...Wall-E’s quest and search are hallmarks of dystopian fiction. The movie’s use of imagery, symbols, places, and other objects reinforce the vast dystopian society that Earth has become. The opening scene of the movie, as well as other key scenes, reflect the result of the overconsumption, wasteful consumerism that is plaguing modern man. According to Wall-E’s director, if man does not change his wasteful way, then a grotesque, dead Earth is in our future. Things to mention/prove in the paper based on the opening paragraph: WALL-E’s adventurous quest and search for love as the main storyline Key point: Seemingly innocuous, children’s entertainment. Wall-E’s quest and search are hallmarks of dystopian fiction Key point/task: apply the five essentials of dystopian fiction to Wall-E Wall-E is left alone on a desolate Earth marred by trash and devoid of life The only viable sign of life is the cockroach The cockroach is the only being that could survive a nuclear holocaust (research this) Its seemingly indestructible nature is depicted in the film when Wall-E runs over it. The cockroach springs back into form, unharmed. Transition point: Wall-E’s world on a future Earth is dismal because of the landscape and lack of human interaction. Key point: Wall-E is lonely and deeply desires companionship/love (Eve) In Wall-E, the lack of human interaction and companionship fosters its classification as an accurate depiction of dystopian fiction. (movie’s use of imagery, there...
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...nature is defined as “the nature of humans, especially, the fundamental dispositions and traits of humans” (Dictionary). Efforts to identify the exact nature of humankind date back centuries ago, as numerous thinkers and theologians debate the topic. The issue whether human nature is programmed in humans’ brains or if it is a decision based on beliefs, society, and the culture is very arguable. Philosophers throughout history, such as Thomas Hobbes, have offered their viewpoints of human nature, eventually reaching Sigmund Freud and other modern philosophers. However, in A Clockwork Orange, Anthony Burgess writes a story of a dystopian future version of Britain with the story revolving...
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...Professor Meredyth Puller English 102-12 February 27, 2013 Literary Research Paper This literary research paper is based on the book Welcome to the Monkey House: A Collection of Short Works by Kurt Vonnegut. Welcome to the Monkey House: A Collection of Short Works consists of 25 short stories most of which had previously appeared in magazines such as The Atlantic Monthly, Ladies Home Journal, Fantasy and Science Fiction Magazine, Collier’s Magazine, Saturday Evening Post, The New York Times, Esquire, Venture, and Cosmopolitan. The title story appeared in Playboy magazine the same year the collection was released. Eleven of the stories were reprinted from Vonnegut’s 1961 short story collection Canary in a Cat House (Vonnegut). This paper will focus on four futuristic science fiction stories from the collection. These stories, “Welcome to the Monkey House”, “Harrison Bergeron”, “Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow”, and “Unready to Wear” all share a dystopian science fiction theme. Science and technology are supposed to make the world a better place, but instead, Vonnegut concludes they only create a new set of problems (Farrell, “Science and Technology in the Works of Kurt Vonnegut”). Television is often a target of satire in much of his fiction from the 1950’s. He describes it as desensitizing and numbing while deceiving the masses (Werlock). Vonnegut uses satire and pessimism throughout these dystopian stories. Satire is a special form of literature that seeks to uncover...
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...Subject Code: APBL20045 | Subject Name: City Future | Student ID Number: 563013 | Student Name: Joel Madeira | Assignment Name or Number: Final essay | With reference to at least one work of fiction, critically discuss how science and technology feature in utopian or dystopian planning of future cities. The city of the future needs to change. With the population increasing at a rapid pace, more and more people favor to live in urbanized area. The result of the urban population explosion means that there is a need to change the physical dimension or space in cities, in order to cope with such a large amount of people. Cities will be dramatically restricted with the aid of science fiction and technology. This paper investigates how Ecumenopolis, the science fiction concept of city layout could be implanted or influence the future of cities, followed by how technology such as: transportation and telecommunication, could help satisfy social needs, which may again reshape the structure of cities in the future, finally by using examples from science fiction theme movies and novels to illustrate how humans could reshape their future cities and whether these advanced innovations would lead to a utopian or dystopian society. The most crucial element that cities of the future would face is in relation to the increasing population. It is unavoidable that for the next few decades, global population growth will escalate intensely. According to Vidal (2012), by 2050, 7 billion of...
