Anti or Pro Technology

From the poem, All Watched Over By Machines of Loving Grace, Richard Brautigan’s tone seems to be sarcastic with the way he used the parenthesis after he writes “I like to think” (beginning of every stanza); not only that, though he is writing about “harmony” between nature and technology, that is not what he is really meaning. He’s anti-technology tone shows the message that during the 1960s technology was booming and he wrote his poem to show an exaggeration of the possible outcome of technology and nature.

In the last two lines of the first stanza, the simile makes a comparison of mammals and computers to “pure water touching clear sky”. To say the least, this, in reality, is not possible. By this, he is saying technology and nature could not coexist. During the 1960s, the cold war happened, so this poem could also be a message that he did not like that technology will overpower nature or his paranoid schizophrenia is acting up again.

Though it could be anti-technology, the parenthesis could also mean his positive opinion that technology should co-exist with nature. In the line “I like to think/ (it has to be!)/ of a cybernetic ecology…” (Lines 17-19) He implies that he would want the technology—machines—to do all the work for him. He ends his poem with “all watched over by machines of loving grace”, this has a double meaning that, yes, he does want technology, but the queer ending does not show that.

Throughout his poem he implies more toward the anti-technology tone because his familiar words of “brothers and sisters” and the last sentence sets out a statement that translated states: Do we want to be watched over by machines? This sounds queer and creepy. Though at first he says freedom he really means imprisonment, because in my opinion, the machinery has all control and we do not i.e. no freedom. Brautigan’s poem is confusing because the reader believes that he believes this but actually believes the other side or the other way around or both. Taking the poem in reality, the deer and the computer could not happen, since one, deer are afraid of human beings, second, then why would they be comfortable being next to a computer. Another thing, technology was barely booming, so all of this poem should not be seen during this time period where technology is most if not all in control of human beings. Rereading this poem, gives a new message: Brautigan is warning the human beings that technology will control the humans and nature.