Monday, October 22, 2007

Why the future doesn't need us

Bill Joy's thesis is that we are becoming too advanced and are trying to make things easier but at the same time we are digging our graves. We create these spectacular machines that can do all sorts of things for us, in turn creating devolution. We want these robots to do everything for us so we can sit around being lazy which is making people fat, lazy, and unmotivated. If you look back to when we didn't have computers or even cars for that matter; how many people were obese? It's because they got up and worked for a good portion of our lives.
The human race can avoid becoming obsolete by creating devices that can do everything we don't want to but the difference is that we still have to provide manual labor. It won't be as hard to accomplish the tasks at hand but, it will get done and possibly a lot better because there will be someone there that can fix any necessary problems. No matter which way it's thought about people are always going to be necessary for the future because the future needs the human race for there to be intelligent life on this planet.
I think Huxley would say something on the lines of that is exactly what he was trying to get at with "Brave New World". He would either say that or he would completely disagree with it or argue until no end. It's basically a different version of BNW there a just a few differences that you can easily connect to one another.

Tuesday, October 16, 2007

Harrison Bergeron

Kurt Vonnegut is trying to tell us that we are becoming too advanced and eventually our world will be similar to what he has described in his short story, Harrison Bergeron. This story argues that eventually we will not be free that there will be so many laws every way we turn to stop us from doing anything we want to. It also argues that if we believe what ever the government tells us then we are for sure doomed. Most of the theme is despair and joy. It is despair because of the communist government that has been established making everyone miserable. Joy, because it ends and there will be a new free government. Not exactly because a little of this was fantasy. It doesn’t need to be because it all balances out with certain scenes in the story. It is told in first person. It would be like if you were the narrator and in the story telling someone else. Because now you can be involved in the story and you can imagine what it would be like and it’s not so boring. Two sympathetic critics of Vonnegut’s work, Karen and Charles Wood, have said of his stories. The two main characters that are mostly talked about in this story are surrounded by all kinds of technology and yet are held back by all sorts of things. The man is really smart but wears an earpiece to keep him from thinking.

Wednesday, October 10, 2007

"The Ones Who Walked Away From Omelas"

The piece, in my opinion was very odd; it wasn't the worst image that I have received from a book or any reading for that matter. Although it was somewhat disturbing when people would lock up one person make him miserable so that they can all be happy. After I read a little bit more I came to relies the people weren't all psychopaths when people came to see this boy in what I envision to be closet of some kind. Some of the people would go see him and they would cry and become curious, and sometimes they would even leave the town or not come out of their own home for multiple days. In the end it made me think about our society and the way things are and now I think it may have done me some good.

In terms of 1984 it's almost like when people get taken away by the thought police. Everyone knows where they go and what happens to them. The only things they don't know are the details of what goes on in the ministry of truth. They would like to do something about it but they can't because they know that they will succumb to the same fate as the person before them. Winston would have to be one of the people that came to visit the little boy and then go home to cry for a couple of days. I think this would be his character because in "1984" he wants to leave and be without what he has seen and known about for his entire life.

Why were the people so selfish as to keep a boy locked up in a closet for their own good? Where would Winston fit in, in this story? What are the differences between the two? Why would some of the people leave their own happy lives and leave town because of the boy? Why would people go back, time after time to see this young boy?