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 me to draw several conclusions. The first of these involves the idea that technology has the potential to imprison the public. Different forms of technology have invaded every space of day to day life. If access to most forms of technology were stripped from us at a moment’s notice, the world as we know it would change drastically. What is considered to be basic forms of communication, phone calls and text messages, would cause mass panic if lost. People’s personal worlds would become much smaller as they wouldn’t be able to talk to people they know 2500 miles away. Automation would cease to exist and humans would have to revert back to some of the original assembly lines for much of our production. Basically, the world as it is known today would take a trip back in time sixty years or so. 

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. With the same advertisements being shown in China as America, the Chinese tend to wear similar products see in American life where two hundred years ago nothing would look remotely alike. Their culture was extremely different from ours. The clothes worn would be vastly different, and the instruments they used would be nothing alike. 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. Per modern day advertisements, women are supposed to be in a near anorexic state so they can stay skinny with a lower than healthy body fat percentage. Men are supposed to be these 6’2” monsters made of muscle, when the average male’s height and genetics make this near impossible to achieve. 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 and function on a basic level. Again, this gives an example of how mass control of media output can cause everyone to view much of life in the same light. If one idea is passed through the entire media, then it leads to mostly everyone seeing that idea or vision and ultimately adopting it.

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. They aren’t looking for her to show them her ideal self, but for her to think of a version of herself that would be less masculine and fit nicely into the world they’ve created. However, since Penelope 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.  
