Listening to Marc Andreessen discuss his Techno-Optimist Manifesto on the Foundation for American Innovationโs Dynamist podcast, I was struck by his repetition of something that is in the manifesto and is completely wrong. โThe myth of Prometheus โ in various updated forms like Frankenstein, Oppenheimer, and Terminator โ haunts our nightmares,โ he writes.1 On the podcast, he elaborated by saying that, although fire has many benefits, the Prometheus myth focuses on its use as a weapon. He said something similar in a June post called โWhy AI Will Save the Worldโ:
“The fear that technology of our own creation will rise up and destroy us is deeply coded into our culture. The Greeks expressed this fear in the Prometheus Myth โ Prometheus brought the destructive power of fire, and more generally technology (โtechneโ), to man, for which Prometheus was condemned to perpetual torture by the gods.”
No. No. No. No.
Prometheus is punished for loving humankind. He stole fire to thwart Zeusโ plans to eliminate humanity and create a new subordinate species. He is a benefactor who sacrifices himself for our good. His punishment is an indicator not of the dangers of fire but of the tyranny of Zeus.
Prometheus is cunning and wise. His name means foresight. He knows what he is doing and what the likely consequences will be.
Eventually his tortures end when he is rescued by the hero Herakles (aka Hercules), who shoots the eagle charged with eating Prometheusโ liver every day, only for it to grow back to be eaten again.
The Greeks honored Prometheus. They celebrated technฤ. They appreciated the gifts of civilization.
The ancient myth of Prometheus is not a cautionary tale. It is a reminder that technฤ raises human beings above brutes. It is a myth founded in gratitude.
Hereโs a passage from the magnificent translation of Aeschylusโ Prometheus Bound by poet John Scully and Aeschylus scholar C. John Herington:
I gave them intelligence,
I made them
masters of their own thought.
I tell this
not against humankind, but only to show
how loving my gifts were โฆ
Men and women looking
saw nothing,
they listened
and did not hear,
but like shapes in a dream dragging out their long lives
bewildered
they made hodgepodge of everything, they knew nothing of making
brick-knitted
houses the sun warms,
nor how to work in wood.
They swarmed like bitty ants
in dugouts
in sunless caves.
They hadnโt any sure signs of winter, nor spring
flowering,
nor late summer when the crops come in.
All their work was work without thought,
until I taught them to see
what had been hard to see:
where and when the stars
rise and set.
Whatโs more, for them I invented
NUMBER: wisdom
above all other.
And the painstaking, putting together of
LETTERS: to be their memory
of everything, to be their Musesโ
mother, their
handmaid!
And I was the first to put brute beasts
under the yoke, fit them out
with pack saddles, so they could take
the heaviest burdens off the backs of human beings.
Horses I broke and harnessed
to the chariot shaft
so that they loved their reins, they showed off
the pride and wealth of their owners.
I, I alone invented
the seawandering
linen wingd
chariots for sailors.
All these devices, I invented for human beings.
I gave them intelligence,
I made them
masters of their own thought.
I tell this
not against humankind, but only to show
how loving my gifts were โฆ
Men and women looking
saw nothing,
they listened
and did not hear,
but like shapes in a dream dragging out their long lives
bewildered
they made hodgepodge of everything, they knew nothing of making
brick-knitted
houses the sun warms,
nor how to work in wood.
They swarmed like bitty ants
in dugouts
in sunless caves.
They hadnโt any sure signs of winter, nor spring
flowering,
nor late summer when the crops come in.
All their work was work without thought,
until I taught them to see
what had been hard to see:
where and when the stars
rise and set.
Whatโs more, for them I invented
NUMBER: wisdom
above all other.
And the painstaking, putting together of
LETTERS: to be their memory
of everything, to be their Musesโ
mother, their
handmaid!
And I was the first to put brute beasts
under the yoke, fit them out
with pack saddles, so they could take
the heaviest burdens off the backs of human beings.
Horses I broke and harnessed
to the chariot shaft
so that they loved their reins, they showed off
the pride and wealth of their owners.
I, I alone invented
the seawandering
linen wingd
chariots for sailors.
All these devices, I invented for human beings.
All human culture comes from Prometheus.
These arenโt just an English majorโs pedantic quibbles. The stories we tell ourselves matter. That even a โtechno-optimistโ inverts the Promethean myth reveals how deeply hostility to technology has penetrated our collective consciousness.
For thousands of years, the myth of Prometheus has taught us to appreciate the gifts of technฤ and the costs that bringing those gifts can exact. Prometheus connects our high-tech present with our poetic past. He reminds us of the continuities of human culture as well as its flux. He unites the Two Cultures.
In that spirit, I cherish the hope that, as artificial intelligence makes the library of Herculaneum decipherable, we will recover the lost sequels to Prometheus Boundโan appropriate fruit of the latest Promethean gift.2
Virginia Postrel is a writer with a particular interest in the intersection of commerce, culture, and technology. Author of โThe Future and Its Enemies,โ โThe Substance of Style,โ โThe Power of Glamour,โ and, most recently, โThe Fabric of Civilization.โ This essay was originally published on Virginiaโs newsletter on Substack.
Banner image courtesy author: “Midjourney doesnโt really follow directions but I like the results: ‘Greek god Prometheus coming down from mountain top, carrying torch of fire. Small human figures, shivering and naked in the foreground at the bottom of the mountain. Stylized modern depiction, daylight.’
- Frankenstein isnโt The Terminator either. Frankenstein is a creator who wonโt take responsibility for his creation, a father who rejects and abandons his child. The Creature is frightening and dangerous but he is also the bookโs moral center, a tragic, sympathetic character who is feared and rejected by human beings because of his appearance. Only then does he turn deadly. Frankenstein arouses pity and terror because we empathize with its central figure and understand his rage. The novelโs most reasonable political reading is not as a story of the dangers of science but as a parable of slavery and rebellion. โBy the eighteen-fifties, Frankensteinโs monster regularly appeared in American political cartoons as a nearly naked black man, signifying slavery itself, seeking his vengeance upon the nation that created him,โ writes historian Jill LePore, who calls the โFrankenstein-is-Oppenheimer modelโฆa weak reading of the novel.โ I agree. The Romantics tended to identify with Prometheus and Mary Shelleyโs husband, Percy Bysshe Shelley, wrote a play called Prometheus Unbound, further undermining the reading of Frankenstein as an anti-Promethean fable. โฉ๏ธ
- Inspired by the Herculaneum example, historian Benjamin Breen has some good ideas for ambitious historical projects that could be aided by new technologies and encouraged by relatively modest prizes. He says the โlack of wow factor when compared to goals like, say, launching a spaceship, is probably part of the reason why there isnโt a long track record of setting up inducement prizes for history.โ But these projects have plenty of wow factor for me. Unfortunately, Iโm not in a position to fund them. โฉ๏ธ
