Paper #3: Software Update
“Decide
whether or not to keep things as they were?”
“No.
Decide whether or not to begin.”
--Cat
Rambo, “Tortoiseshell Cats Are Not Refundable”
In The
Stepford Wives and several of the stories we’ll be reading in The Best
American Science Fiction 2015, the idea of altering human beings to make
them longer-lasting, more desirable, more tame, and less individual is a common
theme. What is the future of the human race in a world where anything
can be changed, altered, or improved? Can a person who can be completely
rebuilt and reprogrammed still be human? Or will he/she simply be Human
2.0? Is that the next logical step in human evolution, aided by science (and
inspired by science fiction)? After all, once we take the first step (as Cat
Rambo suggests above), there’s no going back…
Your Response: How much should we improve human
beings? At what point do humans become androids,
more machines than men and women?
Should we
simply give people the ability to overcome genetic diseases, heal faster, and
learn more efficiently? Or should we go further, allowing people to clone their
loved ones, weed out undesirable traits (and foster desirable ones), and
‘reprogram’ people with antisocial behaviors? OR, should we simply introduce a
new species (robots) that can do all our dirty work, and become the happy,
helpful wives, mothers, soldiers, and customer service workers we all need—but
don’t want to be? Where should the
line be drawn between improving our lives and re-writing our existence? ALSO,
is it already too late…have we already crossed the line into a computer/virtual
existence?
REQUIREMENTS
#1:
Respond to some of the ideas about gender, behavior, society, ethics, and
humanity in The Stepford Wives and
the stories I assign from Best American
Science Fiction Writing 2015. Choose the ideas that most interest you and
you feel most impact our future as human beings in an increasingly synthetic
world.
#2: Find
2-3 sources that can help you discuss this issue. These sources can be articles
on robots, AI, virtual reality, cell phones, cloning, behavior-modification,
etc. You can also use at least one film/show that discusses these science
fiction issues.
#3: Be
sure to incorporate quotes from both the stories and the articles/shows into
your paper. Don’t forget to use MLA citation (or other); for questions on this,
see https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/
DUE Tuesday, April 12th
by 5pm
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