Month: March 2017

Continuing on our discussion from Thursday’s class concerning how the GI would take away from our privacy. I believe that if everyone had access to all the knowledge of every people from when they were young there would be no way for individuality. Everyone would have the same complete knowledge and would have no experiences or biases to shape it into anything. It would be like if everyone was a twin who had lived the exact same life. Everyone would wear, or not wear, the best clothing, have the best thoughts, know the best ideas, etc… It would be just a world of clones.

One of the things I found most interesting about this week was our discussion of the GI and the implications of having one in our society. When thinking about the GI the first thing that it reminded me of was not the web or Wikipedia, but instead the Multivac from Asimov’s short stories. The parallels are astonishing in the way that they both contain information about practically everything, and while GI doesn’t provide answers in the same way that the Multivac does, they are both a fundamental structure around which the societies are based, and without them the worlds upon which they are based would fall into chaos. And while the GI does not provide obvious, clear answers to questions in the same way that the Multivac does, its plethora of information and the manner in which people may access it to gain new information is a way of allowing the individual to make an informed decision about their question based on the provided information.

Another interesting aspect of the GI is in the fact that it provides raw data, or knowledge, with which people can do whatever they chose. And while the GI system works well for the peoples in Delaney’s book, it could cause serious problems in our world today. One of the biggest reasons it would cause problems is that while it provides knowledge, most notably on other cultures, it does not provide any platform on which one might begin to understand the other cultures. Thus, while one might assume that the GI would lead to less conflict by facilitating a greater understanding of other cultures, it would have the potential to cause more conflicts. This is due to the fact that each person who obtains new knowledge does so with a bias which they formed throughout their life experiences, and thus the knowledge they acquire is biased. And because of this bias, any attempt to understand would be clouded by opinions and biases, and would thus never become pure understanding. This biased understanding is evident in some of the issues of today, particularly in people’s fears of Islam. Due to the commonality between many of the people who perform acts of terror, many Americans have become afraid of the Islamic religion, and are thus biased against a large portion of the world’s population. With this fear, many people chose to educate themselves on the religion, to a certain extent, and while the unbiased individual might see how accepting and peaceful the religion actually is, those biased individuals found information that was in keeping with their biases. And some people used this new biased understanding to justify acts of terror against innocent Muslims, being fuelled by their lack of understanding. Thus, while GI seems to work well in Delaney’s world, it would most likely lead to more chaos in our world due to the stark difference between knowledge and true understanding.

Stars in my Pocket like Grains of Sand explores the idea of someone having to restart their life in a completely different culture. In Delany’s novel, Rat Korga is the character that moves to a different planet after his gets destroyed. In class on Thursday, we discussed what questions and technology assistance we would provide an individual whose planet (or previous living) was destroyed.

I had similar questions as the ones we discussed in class. I would ask how they are feeling, learn about their culture, and try to the best of my ability to comfort them. I would want to learn about and document their culture and society. I feel that with only one survivor from a different world, it would be very beneficial and educational to record what life in the planet was like. I would be interested to know what the social structure and government was like and how it compares and contrasts to what we know in the US and on Earth. Discussing the relationship between individuals on their previous planet would also be interesting. If they were comfortable talking about their personal story of living on a planet that got destroyed and their feelings towards everything that happened, I would ask them.

Another theme in Stars in my Pocket like Grains of Sand is gender. In the book, the concept of gender binary is opened up and explored. For example, Delany uses the pronoun “she” for beings of any gender.

Stars in my Pocket like Grains of Sand although hard to read and sometimes understand, it offers a different literature perspective to sexuality, sexual drive, and accepting of different sexualities. Today we live in a world that is very sensitive about sexuality gender and sexual orientation. We must be careful about pronoun use, and our society is now challenged to be more accepting of those who don’t “follow” societal norms. Reading this book makes me think more deeply about this pressing issue in society. It is interesting to me that in RAT Korgas country Rhyonon where sexuality was not as widely accepted was destroyed. However, Rat Korga is sent to Velm. Velm however is more open with sexuality and allows men to be with men, and men to be with Evelmy. Marq and Rat Korga are able to develop a relationship in a country where they could, in a country that is surviving. In the North, the Evelmy and the humans do not get along and are in war which threatens the counties livelihood. However, the south thrives because they accept one another. What if our would was more like South Velm. Is there a message that Delaney is trying to tell us? While the book is science fiction, there is many truths behind the story line that exist in today’s society. There is conflict between people of different sexual orientations, we do have societal norms, and we do have restrictions on what our world sees as acceptable. Delaney makes me question what lessons can be drawn that we can learn from and implement in our society before our country self-destructs due to rising conflict.

In class we discussed the topics of General information and privacy and how the two realms are interconnected in the Stars in my Pocket. However, I was intrigued by the notions of general knowledge and how our current society’s ability is limited based on the constraints of privacy that we are entitled to.  Privacy to whatever extent allows us to be uninhibited in our actions and make progress without the perceptions of others.

The ability to act without the consciousness of others views or opinions allows oneself the ability to explore investigate and learn about what may not be socially accepted or allowed. In doing so, people are able to generate more knowledge and understanding. With the imposition of being monitored, one forfeits the ability to act whimsically on ones personal desires because of the possibility of going against social norms. When a society is collectibly able to explore and learn freely, that society will in turn develop into a more knowledgable and accepting space as a result of the general information and knowledge that it had developed.

For example, countries that experience large amounts of government control fall being on progressive fronts that enable greater acception and personal understanding. China, because of the governments censorship, is drastically behind in social and general rational because of the lack of freedom given to its citizens. In comparison to the United States, where privacy and freedom is much more abundant, our society as whole is leagues ahead of China’s. As a result, the idea of developing general information is born from the privacy that a society has.