Media
Aldous Huxley. Brave New World. New York: Harper and Brothers, 1932.
Ishirō Honda, Gojira (Japan: Tōhō, 1954). (Available through NYU Stream)
Geek of the Week
- Persia
- Psycho-Pass – Season1
- Ep. 1: The background setting of pre-crime city – an algorithmic tyranny
- What does Empathy mean under this kind of social context? (the executer has empathy towards the crime to understand their criminal instinct but their psycho-pass will be rated high)
- Eps. 4-5: The virtual identity
- The lyrics: 16:39:: “You guys are eternal. You are released from the chains of the physical body and polished by collective intelligence. You are the souls closest to Plato’s ‘ideal’. Once I was guided by you, now together with you I will guide people and the world” The consumerism trap and political manipulation behind the pop culture trend. Entertainment industry is also the method of political manipulation like cult.
- “You can play anybody, but it turns out that you yourself is nobody.” The deconstruction of “Human” in the hybrid reality, the depersonalization under the context of hybrid cyberspace.
- The ownership of virtual avatar
- Eps. 7-8: The crime of the art
- Ep. 7 11:28: “Humans are superior to animals, because man is the self, the spirit. Man can be in despair. Unless you know despair, you cannot know hope” What is the value of negative emotions under different context? The contradiction of nature for inspiration and enlightenment. There is no absolute coordinate system in the world, the evaluation is based on the contrast of different values. Once the down parts exist, there can be the good parts.
- Ep. 7 12:52: “It’s said to be the real cause of most deaths that are declared as ‘heart failure towards unknown cause’” “I’ve heard of it. They said it was the side effect of excessive stress care” “For some time, it has been understood that moderate stress has beneficial effects. For example, it stimulates the immune system. As they said, it’s the motivation of your life. You can even call it a reason to live. However, once Psycho–pass checks become routine, people’s sense of stress has been numbed so much that people who can’t even recognize stimulation itself started appearing. Once that happens, they are the same as living corpses. Soon their autonomic nervous system stops functioning on its own, and their vital functions shut down.” What is the boundary of the assistive functions of technology? Humans are dissimilated by their own creation for they give away part of their own power.
- The discussion of her father’s art: Although he used girl bodies to illustrate cruel nightmare, he himself has a strict moral compass. The disconnection between creators and the impression their creations give reveals the ideology: Only when you confront the dark side of humanity can you really appreciate the goodwill. It reminds me of political correctness. The more resistant you are towards something, the more efforts you maintain to fight against something, it turns out that you are more biased.
- Ep. 11: The bug of the system
- Ep. 17: The truth behind Algorithmic tyranny
- Ep. 1: The background setting of pre-crime city – an algorithmic tyranny
- Psycho-Pass – Season1
Theory and Commentary
Dourish, Paul and Genevieve Bell. 2014. “‘Resistance is Futile’: Reading Science Fiction Alongside Ubiquitous Computing.” Personal and Ubiquitous Computing 18(4):769-778.
McCurdy, Howard E. 1973. “Fiction Phenomenology, and Public Administration.” Public Administration Review 33(1): 52-60.
David Deamer, “Special Images, Contingent Centres,” in Deleuze, Japanese Cinema, and the Atom Bomb : The Spectre of Impossibility, 1st ed., Thinking Cinema 1 (New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2014), 31–74.
1. Bokanovsky’s Process in Brave New World reminds me of artificial wombs and human cloning. Do you think human reproduction will change dramatically in the future? What are the consequences of the new reproduction methods?
2. In Gojira, Prof. Serizawa decided to kill himself. I think it is too extreme to be understandable. What do you think of this plot?
3. In Psycho-Pass’s algorithmic tyranny, the ideal law enforcers should act according to the Crime Coefficient. Would it be more reasonable to let robots or automatic weapons (like drones) be executors? Why are there human police officers?
