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)