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...Text Set Introduction Jeff Utegg After reading The Giver and The Hunger Games, we were set out on the task to find a common theme. In an ideal situation, teachers would be able to embellish on these young adult books by supporting them with supplemental sources. Through the use of newspaper articles, magazines, picture books, videos, trailers and clips, and electronics our tenth grade English class will explore and discover the theme; dystopia paired with defiance. Dystopia literally means “ bad uptopia”. According to the MerriamWebster dictionary, dystopia is defined as “an imaginary place where people lead dehumanized and often fearful lives”. Unlike utopia, where a society is perceived to be a perfect place to reside, dystopia differs in that what is “perfect” often causes an undesirable place to live. Having students be able to understand these complex themes in addition to the “on the surface” themes that exist within this young adult literature would ensure a deeper meaning/understanding of the text for them. In addition, being able to present the idea to students in a multitude of facets helps to differentiate learning for students. Also, students are able to gain a better understanding of what dystopia really means when they see it being used in multiple different contexts. This particular English 10 class is a cotaught class of twentyfive including six students with disabilities. There are two students with autism, three with multiple disorders and one student with ...
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...The potential for artificial intelligence has, for decades, been mostly relegated to the larger-than-life imaginations of Hollywood directors. From Blade Runner to Terminator, it always seems to take place in some distant and dystopian future. And yet, if there's one thing to be learned from Google's recent acquisition of the artificial intelligence startup DeepMind for a reported $400 million, it's that the heyday for this type of technology is not a century or even decades away. It's here. Supposing that an individual from the 1800’s, when the industrial revolution just began, visited the present, he would die from curiosity and astonishment from the new technologies. If this man would like to impress an individual from another era this...
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..."George Orwell’s Letter on Why He Wrote ‘1984’." The Daily Beast. Newsweek/Daily Beast, 12 Aug. 2013. Web. 01 Nov. 2015. Orwell’s electronically published letter to Mr.Willmett on why he wrote 1984. He tells of how he fears that the future is getting no better than what he lives in now. That Hitler will disappear but a new force will rise, and how the world is head to a centralized government. Orwell writes about how history is already ceasing to exist and the world is moving one step closer to not caring about politics. He also answers Willmett question on if he thing the world tend to fascism. Which he answer by on why he like war and how he likes war because it's a fight of the choice of good or evil. The letter George Orwell writes is athenic and his own work which gives his view on why he wrote the book. Orwell give insight to what was going on during which it was wrote, using Hitler as a prime...
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..."BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU," runs the caption. Book 1 Chapter 2 * Winston believes that the stability of the Party depends on having a lot of paralyzingly stupid people around like Tom Parsons, his neighbor and coworker. The Party decides everyone needs to love the Party and not anyone else. So the Party eliminated love among family members, actual lovers, friends, and one-night-stands. The Party trains and encourages children to monitor their parents for symptoms of unorthodoxy. Book 1 Chapter 3 Since thinking about the future is really just depressing, Winston dreams about the past. More specifically, he dreams about his mother’s disappearance when he was age 10 or 11, the alluring brunette at his workplace, and Shakespeare. A whistle from the telescreen wakes Winston up at 7:30 a.m. Rise and shine, dear dystopian citizen. Book 1 Chapter 4 * Apparently, the Party despises littering. Oceanians are to deposit every scrap of paper they find into the ominously named "memory holes," slits in and alongside buildings leading to underground furnaces where all documents are destroyed. Winston’s job consists of faking the truth. Seriously. He alters print sources to ensure that they are in agreement with the Party’s version of past and present events. Sometimes, this includes tracking down and forever erasing references to certain persons from historical documents once the Party has...
