John Paul M. Taylor - Reaction Papers (3)

John Paul M. Taylor; 2013-22107

Sci-Fi, Shaping Society’s Future Techs:

A Reaction Paper to TJ Dimacali’s Interview.

                Sci-Fi paves the path for modern technology: that’s my take on sir TJ’ interview simply because in my point of view, sci-fi writers greatly influence our scientists. Somewhere online I’ve read that “what the mind can conceive, the body can achieve.” In a similar ways, scientists are possibly intrigued by the inventions that are seen in movies and they are trying to make these things possible. Facial recognition, 3-D motion pictures, automatic doors, video phones and credit cards: these are things sci-fi writers wrote about in the past that are now everyday things to us. In a way, he also reveals the power of writing. As a creative writing graduate, sir TJ must know how great pieces of literature influences history and I believe that the imagination of writers and lead science to whole new heights. The writers might make-up the things about how an invention works, and even though those sorts of make believe explanations are dumb to the ears of scientists, scientists just might find a way to make those make believe inventions come true and that in itself is fascinating: turning ideas into reality.

               The interview also dealt on the topic of dystopian and utopian writers. I find it a bit depressing that there were – there still are- dystopian writers who like to imagine how technology will screw things up for human beings. Although I understand their worries and they might as well be true, but the thing is technology is a truth that will stay with us humans and will only grow and advance. Humans should be more accepting and accommodating to the change, but then again, I was skeptic when they released the PS3 and was very much reluctant to let go of my obviously inferior PS2. This just goes to show how humans have a tendency to try to stop change. But change will be constant, and for technology, change will mean advancement. And if Sci-Fi shapes that change, I hope the better writers out there decide to be utopian writers and encourage society to welcome technology. I was born into the time where star trek and star wars were the main sci-fi things; I can’t wait for technology from those films to come out into our everyday lives.

Was it only just a dream: A Reaction Paper to Inception

     I personally enjoyed the movie Inception. It was a movie on dreams and how to use dreams to manipulate the brain and generally it tries to give people a feel on how dreams work. The actors were great and the cinematography was nice. To me, it’s a sci-fi movie more than anything else as it had scientific things to explain it, even if those scientific things in their universe do not apply with the scientific laws in our universe. Even my last sentence is debatable because dreams are really just concepts in progress which we are trying to learn more about. That being said, I am intrigued and amazed at inception’s take on dreams; so much so that I actually want to try living in my own dream world where time is all relative and everything could be fixed and destroyed according to my whims. The idea of extracting information from a person’s dream was also interesting as well as their device that is used to link dreams, because it seems to me like a genius way of extracting information without having to “physically” torture your victims, and I use the term loosely.

   The ending was real great. It makes you think about the movie for days after you’ve seen it. I like how the director ended the movie in a way that it’s up to how the viewers think of it. While the story was progressing, I theory crafted that maybe mal was right and cobb was indeed still in a dream. I thought that maybe somewhere along the movie cobb would try to kill himself only to find himself awaken to reality. We all know that it ended differently, personally, I think the coincidences to make the kicks that would bring them back happen were too movie like. I think that in situations like those where everything goes not according to plan, the characters should pay some sort of consequence for not planning properly. But that didn’t happen. The girl cobb brought with him didn’t die, saito didn’t die. Everyone survived and I think odds like that only happens in movies which is I guess the only fallback I see in the movie; so much so that I think that part of the resolution is too cliché. Good thing the open ending was a great touch to fix the ending, but even that is somewhat feels lazy because the director refuses to decide for how the movie should end. Well, open endings have always been double edged swords to stories that either work really well or just look like lazy writing because the author couldn’t think of an ending; but for inception, I guess it worked fine.

Monkey Business: Life of Mammals Reaction Paper

The documentary “Life of Mammals” had two parts and both appealed to me in different but truly awesome ways. The first part was social climbers. At first, I was simply amused by how the monkeys are. They have, in one way or another, a society that isn’t much different from ours. But slowly, what took me over was fascination more than amusement; I was fascinated by how they are. For example; the younger monkeys learn the trade of life from watching their elders, in a similar way, we humans look to our parents and those older than us for guidance and the how to’s of life. Isn’t that similarity simply amazing? Next, the monkeys in Africa have a network of warning system to warn themselves of predators. That seems to me like more teamwork and camaraderie than some of the sports teams I watch in T.V. Then again, they are working together for their lives which are considerably more stakes than bragging rights and trophies. But what intrigues and astonishes me the most is that the monkeys seem to live in social classes and under a hierarchy. There’s an alpha baboon that gets all the girls and all the weaker or lesser males either do his bidding or attempt to usurp him. Amazing how it’s akin to high school where the alpha jock gets the chicks and the lesser males follow suit. If anything, the first part of the documentary was astounding. It showed overall how smart monkeys and how human –like they can be. I also have to mention this fact mentioned in this first part that the larger the group the monkey belongs to, the larger its cranial capacity is. From all the facts of this part, this particularly struck me because it apparently applies to humans as well as sir said that there is a study that a human can only maintain a maximum of 150 close ties. Then I started counting, I’m still far from 150, thank God.

The second part of the documentary was food for thought. It talked more about a possible route that evolution took, from where the first monkey began to walk upright, to our more ambitious dreams of reaching the moon. I think it’s a working theory, although I firmly believe that there might be another truth, partly because I’m not a huge fan of evolution I guess. The theory goes that in a valley somewhere, there was a time when some sort of compound was treaded upon by what seems like an upright walking chimp. The theory suggests that the monkey stood up and walked upright because of necessity because for some reason the chimp’s hands shouldn’t touch the compound. But if that were the case, how come their bare feet can come into contact with the said compound which by the way is thought to come from a volcano. I simply find it hard to believe that chimps decided to walk upright because they decided to walk in lava.