The answer to all the questions, well not really, but I do try, =)

Why "must the system be first?" Shouldn't the people how made the system, well people in general be first? I do agree with Carr, the human brain has become "an outdated computer that needs a faster processor." So much information is thrown at people throughout a normal day that it is hard to even remember what someone told you that morning. Have you heard that people only remember the first thing they are told in a day? (Or something like that) That is why there are commercials, we need a break to have our brains register what we just watched. Vonnegut made a good decision by making the chapters of his book Cat's Cradle so short-he wanted to keep the masses interested and not have them give up on his book because they couldn't concentrate. Google has not helped us. It gives people information right away, I know this may sound like a nice thing, but people do not go out and search for information on their own now. And how do we know if the information given by Google is correct? It is easy to change info by just hacking someone's site.

Taylor wanted "the gradual substitution of science for the rule of thumb thoughout the mechnic arts." His concpet would bring about "a utpoia of perfect efficiency." So science can make everything perfect? Taylor must have been crazy. How can something that can cause so much harm towards the human race, humanity, the planet, the universe help create a perfect utopia. A perfect Utopia should not/would not include science in general.

So I went off a little. So I agree with Carr, the human race has a short attention span that is/was caused by the advancements of technology and Google has helped this along by having this technology andinformation right at someone's fingertips.

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Philosophy Now

One of the main things that stuck out was the article in general. The entire last paragraph of the article remnded me so much of Brave New World-when john asks the Deltas if they "like being babies?..mewling and puking." Will or has this rapid growth of information and technology actually suspended the human race from achieving anything or has it advanced it?

Another thing that popped out to me from the article and video was how much information is being created. That we need to absorb more and more knowledge/information to get ahead/survive this world is distrubing. The concept of being able to make more room in one's brain to store more information is just crazy; we are not computers! We have become reliable on computers for such easy tasks.

Also, another main thing that I may have mentioned, but already forgot to talk about is how computers have taken over out lives. Well I have talked about it, but here is more. How many of us have a myspace, facebook, twitter(which is the wierdest of them all), or any other networking? How many times do you go on the internet? WE ARE ON THE INTERNET TO TALK ABOUT HOW THE "ADVANCEMENT" OF TECHNOLOGY HAD TAKEN OVER OUR LIVES. I think that the concept of a computer being smarter than the average human brain (what exactly is average?) is creepy. HAS ANYBODY EVER SEEN THE TERMINATOR MOVIES?! I think that technology has helped us, we have achieved so much because of it, but where is it leading to? Will we rely on technology for everything in a few years? Look how much stuff has advanced in the last 10 years, 5 years, heck 1 year! What will happen if we continue to rely on something that may eventually be smater than us?

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Cat's Cradle Chs. 1-7

Cat's Cradle clearly has postmodernism ideas in it. Vonnegut's writing style shows the characters craziness with his random hops from topic to topic.

Bokonism is a major factor of the book that seems to have postmocdernist ideas. How can a religion that outwardly states that it is false, that there is no truth to it an have followers. Bokonists know that what they believe in is made up of lies, yet they can not help but live/follow its rules. This reflects the idea of the postmodern idea of holding two contradictive thoughts at once.

Felix Hoeniker and John definitly bleed postmodernism. Felix is clearly indiffernet to any morals that the rest of us seem to have. For example when the topic of sin comes up, Felix replies "what is sin?" To judge right from wrong, one must be able to have some type of morals, but Felix does not have this. Postmodernism has a notion that there is no such thing as absolute truth; this goes with Felix's negation towards any morals.

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In my essay about Brave New World, I am going to talk about the different societies that are present in brave new world, the savages, and the society in which the alphas are part of. I will also talk about the background from which Aldous Huxley comes from. I want to see why Aldous Huxley wrote Brave New World, which part(s) of his life influenced it. I will use a source that has the definition of society in it. If I am to write an essay about societies I should know what exactly a society is. I will also use another source that talks about/has information about Aldous Huxley. If I am to write an essay about the society in which Huxley lived and why he wrote the book, I would need to know about all of his life. (Wow that last part sounded a bit creepy). The last source I would use is Brave New World, of course, it is what the essay is about.

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My internet is finally working!

So I am going to post all of the stuff that I have missed because of my crazy internet. The blog about my essay, well since I already finished my essay, is well wierd, but i will still do it, it is an assignment. The other ones are about Cat's Cradle and other stuff. So i better get started.

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sorry if this is does not make much sense

Like my title says, sorry if my ideas are not in any order and are just really random.

So first before i say anything else, wow Postmodernism for Beginners is wierd. I know that they are trying to help explain what exactly postmodernism is, but sometimes it just confuses me. It is Post modernism for beginners, shouldn't it be more understandable?