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...OCTOBER 30, 2013 Sharing Is Caring Is Sharing BY BETSY MORAIS SHARETWEET War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength. —George Orwell, “1984” Secrets are lies. Sharing is Caring. Privacy is theft. —Dave Eggers, “The Circle” The construction begs for comparison, and yet “The Circle” is no “1984.” In the future, according to Dave Eggers, one mega social-network corporation, the namesake of his new novel, has become the technological architect of daily life—arranging conversations, restocking pantries, making payments, and ranking human beings. The company’s leaders wear zip-up hoodies, of course, and enjoy surfing, yet they are known with reverent remove as the Three Wise Men. It’s serious business—so serious that even the parties are work, since attendance is monitored by your boss—and Eggers emulates this sobriety in his writing, which plods across the corporate campus resentfully. New hire Mae Holland, the novel’s protagonist, bounds forth into the communal ethos of her overlords, embracing her first assignment, answering e-mails that provide a “human experience” to small advertisers. Eggers seems bored by the task—Oh, must we spend another day at the Customer Experience desk, minutiae un-inspected, e-mails unread? He doesn’t want to be in the grind, or even playfully tease it. Disclosure is the story of “The Circle,” yet Eggers hardly tells enough. But even without the searing wit of “1984,” the book is capable of landing on point—when it’s at its...
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...Apple Incorporated, has proven to be exceptionally innovative and successful at creating product lines that easily distinguish themselves from competitors’ products. Apple, under the leadership of CEO Steve Jobs, has even begun to diversify its production, and in recent years, includes everything from music and entertainment software to numerous electronic appliances. Across all its different business sectors, Apple has been widely praised as being creative and original in its advertising and marketing strategies (insidecrm.com). It can be argued that Apple’s massive success and profitably are strongly connected to the company’s ability to accurately ascertain what the public wants and effectively market their products to customers. This paper will outline different marketing policies and strategies used by Apple Inc and compare them to academic marketing theories such as the Marketing Mix, Relationship Marketing and Marketing Warfare. As one of the older and more prominent theories discussed here, the 4-P Marketing Mix was created by E. Jerome McCarthy in 1960, which incorporates the aspects of product, price, place and promotion. In terms of products and services, Apple Inc’s main sources of revenue are from sales of PCs and laptops, iPods, iPhones and iTunes downloads (theapplemuseum.com). Unlike other competitors, Apple Inc has become well known for its focus on high quality and ease of use in all its products (macnn.com). The spinning wheel on the iPod and the new, user-oriented...
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...Colorblindness and our loss of heritage Like many popular literary works in American history “The Color of Water” focuses on the issue of race in America. This is nothing new since a lot of the great works of American history like “Huckleberry Finn” and “The Color Purple” took on the somewhat of a unique experience that many Americans have regarding race. One of things that is a different about ‘The Color of Water” is that the character of Ruth espouses to her children the idea that we build a society that is color blind. Even the title of the work hints at this view since water has no color, thus the color of water is clear. Even though this idea of a colorless society sounds great it is utopian and just not possible. It is a much better idea that if we are going to tackle the issue of race in this country, that we do not pretend that we can’t see differences amongst various ethnicities. The real goal should be that we recognize these differences and celebrate them. To understand why Ruth would say to advocate something like a color blind society it is important to understand who Ruth is. The character of Ruth, even though she was a real person, could be looked upon as being a symbol for the American experience. The classic American dream is one in which hard working immigrants move to the US, the land of opportunity, and make it big through hard work and determination. The American experience is different from the American Dream in that it is the realistic events and...
