Reflection

When I first heard that we were doing a blog project for English class I was really upset.  I thought that having to keep track of a blog was going to be really lame and something I really didn’t want to do.  But then as I learned more about it, I realized that having a blog about whatever topic you wanted was actually a pretty good idea. 

A big improvement on the blog from traditional research papers is that for one, we get to choose our topics from anything.  While usually in English class you get a topic to write on, or at least guidelines for what topics are acceptable, in this class we were able to choose from anything we wanted to write about.  Also the blog format made writing a lot easier.  Instead of having length or word requirements, forcing us to use big words and trying to squeeze every possible piece of information out of something to fill a page, writing the blog made my writing a lot more free and accessible.  I could just write whatever I wanted for how long and proper I wanted it to be.  That freedom really increased the pleasure in writing for English class.

The visual rhetoric was another interesting piece of this English class.  I had looked at political cartoons and advertisements before to see what they were trying to say to the public.  But I had never looked at just regular pictures before to try and decipher their pathos, logos, and ethos.  It was a real interesting aspect that after I was done, was really glad to have done that.

This is without a doubt one of the best English classes I have ever had.  I’m even thinking about continuing my blog after this class is over.  I probably won’t do research for it any more, but it felt good to write out some of my ideas for it. 

Visual Rhetoric

Forbidden planet. (1956). [Web]. Retrieved from http://hotcov.com/archives/2022

This is a still from the 1956 Science Fiction movie Forbidden Planet.  When I found this picture online I thought it was a perfect representative for my thesis of “how Science Fiction can reveal universal truths.”  The picture is of a robot helping a lady put on a pair of shoes, which if you think about it, says a lot about humanity. 

For one thing it says how humans prefer to have things done for them, it makes us feel superior or even like royalty.  See how the lady in the photo is sitting high on a ladder and the robot is bowing ever so slightly.  This gives us the impression that the lady is practically royalty and has a servant for even the simplest task as putting on a shoe. 

It also shows how technology has been thought of even back in the 1950’s.  This robot was made to make her life easier, and that’s all technology has ever really been used for is to make life easier for us.  Instead thinking about new technology that may be used for shoes, the director thought about how technology could make putting on shoes easier.  Sometimes humanity forgets how to create new things, and rather just improve old things.

Ethos has to do with the credibility of the picture to the audience.  Credibility is one of the hardest parts of creating Science Fiction.  You have to make something that no one has ever seen before, but at the same time is believable.  The robot in this picture achieved a great balance between the two aspects.  It’s obviously futuristic, yet it has a look to it that is familiar and feasible.  Someone from the 1950’s could easily look at that robot and believe its existence in 50 or so years.

Pathos is the emotional aspect of the picture.  This picture presents uneasiness to it with a sense of calm as well.  The unknown robot presents the feeling of fear, but the woman is completely at ease with the robot passing those feelings of comfort over to the audience. 

Logos is the logical idea behind the picture.  Unfortunately logic does not always play a large role in Science Fiction.  Many times Science Fiction is trying to stay away from logic, because it is easier just to accept something that doesn’t make sense.  So this picture does not present much logic, because with the future, you have to use your own imagination.

  

Phillips, R. (Artist). (1952). Rat in the skull. [Web]. Retrieved from

http://farm2.static.flickr.com

Sometimes Science Fiction can be so “far out there” that there is no real purpose or lesson behind it.  Take for instance the picture above; the idea is to beware of people because you never know what lies behind their eyes, however the artist lost us with the use of a rat controlling the human replica robot. 

He tried to reach our pathos by making the two people in the picture very life like and showing real emotion.  You can really see the fear and confusion in the faces of these people. 

I believe by using the rat as the “controller” he was attempting to connect with a sense of ethos or credibility.  Having a creature in control of a life-like robotic puppet is something that no one has retaliated to before, so to bring it down for a sense of credibility he put a creature that we are familiar with to be the controller.  Unfortunately it didn’t work.  When you have something that is completely unbelievable, sometimes the only way to make it believable is if you push it past our own understanding of this world, and create something believable of another world.  That is what some Science Fiction does; it takes something so far beyond believable that we simply accept its existence.  In this picture the rat, pushes the down the uncommon sense with something common, and in the end just makes the picture ridiculous.

By examining the inside of the rat’s puppet machine, the artist is presenting the audience with his logos.  If the audience can see the inner workings of the puppet robot then our logic takes over and says, yes I suppose this is feasible now that I have seen how it works.  The great detail of the “control center” really helps present the logical side of the picture.

