The hardest decission I had when writing this essay was how I wanted to start off my paper. I knew that wanted to touch on technology and how and how we have to learn when enough is enough and be content with the point we reached. I wanted to show how both writers showed this idea through their texts. It was hard to find the exact quotes I wanted to use from "Cats Cradle" because unlike "Human Factor" I had not previously high lighted the interesting parts I wanted to touch on. The peer editing helped me varify the fact that I did need to go back into the text and find some more supportive quotes.
I really liked the online peer editing. It was nice to see what other students had chosen to write about and see other ways which I could approach this essay. It was also cool when you would see that many of the other students agreed with you, and had many of the same ideas in their essays. The comments were very helpful. Most the comments gave you a boost of confidence to keep sharing your ideas. They also verified some ideas that I already had planned to do with my essay. I also appreciated when one student complimented one way which I had used to transission from one paragraph to another. Getting comments like this helped me decide what parts I should keep and not revise. Overall I think this was great way to peer edit. Technology defiantely helped in this scenario.
Monday, February 16, 2009
Wednesday, February 11, 2009
Rough Draft # 1
( I had a hard time starting this paper, and I am still searching for more quotes from the text to support my ideas. It is pretty choppy right now...but here is what i have so far.)
One of the greatest rights of human beings is the power to think. In both Kim Vicente‘s ‘The Human Factor’ and Kurt Vonnegut’s “Cat’s Cradle” the authors challenge their readers to take a deeper look at the meaning of their text. They debate the good or evil of technology and the affects which it will have on the world. How far is too far? When will our desire to be bigger and better no longer be a gift, but a curse?
In “Cats Cradle” Kurt Vonnegut almost mocks the way which we exist. He talks about religion and the beliefs which humans hold. His main point is that we believe what we are told, and many of us refuse to question. Christians believe there is a God. They do not need to see him or have proof. They have been told that he exists, and that is enough to keep their faith. Perhaps people do not question their religion because they don’t want to know the truth really. Religion is a comfort. We need to believe that there is a point to our existence, and that we have been placed on this earth for a reason. If there was no life after heaven, reincarnation, or any form of life after death, what would drive us to want to live purposeful lives? He refers to a “religion” called Bokonan often throughout this book. He says that Bokonan is based on lies and there is no real truth in this world. When talking about Bokonan’s cosmogony of how the world came to exist he says, “And what opinions did Bokonan hold of his own cosmogony? “Foma! Lies! he wrote, “ a pack of foma!”(191). Perhaps humans think too much about things which do not matter, and choose to completely ignore the things which need to be paid more attention to. Instead of being so consumed by our religion, maybe we should begin paying more attention to the impact that our technology is having on the world. The character of Dr. Hoenniker almost takes the role of god in a sense. He is so powerful and smart that he was able to kill millions of people with the creation of an atom bomb. In the end, he also destroyed the world with his creation of “ice nine”. It was not God that we had to be fearful of, but man himself.
Kim Vicente also touches on this idea in “The Human Factor” where facts indicate that perhaps it is not technology which is “bad” but humans. Our desire to become the best and most advanced may in the end be our ultimate down fall. At what point will we be content with our achievements and be able to live at peace with what we have evolved into? At this time in our history, it is hard to grasp the idea that we may ever reach a point in our lives where we decide to no longer keep pushing our limits of knowledge and create new technology.
