Uglies Technology and Modernization Quotes

Some of the first technology we see is pretty small but big in meaning. Tally's interface ring is small, but it's basically a tracking device that lets her interact with all the smart devices in her world. (Is it crazy to imagine tracking teens? Not so much.)

Here's a literal party machine: it's a machine that makes parties. (They used to make parties down at the party factory but that closed down.) This machine doesn't come back later (imagine this machine running wild in the Smoke), but it does tell us what New Pretty Town likes: if they build a whole machine for parties, they must like parties.

The surgery is the most important new technology in this book. (We can imagine the book without hoverboards—though we don't like to—but if there's no pretty surgery, there's no story here.) This surgery is more powerful than anything the uglies have, which makes it seem as if the system is going to win against the kids.

Even toward the beginning of the book, we see how that technology is used to direct people. (Still, we know the system can be tricked by the clever trick of… taking off your ring.)

We almost put this in "Freedom and Confinement," but it snuck through the fence and ended up here. Here, Tally's hoverboard isn't what makes her feel confined; what makes her feel confined is the society and Dr. Cable. The technology almost makes Tally feel free here—almost.

This is Cable's method of blackmailing Tally, and note what an important role technology plays here. Dr. Cable uses one technology (the giant wallscreen, best used for watching Game of Thrones) to show Tally the consequences of withholding access to another technology (the surgery).

We don't usually think of books and magazines when we think technology; usually we think of hoverboards and genetically engineered octopus-monsters. But notice how effectively this technology shocks Tally out of her old way of thinking. Magazines with pictures from the past help Tally realize that not everyone needs to be pretty. (This is almost like the reverse of the quote above: Cable shows Tally a giant picture of her as an ugly; Shay shows her lots of other ugly faces that are totally fine.)

A lot of technology in the book (and in real life) is dedicated towards making people "normal." (This is a terrible example, but since we still have nightmares about it, we'll use braces as an example: all that machinery—and pain—just to make teeth straight.) As Maddy points out, one of the side effects of saying "surgery is normal" is that it's hard to make comparisons to other people because everyone is pretty. (Which is, again, why those old magazines are so useful for Tally: the past has a different idea of normal.)

Again, there are some big pieces of tech in this book—pretty surgery, hoverboards, kissing—but there's also some simple technology that a lot of us take for granted. For instance, hot showers. Simple enough, but they really do affect your quality of life. (Quick: if you had to give up smartphones or hot showers for the rest of your life, which would you choose? Yeah, us too.)

We argue that tech shows what a whole society thinks is important. (That is, if most drug companies are researching hair-growing drugs, it's because people decided that hair is more important than, say, cancer.) But it's not as if we started from a blank slate and can choose whatever technology we want. That's the mistake Maddy makes when talking to Shay: Maddy says that Shay can choose to take the pills, but Shay has already had surgery to make her not want to take the pills. (Then again, taking experimental pills doesn't sound fun.)