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...Introduction The Internet is the decisive technology of the Information Age, as the electrical engine was the vector of technological transformation of the Industrial Age. This global network of computer networks, largely based nowadays on platforms of wireless communication, provides ubiquitous capacity of multimodal, interactive communication in chosen time, transcending space. The Internet is not really a new technology: its ancestor, the Arpanet, was fist deployed in 1969 (Abbate 1999). But it was in the 1990s when it was privatized and released from the control of the U.S. Department of Commerce that it diffused around the world at extraordinary speed: in 1996 the first survey of Internet users counted about 40 million; in 2013 they are over 2.5 billion, with China accounting for the largest number of Internet users. Furthermore, for some time the spread of the Internet was limited by the difficulty to lay out land-based telecommunications infrastructure in the emerging countries. This has changed with the explosion of wireless communication in the early twenty-fist century. Indeed, in 1991, there were about 16 million subscribers of wireless devices in the world, in 2013 they are close to 7 billion (in a planet of 7.7 billion human beings). Counting on the family and village uses of mobile phones, and taking into consideration the limited use of these devices among children under five years of age, we can say that humankind is now almost entirely connected, albeit with...
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...University of Warwick School of Law Legal Studies Research Paper No. 2010-05 LEGAL FORM AND MORAL JUDGMENT: THE PROBLEM OF EUTHANASIA Alan Norrie Electronic copy available at: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1577163 ABSTRACT In this paper, I want to consider the way in which categories of legal responsibility in the criminal law’s general part mediate and finesse broader moral issues around questions of euthanasia. I INTRODUCTION Euthanasia and its close cousin assisted dying represent extremely problematic areas for the criminal law, as the recent guidelines issue around assisted suicide testifies. The effect of these guidelines is to make no official change in the law, yet to make it clear as a matter of practice that where the law on its face has been broken, there will be no prosecution where the defendant was motivated by good moral reasons. On a legal realist vision of law, the law has changed, but on a positivistic reading it has not. What we have in fact is a rather complex and potentially troublesome juxtaposition of legal rule and administrative discretion. This balances strong social, political and moral claims in a society where there is no consensus as to the rights and wrongs of helping someone to die. In this context, the legal realist can say ‘I told you so’, and the legal positivist can cluck disapprovingly, but both miss the point, which is that the law’s messy mixing of messages in a pragmatic compromise reflects the moral impasse in a way that...
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...Google Glass as a Cybernetic System Paola Gulian 18/06/2013 p.gulian@me.com Stavangerweg 352, Amsterdam 1013AX Telephone: +359 888 88 30 81 Student Number: 10396144 Thesis supervisor: Michael Dieter Media Studies: New Media and Digital Culture Universiteit van Amsterdam 1 Table of Contents: 1. Introduction / 3 2. Chapter 1 – History of Cybernetics theory, Systems Theory, Cyborg and Posthumanism / 6 2.1. Introduction to Norbert Wiener’s theory of cybernetics / 6 2.2. Gregory Bateson on second-order cybernetics / 8 2.3. The kinship between human, animal and machine, Donna Haraway’s theory of the cyborg / 12 2.4. The disembodiment of the human being, Katherine N. Hayles’ theory of the posthuman / 14 3. Chapter 2 – Google Glass, Individuation and the Black Box / 21 3.1. Introduction to Google Glass / 21 3.2. Google Glass and Gregory Bateson’s theory of self-corrective systems / 24 3.3. Industrialization of memory through Google Glass and Bernard Stiegler’s theory of the exterior milieu / 26 3.4. Google Glass as a black box and W. Ross Ashby’s theory of the black boxing / 29 3.5. Experience Design, Olia Lialina and the disappearing user / 30 3.6. Miniaturization of technology, Google Glass as a ubiquitous computer through Mark Weiser’s theory / 32 4. Chapter 3 – Google Glass as an Extension of the Human Being: MediumSpecificity and Becoming Posthuman / 34 4.1 Media ecology through Marshall McLuhan and Google Glass as an extension of the human being / 34 4.2 Perceptual...
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