Thinking back to Oryx and Crake, I began contemplating how corporate-control over the lives of people seems to be a warning in many dystopian works. This made think about the television series Doll House, a corporation-run program features people known as “actives” being cleared of their memories for a certain period of time and uploaded with a new personality complete with different skills and abilities the “real” person never had (this can include intelligence/ knowledge, martial arts, or even illnesses (asthma for example)). The corporation’s purpose in this is to rent these people out to wealth clients, the “active” is perfect for whatever the client desires because the person isn’t acting the are being whoever or whatever the client desires. However, one “active” begins to remember who she is and all of the implanted personalities from her time at the Doll House. She eventually tries to end the use of technology to wipe peoples minds and destroy the corporation but it backfires and leads the to the use of this technology becoming widespread instead of just on the “dolls” and destroying society.
This seems like a common aspect of dystopias that deal with corporate control, like in Oryx and Crake, there was a great deal of danger in what the corporations were doing but because of greed these corporations allow the world to fall apart. It definitely seems like a common theme in dystopia to criticize the corporations for their shortcomings when controlling technology that could impact the world. Thinking about this warning I wonder what exactly the creators are trying to tell us. It could be something literal in that we should be wary of new technology as it could be our demise. But it could also be that corporations are in some sense destroying the world through other less dramatized means (i.e. pollution). I also see it as a warning to the general population, after all these warnings are not targeted at the corporations themselves rather they are targeted toward the general population. I think they may be a warning that the consumer gives the corporation power; therefore, we are responsible for some of their actions. If consumers exercised their power over corporations they could force change in these greedy entities.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1135300/

As asked I went back to a paper I wrote last year on the subject of tagging children and just to give you a place to browse if you are interested is the company UknowKids. It has a variety of tagging procedures from the embryonic tagging done at all hospitals if asked to actual chips that allow for the monitoring of a child’s position with a GPS that is either an App on a Smartphone or a device worn like a watch. One mother of three, remarked, “It makes me feel safer taking all three of my children to the park.” There are also watches, bracelets and such, that a child can wear that is locked on and removed when you and your child are home.

There are some young people today however that live in what most of you would consider a dystopia if not hell. They have installed on their computers, phones, tablets and any other such device an app that allows their parents or guardians to monitor their conversations over their devices. Even if you log onto your Facebook account from a school computer, the application would allow your parents to see what you are typing to your friends or boyfriends and girlfriends. This type of software goes from the more benign crawler that only alerts parents if there is language that is dangerous or offensive to the ability to see every word. The phones are cloned and there are ways around it but there are safeguards that prevent you from making up bogus accounts. The parents make the children aware in the majority of cases and then the young people, even up to 20 in some cases go about their lives. And as mentioned earlier the phones do allow for GPS monitoring 24/7. Now this is not the same as tagging a child but since some of you are probably tweeting or messaging while you skim this just be thankful you are not one of those children. Now why you ask would this be necessary well with over 10,000 cases of sexual assaults on children over 1/2 of them started with on line conversations, for one. This could be construed as a manner of tagging in a sense. But, to the original case there are stats available on the FBI’s website that tells the exact number of cases of kidnapping solved within the typical 48 hour window a kidnapped child has due to the fact that an embedded chip or a watch that was overlooked by a kidnapper was used. This method is being challenged in the courts but all have been ruled within the parents rights so far. Have a great spring break. Philip

We have discussed the ways in which utopian and dystopian accounts are often criticizing the structure/reality of the world from which they are writing.  In doing so these authors are diagnosing problems, sometimes by presenting a world absent those problems (or in a dystopia with that problem taken to its extreme).  When asked about problems that you would diagnose globally, nationally, regionally, in your community and in yourself the greatest moments of agreement were in the diagnosis of problems in the larger sphere.  For example, 15 people identified war/violence as an issue globally (with three of you identifying this as a problem nationally), 13 people identified poverty/hunger as a global problem (and this came up for 4 of you as a national, regional and local problem as well), and 13 of you identified environmental abuse as a global problem (and while sustainability came up as an issue on the smaller scale, this was the one global problem that was not repeated by multiple people on the smaller scale).  Likewise, when thinking nationally polarization was identified by 8 of you as a problem.  So there is some agreement about key problems.  On the other hand there is also a great degree of variation, particularly as people start to think about problems closer to home.  While issues around inequality came up multiple times the nature of inequality as a problem (class, education, race, gender, sexuality, religion) illustrates a wide array of concerns.  Economic problems ran from issues over taxation to the gap between rich and poor to greed/consumerism.

So what do we do with the results from this informal survey?  On the one hand you should recognize that agreement about big problems simplifies the life of the writer of dystopia – if lots of people agree that violence or poverty or environmental degradation or radical inequality are problems then to construct an imagined world of that problem taken to an extreme should be convincing.  But if we are in greater disagreement about the problems that are more immediate to us and to our own communities then it may be harder to move from an agreement about X being a problem to mobilizing to solve that problem.  Next up I will ask you what would be good to see in our community/nation/world – and I will ask you to think of this beyond the mere opposite of what you have here: no war, no poverty, no environmental degradation.