The greatest problem with technology is that is used by humans, and created by humans, leaving room for human error. A nuclear power station ( created by humans, and operated by humans) caused a catastrophic event of historic proportions. Extremely advanced technology was placed in the hands of a human who did not have adequate knowledge of the system. This human error of placing technology in the wrong hands lead to a nuclear explosion. For 9 days the fire from the nuclear power plant burned, releasing radioactive particles into the environment. “The six hundred people unlucky enough to be working at the plant that evening received very high doses of radiation and many later suffered lingering or fatal diseases. The 116,000 people who were evacuated from the neighboring farms and town received lower but still significant doses of radiation. The 600,000 military and civilian workers who heroically helped put out the fires, evacuate the public, and clean up the disaster were also exposed to high levels of radiation. The number of cases of thyroid cancer among children in the area has increased. One of the most significant health effects of the Chernobyl accident was the mental anguish and trauma experienced by the local population. Large areas of land can no longer be used for agricultural purposes and food is still monitored for radiation over an even larger area. (12). The impact of this explosion transcends to geographical borders such as the Soviet Union, England, Scandinavia, Southern Europe, Canada, United States, and even Japan.
If one man made invention can affect the world that largely, what will be the affects of an incident like this in years to come when the technology is even bigger and more powerful?
Humans must find their limits. Technology placed in the wrong hands will ultimately lead to our termination. However, it is hard to try and place limits on technology when so many of our advancements our seen as nothing but good. It is hard to tell a doctor that he cannot take his stem cell research any further. But should he take his research further? If we have the ability to clone someone, should we? Just because we can do it, does not make it right. Yes, cloning could save many lives and cure many diseases, but we would than have to place limitations on what or who can be cloned. If people just decided they wanted to clone themselves all over the world our population would double within a year. There would not be enough resources to support a population that large.
At this point in time, it is hard to look to the future and imagine a world that has become destroyed by technology. However, technology is beginning to evolve faster than ever before, and it is a problem that we must always be worried about. Humans are considered animals, yet we are the only animal that seems to have the desire to constantly evolve and change our way of life. If it is not broke, why do we insist on trying to fix it? In “Cats Cradle” Kurt Vonnegut writes,
"Tiger got to hunt, bird got to fly;Man got to sit and wonder 'why, why, why?'Tiger got to sleep, bird got to land;Man got to tell himself he understand." (182)
I think in this passage Vonnegut is referring to this desire of ours to always change. Tigers have been hunting the same way which they have always hunted for thousands of years. Birds have been flying the same way since the age of the dinosaurs. Their whole way of life has been the same throughout their whole inhabitance on earth. Yet, man cannot simply be content with one way of adequate survival. They are plagued with the need to think about everything, and always want more. They don’t want to just simply survive from day to day the same they always have. Humans need more, we need to push our limits, we need to find our breaking points. In the end, this will be the destruction of ourselves.
One of the greatest rights of human beings is the power to think. In both Kim Vicente‘s ‘The Human Factor’ and Kurt Vonnegut’s “Cat’s Cradle” the authors challenge their readers to take a deeper look at the meaning of their text. They debate the good or evil of technology and the affects which it will have on the world. How far is too far? When will our desire to be bigger and better no longer be a gift, but a curse?
In “Cats Cradle” Kurt Vonnegut almost mocks the way which we exist. He talks about religion and the beliefs which humans hold. His main point is that we believe what we are told, and many of us refuse to question. Christians believe there is a God. They do not need to see him or have proof. They have been told that he exists, and that is enough to keep their faith. Perhaps people do not question their religion because they don’t want to know the truth really. Religion is a comfort. We need to believe that there is a point to our existence, and that we have been placed on this earth for a reason. If there was no life after heaven, reincarnation, or any form of life after death, what would drive us to want to live purposeful lives? He refers to a “religion” called Bokonan often throughout this book. He says that Bokonan is based on lies and there is no real truth in this world. When talking about Bokonan’s cosmogony of how the world came to exist he says, “And what opinions did Bokonan hold of his own cosmogony? “Foma! Lies! he wrote, “ a pack of foma!”(191). Perhaps humans think too much about things which do not matter, and choose to completely ignore the things which need to be paid more attention to. Instead of being so consumed by our religion, maybe we should begin paying more attention to the impact that our technology is having on the world. The character of Dr. Hoenniker almost takes the role of god in a sense. He is so powerful and smart that he was able to kill millions of people with the creation of an atom bomb. In the end, he also destroyed the world with his creation of “ice nine”. It was not God that we had to be fearful of, but man himself.
