The main thing that stuck out to me was the fact that we watched this entire video about the huge excess of data and knowledge we have that is constantly becoming obsolete (which makes it seem like most of it was meaningless facts) and at the very end of the video the only conclusion there is is the question "what does it mean?". So even the video itself was a five min long presentation of facts and statistics and analogies with no conclusive meaning. Its great that we're in an age where so much knowledge is at hand but i think the big problem is that we've gone overboard and created insubstantial facts that naturally fall out of date in years.
Following this thought it seems like this is just another phase of humanity looking for something to base society off of. For example for along time we based society off religion. We managed to go overboard with this however with such atrocities as witch-burning and the countless crusades. When this overload of religion failed us we turned to science. As we've already discussed there was a lot of hope that science would lead us to a utopia. But, even science failed because again, we could not control ourselves and made horrible creations such as the atomic bomb and hydrogen bomb.
So, after science failed us we entered a phrase of postmodernism, this involved such activities as de-centering which, as we discussed in class, can take any text and give it countless meanings . While this was good at first because it opened our minds to new possibilities we again took it too far. Literature was de-centered to the point where it could not reach any conclusion and no firm foundation could be made for an argument. This led into post-post modernism, which is essentially just an overboard exaggeration of postmodernism. Now, in pseudo modernism there is no meaning but that which the perceiver gives something and, unfortunately it leans toward meaningless and shallowness. Hence the huge quantity of information that someone somewhere deemed necessary but ultimately proved insignificant.
So, moral of the story, people always search for something to base their lives on, after finding it they take it too far ,whether it be religion, science, de-centering, or knowledge, and make that center of their lives unreliable.
If I was Mr. Dominguez I would give you a Super Star! Oh wait. He already did! Hahaha. That is because you did an awesome summary about everything that we have been talking about. I was probably over analyzing all the things that we learned but your summary just made everything so much clearer. So thank you for that. Your views were insightful as well. They were a little cynical, but true. And I do not think that people should be offended by the title of your blog either. You have nicely proved why people are dumb in the contents of your blog. I really liked your examples as well; like the whole religion and science thing and how people have gone overboard with them. That story had a nice moral too! Haha. It is kind of sad to see how far humanity has come along, but in a sense not at all because we are producing so much information that it has become useless. Yeah well, I think you did an amazing job. Keep it up chee chee! ;)
ReplyDeleteello chi chi!! hahaha
ReplyDeletehmm I liked your rant. It seemed very well thought out and like you took some solid time thinking it all through...but its probably the way your Jane Austin mind works...Anywhos, I really like how you talked about the changes our society has made i chronological order. I think Doninguez had you explain it to the whole class one day?? Every single time the society moves into a new phase of knowledge we take it too far until we completely ruin what we have. Perhaps people think they are making life better when, in reality, we are making it worse. I can't seem to decide which I think is better; a world with massive amounts of technology and loads of new information, or a simple society. Obviously both can be good or bad. Maybe we think we are moving forward when we are just destroying what we build. At the same time, I think the wealth of knowledge will help us in the long run because it will lead to new innovations and what-not. Okay i'm done. Wow that was pretty much a rant as well...