Short Notice: This contains a few spoilers for the movie Wall-E
I recently saw Wall-E and I began to see the connection between humanity in that movie to the one Postman predicted. The people in the movie are living quite a few years into the future in a mother spaceship because earth became filled with trash and have created robots to clean it up while they wait it out. In the ship they rely on screen projectors (which is what our generations' t.v. technology is headed for) and they are dependent on other such new technology. At the end of page 6 Postman explains why we are leaving primitive technology and moving to on to updated technology. He talks about the fact that man no longer uses smoke signals because it would pose a problem when you're trying to propose much more complicated ideas and if you tried to you'd eventually run out of supplies thus we need improved technology. In a video Ms. Fletcher put up in an earlier post, it showed that a supercomputer ability to compute things exceeds that of a human brain and that around 2049 a $1,000 computer will exceed the capabiltites of the human race. To me that sounds a bit frightening. Around the middle of the movie I began to realize that Wall-E based his actions on emotions which certainly no robot in our time does. Later on the captain of the ship is notified that it is ok to return to earth but this was no good news for the captain's commanding robot. They had a struggle between leaving or not and it began to hit me that robots are eventually REALLY going to have a mind of their own. I might be getting off topic now but my point is that Postman's idea that technology is becoming so advanced that it is going to take us over isn't that far away from our time.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
3 comments:
I also noticed connections between Wall-E and Postman while watching it in theaters. All the humans are completely dependent on technology. Even 700 years before the time period of the film, humans are depending on technology (robots) to fix the problem that the humans caused. This problem was the huge amount of trash that was taking over the land. Even though this movie is an animated science fiction film, it did cause me to fear the future. The humans in the movie were basically staring into the screen of a television the whole time. This served as a distraction to issues such as returning to Earth and noticing their surroundings. Everyone became lazy and technology's basis was entertainment. Though most of us are not constantly watching television, both us and these animated humans share that same distraction. Also, the humans depend on robots to do everything for them, including helping them in their chairs. How will our future be if robots become as popular as the television? The issues that Postman brings up about television and advancements in technology are illustrated in this film, and that is what makes it unnerving.
I recently saw Wall-E also and I repeatedly saw connections between Postman's idea's and the movie. The human's in this movie had become so caught up in television, entertainment, and the latest technologies that they seemed to have no interest in there origin and history. The captain of one of the space ships in this movie seemed to have no idea about human's prior life on Earth and was fascinated by the idea of such a place. Communication and discourse in this movie was no longer expressed by words, but rather expressed in visual images, speech, and entertainment. The change of discourse from expression of thoughts by words to expression of thoughts by images in today's society was clearly explained in Postman's book.
I was watching Wall-E and was then in the middle of the movie, I made the connection between Postman and the movie. The movie expressed very similar, if not the same, ideas as Postman. The people cared only for television and being entertained. The robot that controlled the ship took over! The people relied on technology so much that it took over. Then the captain knew absolutely nothing about earth or anything because technology completely took over his thinking process. The bit about the computer exceeding the human brain is frightening, I have to agree Marco. I mean look at what can happen, it could take over like "Auto" in Wall-E.
Post a Comment