Kim Vicente also touches on this idea in “The Human Factor” where facts indicate that perhaps it is not technology which is “bad” but humans. Our desire to become the best and most advanced may in the end be our ultimate down fall. At what point will we be content with our achievements and be able to live at peace with what we have evolved into? At this time in our history, it is hard to grasp the idea that we may ever reach a point in our lives where we decide to no longer keep pushing our limits of knowledge and create new technology.
The greatest problem with technology is that is used by humans, and created by humans, leaving room for human error. A nuclear power station ( created by humans, and operated by humans) caused a catastrophic event of historic proportions. Extremely advanced technology was placed in the hands of a human who did not have adequate knowledge of the system. This human error of placing technology in the wrong hands lead to a nuclear explosion. For 9 days the fire from the nuclear power plant burned, releasing radioactive particles into the environment. “The six hundred people unlucky enough to be working at the plant that evening received very high doses of radiation and many later suffered lingering or fatal diseases. The 116,000 people who were evacuated from the neighboring farms and town received lower but still significant doses of radiation. The 600,000 military and civilian workers who heroically helped put out the fires, evacuate the public, and clean up the disaster were also exposed to high levels of radiation. The number of cases of thyroid cancer among children in the area has increased. One of the most significant health effects of the Chernobyl accident was the mental anguish and trauma experienced by the local population. Large areas of land can no longer be used for agricultural purposes and food is still monitored for radiation over an even larger area. (12). The impact of this explosion transcends to geographical borders such as the Soviet Union, England, Scandinavia, Southern Europe, Canada, United States, and even Japan.
If one man made invention can affect the world that largely, what will be the affects of an incident like this in years to come when the technology is even bigger and more powerful?
Humans must find their limits. Technology placed in the wrong hands will ultimately lead to our termination. However, it is hard to try and place limits on technology when so many of our advancements our seen as nothing but good. It is hard to tell a doctor that he cannot take his stem cell research any further. But should he take his research further? If we have the ability to clone someone, should we? Just because we can do it, does not make it right. Yes, cloning could save many lives and cure many diseases, but we would than have to place limitations on what or who can be cloned. If people just decided they wanted to clone themselves all over the world our population would double within a year. There would not be enough resources to support a population that large.
At this point in time, it is hard to look to the future and imagine a world that has become destroyed by technology. However, technology is beginning to evolve faster than ever before, and it is a problem that we must always be worried about. Humans are considered animals, yet we are the only animal that seems to have the desire to constantly evolve and change our way of life. If it is not broke, why do we insist on trying to fix it? In “Cats Cradle” Kurt Vonnegut writes,
"Tiger got to hunt, bird got to fly;Man got to sit and wonder 'why, why, why?'Tiger got to sleep, bird got to land;Man got to tell himself he understand." (182)
I think in this passage Vonnegut is referring to this desire of ours to always change. Tigers have been hunting the same way which they have always hunted for thousands of years. Birds have been flying the same way since the age of the dinosaurs. Their whole way of life has been the same throughout their whole inhabitance on earth. Yet, man cannot simply be content with one way of adequate survival. They are plagued with the need to think about everything, and always want more. They don’t want to just simply survive from day to day the same they always have. Humans need more, we need to push our limits, we need to find our breaking points. In the end, this will be the destruction of ourselves.
Monday, February 9, 2009
Blog assignment #2
"I record the fact for whatever it may be worth. "Write it all down," Bokonon tells us. He is really telling us of course, how futile it is to write or read histories. "Without accurate records of the past, how can mena nd women be expected to avoid making serious mistakes in the future?" he asks ironically. So again, "Papa" Monzano was the first man in history to die of ice-nine."
