Since the dawn of the human race, there has always been a characteristic of humans that allows for rapid ascension in the food chain. The human brain is this characteristic, and it has built tools that allowed for rapid ascension through the food chain, humans to travel great distances in very short amounts of time, and moving past the boundaries of planet Earth to its moon. Technology is this tool, and in Bitch Planet it is seen in a much different form. The comic shows possible warnings from becoming too dependent on technology, allowing one group to control the media outputs, and no longer understanding the way it works.

In the first panel of the book Penelope is seen in a prison with screens covering the surrounding walls. Once the screens come to life with the images of a group of officials claiming to be giving her a second chance, a clearer image is given on the use of technology in this comic. The fact that there are actual guards being projected onto the screens behind Penelope allows for several conclusions to be drawn. The first of these involves the idea that technology has the potential to imprison the public. If access to what we consider to be basic technology was stripped from us at a moment’s notice, the world as we know it would implode. Basic communication via telephone and text message would evaporate and face to face encounters would be the only way to conduct business between two parties. 

The fifth image on the second page contains the images of the Fathers being projected onto the screens in front of Penelope. The main point of interest in this image is not the images on the screens, but rather the use of color to depict the Fathers. For the most all of the men have a blueish hue to their face besides a few little blots here and there. The distinct lack of color shows the lack of differentiation that accompanies mass use of technology. With the exception of some third world countries, every person on the face of the Earth is connected in some way, shape or form, through technology. This means the same news can be distributed to everyone. The same advertisements can appear in China that appears in the United States, and the same beliefs can be shared among people who live in different continents. The main point this illustration gives is the idea that technology can transcend the barriers of language and physical borders between countries and inadvertently assimilate most of the people and cultures in the world by simply spreading the same content to the world’s population. 

This idea is illustrated again in the restaurant scene. For the most part, everyone in this scene is shown wearing a personal screen similar to Google Glass, and Penelope is the outlier yet again. The screens show the same thing to every person and as a result most of the people show similar thoughts and characteristics about general topics. A good example of this comes in the form of the girl ordering “one sugar-free, salt-free, gluten-free muffin and three plates, please.” (DeConnick) This shows that a universal idea has been accepted on the way people should look. The idea is further elaborated on when she is shown using an extreme version of counting calories. She is basically giving her body just enough food for it to continue to live. Again, this gives an example of how mass control of media output can cause everyone to view the majority of life in the same light.  

When the comic returns to the prison Penelope is being held in, the Fathers are shown prying into her head through the use of a mirror like device that allows them to see how Penelope envisions herself. The true purpose of the mirror is shown best when the fathers say, “Once we’ve all seen a vision of your ideal self, we’ll have a goal.” (DeConnick) In other words, once we see a version of you that will fit into the world as we know it, then we can change you into that version of yourself. Yet again, the technology in the form of the mirror device is used in an attempt to assimilate Penelope into a version of society they deem acceptable. However, since Penelope is characterized mostly as someone who has no intention to fit into this world, the device fails to work since the ideal version of herself is the way she is at the current moment suggesting how we shouldn’t let a generalized image of the ideal person control the way we go about imaging ourselves. 

Also, another part to point out from the scene where they are hooking the machine up to Penelope is the lack of understanding when it comes to how technology works. This is evident when one of the Fathers uses the word “algriffins” instead of “algorithms”. (DeConnik) This is something that today’s society can relate to since the majority of the public has no idea how computers actually work. The panel shown illustrates the idea of how the use of technology that was originally intended for a completely different purpose can be perverted into something unforeseen. For example, if the use of the fingerprint scanners we use to unlock our phones suddenly turned into a database of everyone’s fingerprint, the government would have access to at least one fingerprint of every one of the phone users. This may allow for faster crime solving, but it comes at the cost of the remaining privacy of the general public. 

The entire dystopian future illustrated in Bitch Planet represents a possible outcome of the current world. If one group were to control every type of media consumed by the general public then not only would all sense of individuality cease to exist, but the general public would be completely oblivious to whether the information provided was true. Also, no one would question where the ideals held by the majority of the people came from if everyone had the same ones. Everyone would become mirror images of one another and essentially would become mental clones of one another with the only differentiation coming in the form of appearance.  
