Labors of Multitude

In today's society, technology has had an astounding impact on us both beneficially and harmfully. It creates an easier access to information we want to search up and it facilitates our communication with loved ones or business co-workers. In addition to technology proving to be beneficial for us, it just as well does us bad in the aspect of making us lazier, not allowing us to have an in-person conversation, and if we lose this technological device we lose a lot of things because we tend to store so much information in one little gadget. Social media is the biggest benefactor from the disadvantages that technology provides for this generation of human beings since social media gives us everything that is trending and popular out in the world. If a certain catch phrase is popular at a time most people begin to use it in their vocabulary and say it wherever it is thought to be appropriate. Also, people speak with slang through social media and with so much use of that slang it begins to stick to them and I have seen some people incorporate it into their writing and school work. Social media creates a barrier between us and getting the courage to do a public speech and in person conversations with one another. In the book "Rhetoric for Radicals" the author says that there are four rhetorical approaches which are persuasion, argumentation, storytelling, and invitation. Persuasion is the act of convincing another individual of an ideology that they may not believe or have a mindset on. Argumentation is the act of debating with the use of a claim and providing evidence to support it. Storytelling is the use of stories to get a point across. Invitation is the welcoming of different people to learn from past experiences that have happened. The media manipulates all four of these approaches to either inform people of different information or try and change their view on a certain subject since the media is where we get most of our information, if not all. One challenging situation that I have faced that forced me to respond to diverse communities was once when I was completing my community service hours for high school at a diverse middle school that I attended. I witnessed the discrimination of an African American student who was accused without any evidence of a wrong-doing just because he was at the sight of the incident meanwhile there was also a white student nearby the incident also. The African American student was falsy accused because "he was closer" when in reality both students were the same distance. I did not see who did it, but I had to sit with both students to try and figure out who really did it. I could not come to a conclusion, but it ended up being the caucasian student. This goes to show that there is still discrimination out in the world and it was the teacher who falsy accused the boy, so adults still haven't grown out of that stage of discriminating against other people with different ethnicities.

Bicentennial Man

 Some individuals fear the concept of being overrun by Artificial Intelligence (AI) in the future as technology keeps progressing but in the film "Bicentennial Man" it shows the public another possibility of something that can occur with the on-going development of AI consciousness. I found the movie very interesting and it captivated me how it incorporated ideas to make it comedic while still displaying beneficial ideas for the production of AI in the form of a human with human characteristics. The movie was able to give us an insight of a probability that AI robots walking among our society could serve as us favorable to perform our daily tasks and may even give us more time in abundance to do the things we like to do not only chores that we must complete. The film revolves around an AI robot named Andrew who instead of being normal and obeying orders of household chores, he is unique and grasps new ideas of how to feel and think in a different way than all the other robots while still performing tasks that it is commanded to do. Andrew adapts to these unique features that he has and in doing so he begins to realize that he would much rather be considered a human with human features than to be a robot with an eternal lifestyle. He finds an engineer to change up his outer features in order to look more human where he can express his feelings with his one of a kind face and body type, but this not enough for the court to consider him a human being because he has an infinite life and this would cause envy in other human beings who must die as the cycle of life goes. So he also changes this "unusual feature" but before he is announced a human--he sadly passes away. This goes to show us that future robotics may not want to do us harm but instead be more like us and will give up anything to be considered a normal human being and walk among the environment without any criticisms. In addition to wanting to be more like us, AI could also provide us with better improvements in medical research like Andrew did in the film. 

