I thought everyone would appreciate this. We all know we are watching every entire fracking season:
One More Episode
3
Author Archives: Hayley Phillips
Conscious
A lot of what futuristic depictions of man seem to be concerned with is the idea of the mobile or transferable conscious. In Battlestar Galactica we see it in the Cylons who are unable to die because they are theoretically “transferred” or “downloaded” back to a new body. in Dark City we saw a twist on this in that the individual thoughts/memories/conceptions could be extracted from one individual human and inserted into another individuals brain. These similarities brought to my mind various other versions of the future human’s brain being a separate and moldable entity from the body. Continue reading
Superficiality in the Future
The Stone Gods felt vaguely familiar to me, and then I realized that between Battlestar Galactica, Minority Report, and The Hunger Games, which I’ve read recently, I have already seen and become familiar with many of the elements of The Stone Gods. It seems that our fears for the future as humans all have something in common: an apocalyptic environment, starting over on a new planet, the grouping of the world into fewer and more distinct alliances, the introduction of the android robot as a potentially perilous thing. The other thing that struck me was just how commercial each of these future worlds was. Continue reading
Embodiment, Schizoids and Philip K. Dick
This week’s reading in Hayles discussing Philip K. Dick’s work towards conceptualizing the human/android I found really broadening. In this seventh chapter, Hayles works to show us how through thematic and psychological tropes, Dick’s understanding of the future human challenges our preconceptions beyond the idea of embodiment. A lot of Hayes analysis works on understanding the blurring of lines between the interior and exterior world (specifically in the context of capitalism) and the formation of the schizoid android reappearing in Dick’s works from the 60’s. Continue reading
Evolution and Technological Advances
This weeks reading in Grahams book surprised me with all its talk about monsters. I didn’t initially conceive of the future perfect human as having anything to do with how we treat representations from legend and folklore of the past, but now I’ve become aware of the natural connection between what was seen as a mutation or anomaly in the past—i.e. Frankenstein, werewolves—and what concerns us in the modern days as technology develops and the potential existence of a cyborg looms nearer. Continue reading
We Should Have Stayed Hunters and Gatherers
Graham’s introductory passage, which outlined various attitudes towards future technologies and ways of approaching the theme of the “post/human,” was enlightening not only because it discussed such a contemporary and applicable theme, but also because it showcased just how aware we are as a generation and a species of the shifting nature of our existence due to emerging technologies. While I always had some knowledge of the various positions taken on technology, I was mostly exposed to it in a more subtle form; Continue reading