Chapter 1. The Deceiving Virtues of Technology

In this chapter I wish to take a long view of technology—a very long view. It begins with Odysseus and his beleaguered companions penned up in the cave of Polyphemus, the great, one-eyed, Cyclopean giant, offspring of Poseidon. Polyphemus had already twice brained a couple of the men by smashing their heads against the earth, then devouring them whole for a day's meal. Odysseus was desperate and, as he later told the story, "I was left there, devising evil in the deep of my heart, if in any way I might take vengeance on him, and Athena grant me glory."^[*] So he hit upon a plan. Finding a huge beam in the cave, he and his companions sharpened it, hardened the point in the fire, and hid it beneath one of the dung heaps littering the place. When Polyphemus returned from pasturing his flocks, and after he had dined on a third pair of the companions, Odysseus offered him a wondrously potent wine the Greeks had brought with them. The Cyclops drank without reserve, draining three bowls and then falling into a drunken stupor. But before passing out, he asked Odysseus for his name, and the warrior answered, "Nobody is my name, Nobody do they call me."

^[*] Quotations are from the A. T. Murray translation (Harvard Loeb edition, 1919), unless otherwise indicated. I have changed "Noman" to "Nobody" in the text that follows.

As the giant then lay senseless, dribbling wine and bits of human flesh from his gullet, Odysseus and his comrades heated the end of the beam in the coals of the fire and then, throwing all their weight onto it, thrust it into the eye of Polyphemus. Roaring mightily, the blinded Cyclops extracted the beam from his bloodied eye, groped to remove the huge stone blocking the mouth of the cave, and bellowed his outrage to the other Cyclopes living nearby. But when they came and asked who was causing his distress, his answer that "Nobody" was the culprit left them perplexed. "If nobody is tormenting you, then you must be ill. Pray to Poseidon for deliverance." And so they left him to his troubles.