Week 9:The Stranger Learns the Signs

This week we began to look at the story of Valentine Michael Smith as he begins to learn how to act human, having come from a Martian background. He comes to earth innocent, having never been exposed to our ways and our customs, and begins to learn how to comply with human customs. He is forced to make decisions with little to go on except intuition and experience from another world. He wants so badly to please and to fit in that when he feels that he has not acted in the manner that the people around him had wanted, it is very difficult for him. Loyalty is an absolute for Smith, and protecting his water brothers are his top priority.

"Smith's face had been completely blank. Now it became tragically forlorn as he realized that he must have chosen wrong action at the cusp."(Heinlein, 92)

Week 8:The Alien as Other

In faced with the prospect of interacting with extra-terrestrial beings, we have to hope that any other race we were to come in contact with would be benign. The possibility of that race being aggressive, or looking to destroy us is frightening. Especially the possibility that such a destructive being may already be on our planet just waiting to be discovered and then able to carry out their plans. It is our hope that we would successfully come out of such an interaction having defeated the aggressors, and restored our dominance of our planet. Of course such a victory would likely come at the cost of human lives.

"It won't be a loss if we continue to live, and come out of this"(Campbell, Jr. 106)

Week 7:Planetary Disaster

The reading this week was very stimulating. It was interesting to imagine how people would react in the face of the end of the world. In the materials that we studied, it was shown how such a scenario could bring out both the best and worst in people. Some people would simply want to savor the hours , or moments that they have left, they would want to spend the time with loved ones, or participate in activities that they had enjoyed in their lives. Others might want to try t fight for survival at any cost, paying no mind to any harm being done to other people and looking out for themselves first and foremost. One scenario ended with a brush with apocalypse that was ultimately diverted. The people who survived were faced with the enormous task of rebuiling and recreated society. Some of those were remiss that they did not simply face the end, but the beginning of a task for multiple generations.

"Damn! I missed the nova. Life had been simplicity itself last night. Now..."(Nivin, 239)

Week 6:Paper 1

In my paper I chose to discuss the dangers of the dependence on technology. One of the aspects of this topic is the possibility of cyborgs becoming more of a reality and ultimitely being used against humans. Cyborgs of our creation or someone elses could end up being used by their creators against us, or developing a community of their own and rising up against us for control of the planet. This was addressed in the Cyborg Manifesto by Hathaway as well.

Cyborgs could be "the final imposition of the grid of control on the planet, and the final abstraction used in Star Wars apocalypse waged in the name of defenct," (Haraway, 8)

Week 5:Cyborg

This week as we took a look at dystopian societies I think that a major theme was what is it that makes us happy. The dystopian society looks at life in a society that has been affected by a hypothetical possibility of the future. We see within this society, one way that humans could react to changes that could affect our race, and how humans would adapt. Through these changes, normal life is redefined.

"Happiness is based on a just discrimination of what is necessary, what is neither necessary nor destructive and what is destructive."(LeGuin 2)

Week 4:Integrated Circuit

This week we discussed what a cyborg is and our thoughts and opinions on cyborgs, as well as some ideas of a changing future. Some of what was discussed was about humanity and how we view humanity in relation to the cyborgs. The quote that stuck out to me this week was regarding the need for the family structure to evolve in order to maintain our humanity. This aspect was of particular interest to me, as family structures have certainly evolved over time, and as we have seen the current structure may be broken, and many studies show that monogamy goes against human nature, so it may be much more human to be involved in plural relationships, and to change our family structures.



"We may welcome this evolution of the family or we may resist it, but we must begin conspicuously choosing sustainable family structures that support the welfare of our children, or we may risk the very survival of humanity."(Dr. Anapol)

Woman as a Robot Doll, our mutual strangeness

This week we have explored a topic that I would imagine most people don't spend a whole lot of time contemplating, and we contemplate these themes consistently in our daily lives. Parents lament their children idolizing stereotypical celebrities and images in magazines that do not represent the people that we know in our daily lives. Women find themselves subject to prejudices that have held throughout the history of mankind. And yet, women are no less able to understand what makes the men in their lives tick. I would even daresay that women look at men in much the same manner that men look at women, albeit in a much subtler manner.
With that I think that although this weeks topic focuses on women as robots, it could easily be the other way around, and we need to both be understanding of the opposite sex. Only when we attempt to open ourselves to understanding the opposite can we begin to understand the self and our roles as men and women and our relation to them in our human journey.

"In our mutual strangeness, men and women can be doorways one for another, openings into the creative mystery, that we share by virtue of our existence in the flesh."(Sanders 62)