So this last week in Mr. Dominguez's class we talked about postmodernism and Lyotard's view point on it. He talked about local narratives and metanarratives. A local narrative are a small piece of the bigger metanarrative which is used to explain a local narrative. Narratives help to explain parts of our world and what happens in to/to it without using scientific elements of the subject at hand. People used to explain the unexplainable with myths or metanarratives that would explain something that needed explaining. For example in Brave New World, when Linda can not explain where chemicals come from, John goes to the old men of the reservation for an answer. They tell him of the "Four wombs" and the "Fog of Increase." John sayd later that the "men of the pueblo had much more definite answers"(130). Why is this? Is it because the old men did not hesitate to answer him and that they were taught this to be true so they think it is true? For John it was easier to accept what the old men said than his mother's (opps, I said it) non-answer.

Narratives though have controlled some societies; an example that popes into my head is the ancient tribe, the Aztecs. Narratives helped explain everything like their health and weather. If the tribe became unhealthy or the crops were dying, they would think they did something wrong and what would that lead to, a sacrifice! The thought of a virus going around and making people sick or that the plants just weren't taken care of correctly never came into mind.

Narratives have had great power over some societies, why you might ask. Well, people grew up with certain traditions and were taught the way that there parents were taught about the world, they were taught that everything that happens like the gods being made was true because they always thought it was true. (sorry if that doesn't make much sense) Scientific discourse will be able to overrule narrative discourses when the human population becomes more civilized or when everybody thinks the same way.

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So...wow...Brave New World is... different

The society in the novel is crazy wierd. Everything is planned, and no can be an individual, everyone is one, everyone is the same in one class. People are programmed, kids are programmed! Why would anybody in their right mind do that, seriously?! Books are bad, flowers are bad, come on! Nature and reading are freaking awesome! Why would you want to have people not like those things, little kids not liking those things, wtf! Electricuting babies! The only progress that they have is that they consume more, they have to buy a lot of things to play or do pretty much anything. I think Huxley is trying to say...I don't know, honestly, I have read waaayyy past where we had to, and I don't really know yet. I think I will have to read the whole thing. In 1984 the government is against the people, and in this book, the government seems like it is trying to help people, in a wierd way it works in some aspects. I think he is writing what he thinks society should be, or he is showing us what society might end up being, one way he is with it, or the other he isn't. I am not sure if so far the book is a relative critique of our society. I think he may be writing what he thinks society will be. I don't know yet, I will have finish reading the whole book and think more about it. I think it might be if things were more controlled, things are that controlled now, ie: the teabagger, haha, they had no clue what they were talking about!
Okay back to the book: what about the whole a.f thing. WTF! Whenever anybody in the book talks about Ford, they use his name as though he is God, they have replaced his name with God's, ie: "our Ford" instead of out God. Wierd!
Also, why must everyone, I mean everyone be promiscuous? It is bad if toddlers aren't going around playing "games" with each other (i don't know what they call it, i am calling it games here).
This book is well wierd, but on another level I think i like it, i don't know why, but it is wierd, and it makes me think about societies and how different they can be.

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Is Change Always Good?

Well, i am going to babble, so sorry if i doesn't seem to make sense.

"There is nothing wrong with change, if it is in the right direction"



The word "change" means to make the form of something different from once it once was; but most people do not like change. The "right direction" for some people may not be right in other people's opinions. From our discussion in class though, I saw that most people did not agree with the changes the Texas Board of Education wanted to make to what was being taught in US History classes-many did not believe that what the Board wanted was the "right direction." The Board of Education wanted to get rid or in a sense erase people from history books. One of those people is Anne Hutchinson, she was "exiled...for teaching religious views at odds with the officially sanctioned faith." Is she to not be written in history books because she did not agree with the "sanctioned faith" back then?. So because she did not agree she is to be erased; if this were to happen to everybody who did not agree with the "sanctioned faith" of the time, then the United States would never have come to be. Some of the original thirteen colonies were established by English settlers who wished to practice their own belief without discrimination. The United States started because of religious reasons, but that doesn't mean that religion, or Christianity, should be forced down kids or teenagers throats in school.

History books should have nothing but facts, true, this may not always happen because everybody has a bias. Historians or people that are correctly qualified should write history books, reverends and politicians should not write history books; true there is a bias both ways, but one is not visible as the other. Everybody grows up a certain way, a different way than other people. We are taught certain things by our parents throughout our life, conscious or not. We grow up with the beliefs that our parents have and more often than not we will probably grow up to be exactly like our parents.

Back on the subject, when one groups beliefs become more powerful than what most people is right, what most people can not erased is the change they want a good thing? Should people or events in history be changed, altered, or even erased because of the "all-out moral and spiritual civil war for the soul of America, and the record of American history is right at the heart of it." Is America really in an all out spiritual war, and is changing the history and erasing important figures the right thing to do? There is nothing wrong with the current history books now, what is the need for this change, do people just want to get their religious foot in the door? In this situation, change is not good, why change something that has never let people down so far?

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sup

so i got myself a blog...um, super exciting right? :D

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