WAR

In these all of my previous postings, I have always tried to show how the universal truths that humanity holds within its own imagination.  There is one aspect of humanity that I have not yet touched upon, which is our ability to make war.  All other animals on this planet fight and kill one another, but humanity is the only ones who can have wars.  One could even say that war is something that is uniquely human.  But what will those battles be like in the future?  Humanity has already seen some horrendous examples of battles and warfare, will the future hold more atrocities or will it hold hope?  I once heard that as long as mankind exists, there will always be battles. 

The weapons mankind uses in warfare change throughout the years as technology evolves.  In fact usually the first technology to change from new innovations are weapons of war.  From fire, to rocks, to metal, to gunpowder, to rockets, technology evolves and the tools of war evolve with it.  So what will the tools of war look like in the future?  Will we have laser guns, battle suits, space ships?  The real question though is will we have dooms day bombs.  Right now our most powerful nuclear weapons can destroy entire cities and irradiate the populations for miles around.  If technology evolves our most devastating devices isn’t it possible to have a weapon that in a single instant could destroy an entire planet? 

Already, technology has reached a whole other realm than what we are used to, weapons in outer space.  Recent advancements in rocket and satellite technology have opened another possible theater of warfare. The deployment of weapons in space has become more and more likely with each passing year.  While currently no nations have any weapons platforms in orbit, experts agree that several countries currently have the resources and the understanding to make these Science Fiction battlefields a reality. 

There are those who would say that space battles and laser guns are only in Science Fiction and that no one would actually create weapons like those.  But if you look back in history there was a time that people said man would never be able to fly.  And no most of our military forces have to do with aircraft, either as transport or as fighters.  If there is one thing that history and Science Fiction has taught us, it is that never say anything is impossible.

Militarizing space.  (2009, December 4).  Issues and Controversies on File.  Retrieved

December 9, 2009, from Issues & Controversies Database.

Apocalypse

It’s the end of the world and we know it.  It’s a catchy lyric from a song over used in comedies and parodies.  But how will the world end?  Humanity is mistaken if it believes that we’ll always be on this planet.  While the question of when humanity is to die out is impossible to determine, the real question is not when, but how? 

Over the years there have been many theories about the end of the world and in what form it comes in.  Religious rapture, alien invasion, universal disease, zombie attacks, enslavement from robots, or possibly we destroy ourselves with global nuclear war; all of these endings have been shown to us in Science Fiction writings and movies.  But how the world truly ends is a mystery to us all.  But that doesn’t stop people from joining cults and believing they know the answer to the end.

These apocalyptic cults and believers have been around for thousands of years (Kaihla).   These cults tend to  flourish in societies that are experiencing economic chaos, political turmoil, or other types of instability (Kaihla).  This can say something about certain people who join these cults.  They don’t seem to realize that civilizations rise and fall constantly throughout history, and that when their civilization ends, the world is not necessarily following right after.  In the past, most peoples religious beliefs dictated how they believed their world was to end.  Every religion of the world, both current and ancient, they hold the secrets to the end of days.  As time went on, societies began believing less and less in religion, and more in science.  Acording to the scientific community the world is already coming to an end due to global warming and the other natural turmoil.

In Science Fiction, there are an infinate number of posibilities for the apocalypse.  My personal belief is that humanity ends at the dawn of artificial intelegence.  Artificial intelegence are computers that can think and reason for themselves.  I’ve seen it a thousand times in Science Fiction movies like The Matrix, The Terminator, and I Robot.  In all of these movies once computers reaslize that how cruel and twisted humanity can be, they decided that humanity can not be saved and therefore must be eliminated.  As I see technology advancing faster and faster as time moves on, I can easily se computers eventually evolving to the point where it no longer needs a human in control.  Can you see it?  It would be hard to find someone who has not seen the cruelty or harshness that humanity can bring to itself, but humanity also has the capability for great compasion and love.  However computers only see facts and statistics, such as crime rates, and are incapable of seeing the hope that humanity constantly is able to hold onto.

Kaihla, P. Apocalyptic cults. Cults. Ed. Jill Karson. San Diego: Greenhaven Press,

2000. Contemporary Issues Companion. Gale Opposing Viewpoints In Context. Retrieved October 6, 2010, from the Opposing Viewpoints Database.

Aliens

There has always been a single theme that has gone hand in hand with Science Fiction since the very beginning.  In ninety percent of Science Fiction, there are always aliens.  There seem to be hundreds of aliens and thousands of planets, and each movie, show, or book has their own special idea on what our galactic brothers and sisters are like.  What do they look like, what is their culture like, do they even exist?  Maybe they are giant creatures covered in fur like Chewbacca, or maybe they are short little grey creatures who have a soft spot for Reese’s Pieces, like in E.T.?  Will they be friendly towards humanity like the Vulcans from Star Trek, or will they attempt to exterminate the human species like in Independence Day?  It is impossible to say, but the real question is are they even out there?  That’s a question for the people at the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence or SETI for short (Triplett). 

