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LITR 4368 Literature of the Future 
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Sample answers
for Essay 1:
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Vaneza M.Cervantes
What Does Your Future Look Like?
Being
in Dr. White’s class I have come up with an understanding that there are two
main types of scenarios for the future, high tech and ecotopia. Both scenarios
share a common theme of moving forward to the future. In high tech, technology
is used a lot in helping us create a better world for the future. However, as
many fear too much technology could be our down fall. Which is why we have our
second scenario ecotopia where using what we have from earth creates a healthier
future. I agree with this vision because we are guests in this world. We did not
create it; we have created different industrial and technology that is
destroying the Earth. However, Earth was here way before we were known to walk
on it. Yes, man is creating amazing machines to help better our world, but yet
once we abuse of it the only thing we have left is earth.
The
vision of a high tech future is best explain and shown in William Gibson’s
Burning Chrome. Set in a virtual
world Bobby Quine and Jack are on a virtual journey to burn Chrome, a criminal
who is laundering money. Because it is based in a virtual world, Gibson uses
metaphors to help the reader envision this high tech world, “A silver tide of
phosphenes boiled across my field of vision as the matrix began to unfold in my
head, a 3-D chessboard, infinite and perfectly transparent” (3). Since Chrome,
is a women living in this virtual world the only way to murder her is clearing
out her accounts, creating this whole scenario very high tech. However embedded
in the story we still get a taste of actual reality, Jack talking about how
Quine ignores Rikki a real female woman. The fact that these hackers are able to
travel through virtual reality is high tech and totally foreseen till the far
future.
Another example of high tech is William Gibson’s second story,
Johnny Mnemonic. Johnny is a man who
got his childhood memories erased in order to store important information in his
head that the Yakuza wants. “I had hundreds of megabytes stashed in my head on
an idiot / savant* basis, information I had no conscious access to” (1.5).
However implementing megabytes on humans is not the only thing that this
future does. Their technology is so high tech that they even 2"augmented"
a dolphin. Our protagonist, not wanting to fall into poverty, decides to live in
this high tech world basically as a walking computer with memory cards in
chipped.
These
two stories show the scenario of how a high tech future can be like. Next,
ecotopia is another vision of the future. The concept of an ecotopian future is
best seen in Ernest Callenbach Chocco.
Chocco tells the story of the River
People, simple people living of what earth provides for them. Later on the
reader learns that before the ‘Machine People’ co-existed with them, however
they nearly destroyed the planet. We realize in the Socratic discussion that
Mikal and Jon have in seeing who will be the next memory keeper. The discussion
highlights all the negative of high tech that man depended on. For example,
“they were rich in possessions,” said Mikal, “we know that many of their
machines ran by the burning of fuel. They tried another form of fuel Hot Rods.
This fuel caused explosions that polluted wide areas and caused much disease and
also deformity in children” (196). Here we get a glimpse of all the bad that the
‘Machine People’ brought to the world.
It is
normal to see in an ecotopian scenario people working together almost entirely
without technology. We saw this in Chocco,
how even though the ‘Machine People’ left a tainted world, they still survived.
Now in House of Bones by Robert
Silverberg our narrator comes from a high tech futuristic world, he time travels
to a prehistoric era where he encounters primitive men and women. The narrator
is forced to forget all that he learned about, “electronics, computers, and
time-shift physics” (89). Even though he had to adjust and shape his point of
view, our narrator realizes the beauty of a world without technology, “They’re
highly skilled individuals” (88). House
of Bones becomes an ecotopian world where everyone works together without
technology and prospers.
To
conclude both are valid scenarios that many people believe will happen. One can
only wonder what the future truly awaits for us. Kevin Kaup writes, “Although
depressing at first, once you realize the admission of the death of our way of
life, as well as our actual lives, "Chocco" really represents the most
optimistic and balanced scenario of our future, incorporating limited but
necessary technology into a predominantly agrarian society.” Kevin explains my
point perfectly, a society run by the help of our mother land. In the future we
may have all of this technology aiding us, but are we happy?
Even
though in Burning Chrome, when one
reads the story they are transported into this amazing virtual world, however
human characteristics are still evident. Internally Jack says about Rikki, “even
though I felt like screaming it at him she was right there, alive, totally real,
human” (62). We can be living in a world that provides everything for us, but
actual reality will always dominate. A high tech world will only separate us
from what truly is real. We will probably adapt like Johnny, but then we lose
our human characteristics. This is a decline for humanity and the future.
Is
this truly the future that you want? Therefore
Chocco is the perfect example of a
high tech world gone wrong. Chocco
shows the progress that our future can be saved and flourish. This short story
shows the audience that life is beautiful without so much technology bombarding
your life, taking you away from what is real.
