LITR 4632: Literature of the Future

Sample Student Final Exams 2011 Essay 2

Anonymous

All I Really Need to Know I Learned from Sci-Fi

          The texts throughout this course examined and hypothesized what the future might have in store for humans, earth, and the universe. I like the word hypothesized. I like it because it shows the genius of many of our texts. It is one thing to say, “Wouldn’t it be cool if in the future there were giant robots that could turn into cars and blow up stuff, and only Shia Labeouf could save us?” but that is not what the texts we read do. Instead these stories look at what is happening now, and using the information we have about what has happened, predict what could happen in our future. Some ideas, like alien experiments, get on the fringe of science, but the effects these hypotheses have on humans are calculated and researched.

          The story “The Onion and I,” is centered on a father describing to his son the differences of a real onion and the cyber version the boy knows. Even the father has begun to forget some of the details of a real onion, and he uses properties of other foods to help describe the onion. The son doesn’t understand the why onions make people cry, and the father seems nostalgic for the tears an onion induces. The tragedy of the story is that these people have been living in a cyber world so long, they are forgetting the things that exist in the real world, and ultimately they are losing themselves. I use the word nostalgic for a reason. The father is nostalgic for an onion just like my father is nostalgic for 80’s guitar rock. Yes, you can find 80’s music on the radio, but new music is nothing like that. My father misses the times when he was in high school, going to the car wash and hanging with his friends “jammin’ some tunes.” I haven’t washed my car in months. Kids don’t go out and do that anymore, we just use the drive through car wash, and we’re on our way.

          The way I see it the onion is a symbol. Times change and people do things differently, but today technology has changed how we do things drastically. Here is the genius of the story: The cyber world has replaced the real world. The cyber world is not real like the onion, it is an imitation, but they seem to prefer the imitation. It doesn’t cause any tears. I realize I am getting kind of abstract in a, “there is no spoon,” kind of way. So let me get to the meat of it, and say what I think is really going on.

          I am writing this paper on my computer. While sitting here working, I am on facebook, talking to 3 friends about where we are going to drink tonight. I am also listening to a band I wouldn’t have known about had I not saw a video of them on Youtube. And the penultimate, I just messaged my mom to ask what we are having for dinner. (My mom is downstairs, I literally could have said, “hey what’s for dinner,” and she would have heard me, but messaging her seemed easier. The answer was “leftovers.” (Leftovers=disappointment.)) My point is real life interaction is being replaced by technology. I would rather text than speak, one out of five couples meet online. WE ARE LIVING OUR LIVES THROUGH TINY MACHINES! This short story predicted a time when humans would be living through their computers, and what’s worse, the computer doesn’t get all the details that make life worth living. The father and son miss onions making them cry. They are living a Prozac lifestyle on their computers instead of going out and chopping some freakin’ veggies! This story is the most appealing to me, because it is one that you can clearly see unfolding in the real world. We read The Time Machine and said, “That could happen,” but this really is happening. Here is another example: Do you know who the T-mobile girl is? She is this ridiculously gorgeous girl that hosts a series of commercials about T-mobile phones, but where do the commercials take place? In some kind of vacuum of white space, that’s where. It’s the same place as the “I’m a Mac, you’re a PC” commercials, or those weird floating hand iPhone commercials. They all take place in, what I can only imagine is, the Internet. We are being primed for the cyber-age.

          In “Burning Chrome,” two hackers steal all of a famous hacker’s (the titular Chrome’s) money. They know what they are doing is wrong, they even imagine her being broke on the street, but they feel no regret because they never met her and to them she isn’t even really real, since to them, her existence is only through the Internet. Talk about Internet bullies.

Here is my final example of humans losing our social skills, skills that enabled us to build our entire civilization: Last week, I was at a bar, (I know, another story about me drinking.) and I saw a pretty girl. I made my way over to her, and started a casual conversation. As I was talking she started texting in the middle of our conversation. Normally this should be considered rude, but not in these technological times. So I said, “I’m sorry, was I bothering you?” and she replied, “No, I’m looking you up on Facebook, I want to see what you’re all about.” I was standing right in front of her! Anything she could have possibly learned about me, she could have asked me, face to face. Instead, she wanted to look it up on Facebook.

Sometimes, I really wish a story like “Chocco,” could come true, just so I can actually get some physical contact with some human beings. As Emily Sevier said in her 2007 essay, “In many of the stories that we have encountered this semester, dystopias revolve around high tech civilizations. From the readings it seems that the only way a utopian society can exist is if we keep it simple. 

Wouldn’t it be great if we didn’t have all this technology, and we had to get together and discuss what actions we should take in our future? Can I get off the computer now?