One may think that science and technology are nondiscriminatory. People use and delve into these areas to better the world and the lives of people who reside in it. From reading The Cold Equations, It’s Great to Be Back, Down and Out on Ellfive Prime, and The Martian, we can see the lack of access to technology many people experience, and the multiple relationships society may have with technology.

There is a clear divide between those who can enjoy the benefits of technology and those who can not. In the story It’s Great to Be Back, Josephine and Allan travel between the Moon and Earth to eventually reside back in Lunar City. They justify their return by saying only the smartest and elite are able to be accepted to live in the Moon. People are separated by their skill level, and most people are unable to enjoy the result of this advancement, let alone even travel to the Moon once. In Down and Out on Ellfive Prime, people are  essentially divided by their class. The rich are able to avoid living on Earth, and anyone and everyone else must ultimately go back. Even though this technology was made for the better of the human race, in the end, class systems and values shape who can really benefit from it. For the protagonist Almquist, even though he held the top technical position on the new colony, it was still not good enough to avoid being sent to Earth.

Although some stories are hard science fiction, they are able to highlight the poor relationship people have with technology, both governmentally and socially. The Martian was filled with many pages of robust problem solving, combustable elements and dangerous factors for the experiments that Mark was carrying out. Despite all of this lingo, we can still see the affect of power and government on technology. Back on Earth, NASA was having problems to put together supplies for Mark and to make sure it was safe. Ironically, Mark was successful with most of his experiments (I measure success by not dying or exploding fatally), while NASA really just failed in its one job of sending supplies to Mark. The difference is that while Mark had limited supplies, he had complete autonomy and the willpower to live. On Earth, the bureaucracies set up essentially impede creativity and the drive to push technology to be able to bring Mark back. If the world really want to test limits and try to bring Mark back, they would have pooled efforts in to do it. The Chinese managers ultimately helped because they desired a man of their own, their own representative, to be on the next Ares 5 mission. The effort on this mission to save Mark really does not seem to be about advancement as much as it is about power. He was saved ultimately because the Ares 3 crew decided to jump in and save him without approval from NASA.

Another example of this poor relationship between society and technology is in The Cold Equations. The main character repeatedly thinks and says that the ship is only supplied with enough fuel for the current weight. This wording makes it seem like it is the ship’s fault, that the technology is simply not favorable. However, it is people and not machines who design these ships and give it fuel. If their society had a stowaway problem on the ships, they should have added more fuel to them. It seems like the people in charge find being stingy on oil is better than using more oil to save a life. In this case, the cold equation is really one produced by society, and not this anthropomorphized technology/space.

In It’s Great to Be Back, Josephine and Allan essentially take advantage of all the services available to them. The technology in this story would be amazing to us, but it becomes second-hand to them. I guess this highlights the fact that people quickly adapt to new technology and don’t really take a moment to understand or appreciate it. The people on Earth behave the same way as well; they worry about their taxes being invested in the Moon, instead of appreciating where they have reached. This feeling can be understood through a class struggle lens as well. Their tax money is being used for a city that only allows the elite to live there, everyone else is not eligible. This divide causes tensions between the Lunatics and Groundhogs, each forming unfavorable opinions of the other as weak or backwards.

These stories all focus in how the advancement of technology really doesn’t mean the benefit of humanity. With the class society we have now, it can only help those who are considered the elite and of the upper class. Science won’t make us better, it’ll make things easier for us, but change between people starts culturally and politically.

Side note ** *THERE’S GOING TO BE A MOVIE ON THE MARTIAN***