Technological Advancement In Brave New World

The Modern Dangers of Technological Advancements

Word Count: 1167

Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, published in 1932, is a novel set in a futuristic society where rapid technological advancement is prioritized above all else. In this world, the government removes any aspect of free will from the character’s lives, from their careers to their relationships. The main character, Bernard Marx, gains awareness of the flaws in the world’s systems due to his poor treatment and, throughout the book, he begins to question the cost of replacing natural processes with technology. Aldous Huxley criticizes society’s prioritization of rapid technological and scientific advancement during the early 1900’s, emphasizing the dangers it poses to humanity,

For example, in the beginning of the novel, the narrator describes the Hatcheries and Conditioning Centers where humans are produced and primed for their predetermined roles in the restrictive society, detailing the way in which “the principle of mass production [was] at last applied to biology” (Huxley 7). The implementation of the assembly also leads to the dehumanization of reproduction. During the children tour of the facility, the Director explains the “embryo's troublesome tendency to anæmia, to the massive doses of hog's stomach extract and foetal foal's liver with which, in consequence, it had to be supplied” (Huxley 12). Because humanity was removed for the process, it was necessary to take nutrients from the organs of animals. In both a literal and metaphorical sense, human reproduction had become a process that no longer needed humans. Huxley also uses the symbol of the assembly line to criticize the way in which excessive use of technology results in a loss of morals. In one scene, the character Mustapha Mond, a world controller, refers to the time before Ford had introduced the assembly line, “For a very long period before the time of Our Ford, and even for some generations afterwards, erotic play between children had been regarded as

The New World’s habitual use of Bokanovsky’s process, a method of artificially reproducing identical human embryos in mass quantities, alludes to a French Bureaucrat who advocated for governmental efficiency. The use of this process is a means of controlling the size of the population and ensuring a stable society. The Director conveys the importance of the Bokanovsky Process, "Bokanovsky's Process is one of the major instruments of social stability… If we could bokanovskify indefinitely the whole problem would be solved” (Huxley 7). This passage demonstrates the futuristic society's belief that technology is necessary to prevent instability in any shape or form. In addition to Bokanovsky's Process, the society also controls reproduction through the use of Malthusian belts. These belts, which carry contraceptives and are worn and displayed proudly by the women in the novel, alludes to Thomas Malthus who offered birth control to regulate the population’s growth. Lenina, a product of the new world, was promiscuous just as the conditioning encouraged. It was also instilled in her to take contraceptives, as “years of intensive hypnopædia and, from twelve to seventeen, Malthusian drill three times a week had made the taking of these precautions almost as automatic and inevitable as blinking” (Huxley 77). Rather than allowing natural reproduction, the new government completely replaces vicarious