How we cite our quotes: (Chapter. Paragraph)
Quote #7
"Overpopulation."
"Mhm, that was the word you used. That's your word, your metaphor, for this feeling of unfreedom. (5.33)
Dr. Haber is being kind of nasty about it, but he's hit on something important. Technology and modernization don't just have physical ramifications; they have emotional ramifications, as well. Technology can be a double-edged sword: it may make the world safer, and it may make life easier in certain ways, but it can also lead to things like overpopulation, pollution, and that feeling so many modern people have of being totally adrift, cut off from life and from each other. Why do you think this happens?
Quote #8
He didn't wake until nearly noon on Saturday. He went to his refrigerator and looked in it; he stood contemplating it a while. There was more food in it than he had ever seen in a private refrigerator in his life. In his other life. (6.39)
In this scene, George directly experiences the benefits of Dr. Haber's world modification. Before that, improvements in health care led to longer lives, which led to overpopulation. On an everyday, practical level, that meant that George, like others, was forced to eat things like soyloaf, made from a plant that is very cheap and easy to grow. In a way, Dr. Haber's modification is actually a step back in the modernization of the food chain. But which is better?
Quote #9
"It isn't evolution. It's just self-preservation. I can't— Well, it was a lot worse. Worse than you remember. It was the same world as that first one you remember, with a population of seven billion, only it—it was worse. Nobody but some of the European countries got rationing and pollution control and birth control going early enough, in the seventies, and so when we finally did try to control food distribution it was too late, there wasn't enough, and the Mafia ran the black market, everybody had to buy on the black market to get anything to eat, and a lot of people didn't get anything. [...] One of the African states came in on the Arab side, and used nuclear bombs on two cities in Israel, and so we helped them retaliate, and...." (7.141)
The traditional Western view of history is one of progress. The more you go in the future, the more technology you get, and the better things become. But the way that George is telling it, technology is actually what destroyed the entire world in 1998. Instead of making things better, things got progressively worse. It was just that nobody noticed that until it was too late.