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

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.