A Call To Rhetorical Action (Group 1)

There have been many great advancements in technology over the years and it has all lead up to where we stand today with such wonderful improvements in technology. The technology that we come face to face with on a daily basis has proved beneficial for us in many ways and our society would not be the same without it. One way that today's technology can help us build a new inclusive social norm is by fulfilling tasks in our day that would prove to be much more difficult and time-consuming without the use of technology. For instance, the use of automobiles is a normal presence in our lives, but we don't take into consideration how much technology has gone into automatic transmissions and the motor of a vehicle. Without the invention of automobiles and vehicles, we would not be able to get around the city as fast as if we were walking or cycling, which is one way that technology in this era can help build a new social norm. Although technology has offered us a lot of great assistance, it also has given others the potential to lie to the world and make them believe certain things that may not always be true. For example, the media falsifies or ignores our movements and actions most of the time; now that a lot of people own a television or have access to  radio--the media has much more power than it used to have in the early 1900s. But, the media is ruled by the government and if the government tells them to inform us about a certain issue then they can, but if the government tells them to obscure an issue from the public then we have a big limitation to where and how we may find out what is really going on in the world and our country. So in the book, "Rhetoric for Radicals" by Jason Del Gandio, he makes it clear to his readers that we must change this form of leadership to better ourselves and to better the world around us. Del Gandio tells us that activists face five contemporary challenges in today's generation which are, "creating decentered movements, developing new forms of leadership, learning to communicate across contexts, building transnational alliances and dealing with the media juggernaut." (p. 29) The technology provided to us today can help us overcome these five  challenges by allowing us to better understand each other and granting us the opportunity to become one voice that can be heard all around the world. Although, some people may oppose one another's beliefs-- there will most likely always be a majority of people who rule in favor of a democracy where everyone has a say in their society and dictatorships will fall. Technology allows us to express what we feel and communicate across different types of contexts and overcome the lies the media provides us with.

The Terminator (AI)

The future existence of Artificial Intelligence (AI) frightens some people who concern themselves with the idea that the AI systems may have the capability to make the human race go extinct. In the film "The Terminator", Arnold Schwarzenegger plays the AI robot who has so many features and characteristics of a human being which makes it difficult for other people to distinguish them from normal human beings. The AI robot is trying to kill Sarah Connor who has a son that teaches the future individuals to fight back against the AI systems. In my opinion, it was a very interesting movie, although I had not thought much about the series before I had watched them since they never caught my attention with the previews I always thought they were boring and did not want to waste my time on watching them, but after watching the first Terminator I realized that they are pretty fascinating and I would like to keep watching the ones that follow to see how they kept going with the film series. At the end of The Terminator, it seems as if there is nothing to worry about anymore for the future since the AI robot was crushed, but they have already come out with Terminator 2, 3... so I would like to see how they continued to produce the thrilling story.

Blade Runner

The future can hold many great surprises and inventions that were not present during the past decades, but as well as being remarkable--the future can be a potentially dangerous place. In the science-fiction film "Blade Runner", the future of Los Angeles is told in the year 2019 from the perspective of a man named Decker. Decker has an occupation as a blade runner and blade runners are people that hunt down and put an end to Replicants. Replicants are Artificial Intelligence that have the physical form of a human but do not portray empathy. Decker is sent on a mission to kill off four replicants who have killed human beings on Earth and are beginning to rebel against their makers. In the end of the movie Decker wants to run off with another replicant that he fell in love with during his mission, but in reality they may not be so distinct from each other given that Rachel (the girl he falls in love with) has no real memory of her childhood. In the plot, it never gives any information about Decker's childhood either and he instead remembers a spider story that Rachel also has implanted in her brain; this meaning that they have a memory of the same thing. We know that Rachel is surely a replicant signifying that Decker may also be a replicant in the disguise of a human. Also, he found a unicorn origami at the end of the film while he was escaping with Rachel away from potential Blade Runners who could be after them and gives off a little smile once he sees it up close. His police companion would make a lot of origami pieces at the scenes where replicants had killed another human. This is significant because Decker had a unicorn dream in the middle of the film and his companion named Gaff may have let it for Deckard to see so that Gaff could let Deckard know that he knew he was a replicant. Gaff knew about it all and he let Deckard get away with his replicant partner since they had helped the police defeat the real danger which were the other four replicants. Deckard and Rachel were no real threat to society, the government only benefitted from the good deeds that they did and Deckard's smile at the end was the moment of realization for him that he was also a replicant like Rachel.