1. Why is Kogami in Psycho-Pass so freakin’ hot?
2. In terms of morality, do you think a system with the basic premise of the Sibyl System is more “moral” or is our current justice system more “moral”? Consider framing this question in the context of New York City’s rising crime rates.
3. To what degree should the government have a role in protecting a country’s citizens?
4. Brave New World brings up salient ethical questions related to modern day gene editing. Is prenatal genetic editing ever ethically justified? If so, when?
Brave New World has me thinking about drugs. Are we against drugs, or just misuse of drugs? If we could cure overdose, would we be fine with Opioids? We’re fine with alcohol – unless it’s an addiction. Clearly in Brave New World the drug ‘vacations’ are embraced, even expected.
Why does the ‘savage’ accept that name? He doesn’t feel savage, or act savagely – in fact he thinks the behavior of society is anti-social. But he is called ‘savage’ and is fine with that – which i fiend odd.
1. Brave New World seems like a dystopia when read today, but what can be changed/altered in that world in order to turn it into a utopia?
2. The Dominator (the gun) in Psycho-pass determines the crime coefficient of a person, but ultimately it is the person holding the gun who decides to take action. And even the data/algorithm that is fed to the sibyl system is constructed by a few humans. So ultimately, a few people control the entire fictional world. Does that deem everything else (the enforcers, the detectives, the online identities) futile?
3. In a world where natural childbirth is regarded as abominable, will women (and consequently other gender identities) finally be given an equal status as men in the society?
1) While it seems that the world in “Brave New World” is perfect in a sense as it runs around science and efficiency, John the Savage sees this as not perfect, or realistic and requests in a nod to Shakespeare The Tempest, but rather being hopeful like Miranda, he is the dystopian version. What do we think about his constant proclamation of “brave new world”
2) Aren’t characters like Bernard and John the Savage just products of environments that raise them correctly? Are they products of poor nature and nurture?
3) I wonder how might our own society if the Psycho-Pass checks?
1. What is the societal advantage of keeping communities of indigenous people in existence in Brave New World?
2. What does the use of oversized eyes do for our impression of female characters in anime?
3. In what ways does Godzilla resemble a dragon? In what ways is it different?
1. What commentary is Huxley making regarding the morality of sexual expression? How does he engage with the Oedipal complex?
2. In Brave New World and Everything Everywhere All at Once, sci-fi is not only used to explore future sciences but also the inward, less topical exploration of human psychology. How can sci-fi provide a unique tool for individual introspection?
3. What purposes do disaster films serve?
1. Brave New World is, for better or worse, an excellent example of how I understand the concept of “Form of life”, meaning the meeting point of nature and culture. So far, heterosexual reproduction has been the only way of having children. But then, it has become a biological possibility to tweak this fact of nature. Does this mean that culture becomes our new nature? Do we have any ethical control over this or are we merely delaying the inevitable?
2. Is Gojira a metaphor for the US Air Force, for the dangers of nuclear energy, or for anything that turns against us in our hybris?
3. What does the Dominator as a materialised doctrine say about society? What agency is left for law enforcement personal caught in the machine?
1. How to interpret this week’s topic “dogma” in the sense of all the course materials?
2. Brave New World builds up a totally different human community by way of making social class nature and righteous, but I feel like in this way the whole existence of human beings and the definition of human beings will change, which I think this work does not challenge the definition of human identity beyond social class too much.
3. Is Brave new world response to all the utopian and dystopian imaginations in the early 20th century?
How does Predictive Policing and predetermination threaten order or enable it?
How does Brave New World posit values of pleasure, indulgence, freedom, truth and purpose in the dystopian world it describes?
How does Scifi create an A-ffective and E-ffective spaces?
1. Why does Barnard simultaneously dislike control under Ford but fear the ‘outside’ (i.e Iceland)? What does this say about conditioning and deep-seated dogma?
2. What is the future of gene therapy?
3. As our beliefs change, but our instinct to follow doctrine remains, what is the future of organized religion?