William Triplett explains in his article how the search for both microbiological and intelligent life forms distant to our planet is proceeding.  With the help of both SETI and NASA, we are finding out more and more about our own galaxy, and most notably about our closest neighbor, Mars.  Through looking at the natural formation of Martian rocks scientist have confirmed that there was at one time abundant water on Mars (Triplett).  With a moist planet, it is likely that at one time Mars had an atmosphere, which once might have had the possibility to sustain life depending on the alien organism.  But without knowing the exact biological needs of a certain organism it is impossible to say what kinds of planets can and cannot support life.  Perhaps there are species out there that don’t even need an atmosphere; perhaps they can live in the cold vacuum of space.   A statistic in the article points out that even if one out of every billion star systems contained intelligent life, there would still be over one hundred intelligent life forms in our galaxy alone.  So with the hope of someday experiencing first contact with an alien life form, the people at SET, NASA, and the occasional UFO fanatic, will keep their eyes to the night sky. 

What will first contact be like?  Will we find them, or will they find us?  I guess it depends on how far into the future we meet them.  In the film ‘Signs’ the little boy Morgan explains that if an alien intelligence were to come all the way to Earth in person, there can only be two explanations.  One, they are peaceful explorers who wish to increase their collective knowledge and understanding of the universe; or two, they are hostile and have come to use our planet for their own purposes.  While the first option is preferable, which do you believe to be more plausible?  There is a good line in the new science fiction action movie ‘Sky Line’ in which a news reporter is saying how if aliens made first contact with us it would be similar to when Columbus first discovered the Americas, in other words, it didn’t turn out too well for the Native Americans.  I believe that in this present time, if a hostile alien force did come to Earth, humanity would not be able to defend from a more technologically advanced force.  However, I have a feeling that an advanced alien society would not use their technology to travel across the galaxy just to pick a fight with some biped race with a dying planet. 

Triplett, W. (2004). The search for extraterrestrials. CQ Research Online, 14(9),

Retrieved from CQ Research Database.

Cloning

This is a still from "Star Wars Attack of the Clones," where an entire army of clones have been grown for combat.

Ever since we were children, our parents have always told us that everyone one of us are special and unique in our own way.  Individuality is a corner stone in the human spirit.  There is no one else, in the whole world, who is just like you.  But what happens if the individual is copied?  Can an individual be copied?  Does it cease to be an individual?  Or is there simply a second identical individual?  These are questions Science Fiction needs to answer when dealing with human cloning.  While successful human cloning is still a technology far past our present reach, there are already those for and against this issue. 

Those in favor of human cloning research tend to be those who see new scientific discoveries within this field.  They “warn that stopping human-cloning research will cut mankind off from potential advances that have not yet been imagined.”  Perhaps new cures can be found through advancements of human cloning research that can cure Parkinson’s disease or Alzheimer’s disease. 

Those who oppose the idea of human cloning do so mainly on the simple basis of morality and ethics.  There is an Arnold Schwarzenegger movie called “The 6^th Day” in which human cloning becomes a reality.  In the movie, the government puts a ban on all human cloning known as the ‘6^th Day Law’ because God created man on the sixth day.  While the movie is more or less just an action movie, it does beg the question, does man have the right to create life?  Even if man has the ability for human replication, who is to say that these clones would have a soul?  Perhaps God is the only one who can give man a soul?

In true Science Fiction manner, movies and novels have shown us the very worse scenarios that human clones can bring about.  Picture a mad scientist who decides to take over the world with an evil army of clone soldiers.  Far-fetched right.  But what if you replace the mad scientist with a corporation; and replace soldiers with factory workers.  Do you believe it would be unrealistic in the future for a company to clone their employee of the month a hundred times and replace every factory worker with clones who don’t need to be paid and who never complain?  Is that scenario far-fetched? 

Every experience you’ve had is your own, every decision, every mistake, every success leads us who we currently are.  And because everybody chooses differently down the road of life, the result is a billion people, with a billion individual spirits.  That what makes us individuals is what makes us human.  In my opinion if you replace the individual, then you no longer have a human being.

Cloning. (2007, June 19). Issues & Controversies On File. November 3, 2010, from

Issues & Controversies database.

Ever since I was a kid Science Fiction movies have always amazed me and entertained me.  At first they were just cool because they had spaceships, alien sidekicks, and laser guns.  But as I got older and watched more and more SciFi movies, there were certain ideas of humanity which remained constant.  It didn't matter how far away from Earth you were, or even how different that Earth compares to our own, the spirit of humanity never changed.