Nature Vs. Technology

In the poem, All Watched Over By Machines of Loving Grace, Brautigan introduces readers to the interaction between Mother Nature and industrial advances.

In the first stanza, Brautigan portrays a wistful image of a “cybernetic meadow”(3) that joins the forces of nature and technology to create a “mutually programming harmony”(5-6). This imagery provides a positive relationship between “mammals and computers”(4) because they can coexist in a healthy ecology, where neither may harm the other. Brautigan points out that in this way, inventions and innovations aren’t playing the role of “destruction”, as some critics say, but rather building upon the beauty of nature to give a meaning of “paradise”.

Similarly in the second stanza, the author continues with a “cybernetic forest” (11), illustrating the positive connotation of the pro-technology idea seen previously. To a further extent, Brautigan denotes “electronics” (12) as “flowers with spinning blossoms”(15-16) as if nature is refined through the cooperation and coercion of the technological factor. This new milieu “where deer stroll peacefully past computers”(13-14) gives a somewhat “dreamy and peaceful” setting. In fact, technology is another aspect of nature used to help people conform with society as a whole and seek what it has to offer.

The message in the last stanza is that nature and technology are clashing forces because one succeeds at the other’s expense. Given the creation of nature, humans are introduced to help enhance and improve upon this creation. As society develops due to the unlimited needs and desires of the human population, labor becomes an inescapable duty and responsibility. With people being put to work on industrial advances, the environment is getting physically damaged in a way that is irreversible. Brautigan sees such labor as a heavy burden on mankind and reminisces upon the early ages when people are “joined back to nature” (21) and “returned to our mammal brothers and sisters” (22). In this situation, “mammal” refers to the earlier characteristics of life that coexisted with the human population in nature. Such melancholic and desirous tone brings readers back to reality while showing doubt on the previously shaped utopia.

From my perspective, the anti-technology proposal seems more propelling because realistically, society is portrayed in this way. Since the introduction of new inventions in the industrial age, more labors are hired to further development in various companies. Consequently, many factors of nature, such as animals, have become extinct, and plants are striving to be preserved from pollutions of factories and other contaminants worldwide. In this matter, nature and technology are two extremes that when combined, collides with the concept of "harmony".