This passage really caught my eye because it reminds me of a time when my history teacher was talking to our class about why it is so important to study history. He described history as the documentation of our past and how we have become the people we are today. It also allows us to learn from our past mistakes so that they will not be repeated. When studying history, you also see how we advanced in technology. We once were people who lived in caves, and used tools made of animal bones. We once considered fire to be our greatest invention. With technology so quickly advancing, I question what past events can show us our limits of how far we should take technology. I think its hard to use the past history of technology to helps us decide our future since the technology is uncomparabale. So far, we only see the good in most of our previous inventions.
How long will it be until we see the harmful affects of things such as cell phones, and television. Our advances in medicine have proven to be amazing and saved many lives. Diseases which once meant certain death, are now easily treated. But, because we have seen advances in technology as beneficial, how will we know when enough is enough. Although stem cell research could possibly allow us to save many more lives, do we need to draw some rules when it comes to things such as cloning. Just because cloning could be done, should it be done? Some argue that we are beginning to play God and and tamper with things which should not be altered.
Looking back in history, we can see the affects of some of our advances. Such as, our advances in medecine leading to a higher population, nuclear bombs affecting the whole world, cell phone radiation believeing to cause brain cancer, harmful radiation, the affects of new technology on the 0-zone layer, and much more. With every action there is a reaction. Since history shows that technology is always eveolving, how will we know when to draw the line and be content with the point which we have reached?
This passage really caught my eye because it reminds me of a time when my history teacher was talking to our class about why it is so important to study history. He described history as the documentation of our past and how we have become the people we are today. It also allows us to learn from our past mistakes so that they will not be repeated. When studying history, you also see how we advanced in technology. We once were people who lived in caves, and used tools made of animal bones. We once considered fire to be our greatest invention. With technology so quickly advancing, I question what past events can show us our limits of how far we should take technology. I think its hard to use the past history of technology to helps us decide our future since the technology is uncomparabale. So far, we only see the good in most of our previous inventions.
How long will it be until we see the harmful affects of things such as cell phones, and television. Our advances in medicine have proven to be amazing and saved many lives. Diseases which once meant certain death, are now easily treated. But, because we have seen advances in technology as beneficial, how will we know when enough is enough. Although stem cell research could possibly allow us to save many more lives, do we need to draw some rules when it comes to things such as cloning. Just because cloning could be done, should it be done? Some argue that we are beginning to play God and and tamper with things which should not be altered.
Looking back in history, we can see the affects of some of our advances. Such as, our advances in medecine leading to a higher population, nuclear bombs affecting the whole world, cell phone radiation believeing to cause brain cancer, harmful radiation, the affects of new technology on the 0-zone layer, and much more. With every action there is a reaction. Since history shows that technology is always eveolving, how will we know when to draw the line and be content with the point which we have reached?
Sunday, February 1, 2009
Blog Assignment #1
After reading through both The Human Factor and Cat's Cradle, I was able to see the different approaches that each writer took in discussing their views on technology. In the Human Factor, I think that the writer was much more factual and to the point about his views on technology. He gave very accurate statistics in his efforts to show us how techology has both advanced our society as well as harmed us. In almost all cases of technology which he discussed, a human error was involved, thus the name The Human Factor. I enjoyed both Vicente's and Vonneguts approaches to this subject. I think that Vonneguts personal voice was awesome to hear. I like how he is focusing in on one specific man and his contribution to technology via the atom bomb. Its very interesting to hear about the personality of Dr. Felix Hoenikker. I feel as though it is still hard to understand what Vonneguts opinion of technology is at this point in the reading. He seems to be focusin more on his personal values and beliefs which had changed during his research. It does appear evident however that he does agree that Dr. Hoenniker was a genius and a very interesting man. I am also very interested to continue the book and figure out why he is no longer a christian man. It seems that his views and beliefs are beginning to change has he looks deeper into his new surroundings. It seems to me that both authors are questioning technology but not trying to say that it is bad. They are talking about the role which technology plays in our lives and how it is not flawless. Technology has been created by humans, and is used by humans, therefore leaving room for human error.
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