Similarities Between The Nether And The Effect By Lucy

Human’s eyes cannot detect how fast technology is growing in today’s society. In the two plays, The Nether by Jennifer Haley and The Effect by Lucy Prebble, the reasoning of how technology has become such an issue in the way humanity is trying to become. Albert Einstein, the German-born physicist and undoubtedly one of the smartest individuals ever, raised a dilemma in modern society by stating that ‘‘It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity.’’ However, in the Nether and the Effect, some plausibly real, if futuristic situations shed light that this quotation is quite simply incorrect. In the Nether, two participants experimented with a drug as part of a trial to explore how complicated an emotion love

can be; meanwhile, The Nether sometimes takes place in a virtual world, whose name inspired the title of the play, where ethical behavior is confronted between the physical and virtual world. These two plays, where love and ethic are significant themes, illustrate that technology is not really something beyond humanity's love between others and how people’s morality exceeds technology when it’s the time to reason.

Love is a constant emotion whose presence in two individuals makes them inseparable, not even through technology. In the Nether and the Effect, love is omnipresent in the progress of the story, and its describes at something above technology. Each play is different in their message to deliver and in the form of what is technology, but both confirms that when two individuals find the addictive, kindness and caring emotion which is called love, they can exceed technology. For example, in the Effect, Tristan and Connie, the two volunteers for the drug trial, are drugged with an anti-depressants, but Tristan has merely taken a placebo. During all the trial, Tristan was trying to have sex with Connie and even Doctor James, but he does not know that he was on the placebo effect. When Connie reveals to Tristan that he is on the placebo, Tristan’s emotions change because he feels that he was faking, but in fact he was still in love and that the drug was not the one that influence is emotion towards Connie. This is also true with Connie that had hesitated to love Tristan during all the trial, but at one moment, she decides to show how powerful she loves Tristan by transferring him an extra dose of drugs by kissing him. This symbolises the way when individuals love each other, they can even drugs each other to show their addictive love and passion. This is also seen in a crucial scene when both characters slide away all the normal rules of behaviour by texting each other’s, which is illegal during a trial, and reveals a scene where emotional and chemical sensation is more powerful than the technology. Moreover, Dr. James argues that there is no ‘‘anti-depressant effect going on’’ about the love of the two volunteers and he thinks that there is nothing ‘‘to do with your drug’’ (Prebble 43). In other words, he said that the technology (drug) is not why both act in this way, but more the love that makes the way they act and are. Moreover, drug is not the only sort of technology that can be exceeded by love, but also the world we living it. In the Nether, Morris, a businessman, is exchanging his time between the real and virtual world. Where Iris, a shining little girl, who in fact is Doyle, a middle-aged science teacher is living in the virtual world and being the “little girl” of Sims, the owner. Love is also a constant emotion in the real and in the virtual world. For example, Woodnut, Morris’s characters in the virtual world, get attached to Iris: ‘‘[m]aybe I should not get too attached’’ (Haley 57). She found during her interrogation that Sims in fact love children and has a profound and indecent illness: pedophilia. However, Sims expands this sickness by saying to the detective that we don’t know what Morris does by putting him out into the real world. In this part of the play, Sims reveals that one day he was in love with a little girl near his neighborhood and decided to have sex with her, so in order to escape this kind of situation, he decided to create a virtual world. However, even in both worlds, the technology cannot exceed the love he has for little girl. An important scene, the last, reveals that Sims in fact really love Iris, who is Doyle, by saying: ‘‘I love you’’ in the virtual world and that no kind of technology will stop him of being in love with a little girl (Haley epilogue).
Even if technology surrounds all human spheres, there still people that are trying to do good ethical acts.

In the Nether, Detective Morris is trying to have Sims’ servers to prohibit and delete his servers because a lot of crimes had been committed in this virtual world. Morris’s characters is a good example of a good ethical and moral behavior because she tries to reveals the crime that Sims had committed in the virtual world even his server is on another dimension. Morris is one of many examples that illustrated that ethical behaviors will always be present and exceed technology even is technology a deadlock to counter ethical reasoning. Moreover, when Sims reveals his sickness of pedophilia to Morris, Morris demonstrated how ethical behavior and the way we acts will still be the same in both worlds: ‘‘The world is still the place we have to learn to be. You are free to go, Mr. Sims.’’ (Haley 71). This divulges how technology can be a burden to humanity, but that basic ethical acts will always exceed technology. For example, in The Effect, Dr. James argues with Toby about the whole purpose of the drug trial. During this conversation where James divulges that this trial was just about money and not really to help people, she evokes a sense of good ethical behavior by confronting Toby, who in fact: ‘‘spend more on marketing than research’’ (Prebble 80). Dr. James behavior demonstrated how far ethical behaviour is a strong component of humanity that can surpass everything in this world that is created by humans, in this case:

technology.
Technology is only a human creation to convey messages that humans itself have difficulty to do without it. Love and ethical behavior are the essence and the power of humanity to have a better world and to grow with a technology that will never exceed humanity because ‘‘brain will always lie beyond the reach of science’’ (Prebble introduction). In the Nether by Jennifer Haley and in the Effect by Lucy Prebble, love and ethical behavior are themes that proved that Einstein’s thought is purely wrong. Perhaps technology is not evolving enough or is just that humanity will always be the center of the universe.