Wednesday, November 12, 2008
final project
I plan to write about how technology will ultimately end the human species, which will be my thesis. I will incorporate Bill Mckibben's "Enough" and Lee M Silver's "Challenging Nature" . Silver will be apart of the counter argument stating that technology cannot end our species, it can only help and improve our way of living. As my research aspect, i will find article or books written about technology. I'm sure i will mostly find articles on this subject so ill look mostly for online articles. I want to use aspects of today's technology along with technology in the past. So for example i would use the atomic bomb of WWII and the nuclear scare during the cold war. Also, i would use Genetic engineering in today's world and the idea of how terrorists can destroy our food supply. I am still on the fence whether or not I will be doing a short story or a paper.
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5 comments:
If you want to do a short story, there's a well established subgenre of science fiction about the end of the world and/or whatever happens after. One example is Philip K. Dick's "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep" (the basis of the Ridley Scott Film "Bladerunner"); another is Neville Shute's "On the Beach." Those might be useful as inspiration.
Regardless of whether you do a story or essay, one important question is what you mean by "end." Are we going to blow ourselves up/ reduce ourselves to sludge, or are we in some sense going to create our replacements?
It's a worthwhile project, but obviously just the start of one.
Like Dr Johns said, I think narrowing down how the the human race will be destroyed is essential so that you aren't just talking about all the ways the world could come to an end. If you want to incorporate Butlers heirarchical and intelligence humans will blow each other up you could. It seems like that's what the atomic bomb and cold war examples are getting at. I think McKibben examples would come more from the creating replacements aspect, however Butler could relate to this as well with the Oankali messing with genetic engineering and making humans progessively less human.
What could help your ideas take off would be more clearly specifying your thesis for your argument and building your counter-argument off of that. Maybe you want to say that genetic engineering will fall into the wrong hands, giving terrorists the ability to wipe out all of man kind through a simple virus or change in the food supply. State that as your thesis and look up articles talking about the advances in genetic engineering and the downside of genetic engineering. By narrowing your paper to just a few technologies that could destroy the world you make it much easier to make a strong argument.
Once you find a good source that may interest you, it could give you a better idea of what you want to do between a short story or an essay.
After you specify what you mean by "end the human species," I think you will be better able to develop your argument and counter-argument. Using Silver and McKibben as your sources should provide you with a lot of information and examples.
I think that your project idea could make for a good short story or an essay. If you decide to take a creative standpoint, you could probably write a short story and show the contrasting viewpoints on technology, or you could write a traditional essay and incorporate other research articles into your paper.
I am inspired by Dr John's comment about what the end of the human species really means. My first thought is of a nuclear apocalypse, and easy technological death to the human species and the the earth itself. The second thought that I have follows from Lilith's brood, where humanity is destroyed just as surely by interbreeding as they would have been destroyed by the bomb. Technology could play a role in this, as you could argue that human minds encased in computer components are no longer "human" as such.
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