[Jean-Paul Nunez]

I agree with your interpretation of the Wandering Earth story being an example of giving ecomodernist ideas and innovations because moving the Earth away from inevitable destruction is saving our planet, no matter the measures taken. The land above is used for creating giant engines which will propel the Earth to a new galaxy and is not being used by humans (for the most part) anymore. Instead, they build underground cities, preserve all of our natures seeds and human embryos to recreate a new humanity when they arrive at their new sun. If the people in the Wandering Earth did not take action, the planet would plunge to its inevitable death with all life and resources being wiped out. I also thought that the underground cities were an innovational way for the Earth to not use up land resources. With the giant tsunamis wiping much of the human population out, the underground cities allowed humans to live relatively safe while the forces of nature above raged on (with the planet freezing over) while using green energy like nuclear energy. The Earth is free from humans putting waste onto it everyday and once they reach the new sun, they can put all of Earths creatures back with the seeds as well. My question is though, would it even be possible to recreate all former life that died out and have them prosper and create the same food chain as before? It would be hard to put all the animals back on Earth at a mass rate, but I’d assume they have a plan for that too since they managed to propel Earth out of our Sun’s gravitational pull.

[Jean-Paul Nunez]

Wall-E is the story I will be focusing on as well.
My family is from Peru and even though I was born here, I also have a citizenship in Peru due to my parents. I went to visit Peru in the summer of 2019 for a month and although it had extremely beautiful views, I wasn’t really shielded from the not so clean areas. Since I was not a traditional tourist living in a nice hotel (I was living with my grandparents in a ‘neighborhood’ in Lima), I was able to witness how dirty the streets could get. People left trash on the streets, the ‘roads’ actually used to just all be dirt while my parents lived there (the government has built sidewalks and actual roads now), and overall people just did not seem to care about the environment. The lesson I learned from Wall-E is that if we don’t begin to take care of our planet, it will soon lead us to an inevitable path down to destruction of the Earth. It is important to take the necessary measures us as individuals can do for the Earth. Throw your trash away. Let garbage trucks take your weekly bags. Use less water. Recycle as much as you can. And although I know a lot of the problem with this trash has to do with the Peruvian government not caring, we as individuals should care. Especially seeing as the threat of forest fires, which are a direct effect from climate change, are capable of destroying one of the seven wonders of the world- Machu Picchu, which I had the privilege to witness myself in Peru. This important piece of my heritage could be wiped out by forest fires and I hope us as individuals can recognize there are steps we can take to try and do our part in saving the Earth. We do not have another Machu Picchu.

[Jean-Paul Nunez]

The song I chose to reflect is called “Harder Better Faster” by Daft Punk. The reason I chose this song is because the music daft punk creates is already electronic which I relate to being futuristic because they don’t use traditional physical instruments you can touch and instead focus on making music with only a computer and electronic instruments like drum pads or keyboards. The music video for the song takes place in a spaceship, where blue aliens are being turned into humans with advanced technology. These blue aliens are being used to create ‘harder better and faster’ humans like the lyrics suggest (which is also basically the only words repeated over and over in the song). These aliens have their memories changed to make it seem like they have lived on Earth their entire life and have always been humans. The machines strip them naked and paint their skin color to be human and put glasses on each alien while inserting a camera in their eyes. Then, they are sent off the ship.
This song and music video relate to science fiction because it connects to the theme of aliens existing, which is something we do not know yet. It also makes me think about the theory about how aliens helped build the wonders of the world, which maybe this song could be referencing. Aliens disguised as humans came to Earth and were able to help build these wonders of the world. Science fiction is what this song and music video is all about.

[Jean-Paul Nunez]

(https://theconversation.com/hundreds-of-chinese-citizens-told-me-what-they-thought-about-the-controversial-social-credit-system-127467)

In this article, it discusses the same issues of the ever increasing surveillance on China’s people but from the perspectives of Chinese people. Instead of having western people write about how bad this surveillance is, this article focuses on what Chinese people think about it all. The way I revised my article, I made the surveillance of specific ethnic/religious groups outlawed and surveillance in private places was outlawed as well. There would be no more social credit system and the AI facial recognition would only be activated if someone had an active warrant and was seen in public by one of these cameras.

But Chinese people seem to be fine with this social credit score and AI facial recognition. In fact, most see it as a positive to bettering society. A lot of this is due to the false stories heard by them, stating that this social credit system already existed in the west, so there is no way it can harm society. But there is no system in place here, and never will be (hopefully). Chinese people are fine with more security and less privacy, seeing as better humans make for a better society. If you are always being watched and under scrutiny (your social credit score can be lowered by littering, jaywalking, etc.,), then you are going to be a better person. Only good people get to do things in their society like buying airplane or train tickets. Those who aren’t deemed as good because their credit is low, are put on a blacklist. This is the utopia for China and their citizens seem fine with it.

[Jean-Paul Nunez]

I believe that there should be minimal regulation when it comes to technology. The regulations should obviously protect workers and humans but other than that I see no other regulations coming into play. Take self-driving cars for example. Many people believe they should not be allowed on roads because of the technology having an error and crashing even though it is way more likely for a human to have an error and cause a crash. This may sound crazy, but I think I’d rather trust a self driving car more than most people. With too much regulation, how is Tesla ever going to get to the point of a complete self driving car? It would take a significantly longer time for them to get to that point.

Connecting this to a previous class I took, I learned that a lot of error in technology is not from the actual technology but from human error. According to Boeing, the aerospace company, humans are overall the largest cause of all airplane accidents. Not the machine, but humans. Most regulation is not to protect us but here because humans are scared. We are scared of what could happen instead of what’s most likely to happen which is us messing things up.

Technology regulation is obviously complicated, but I wonder if regulations even make it possible for technology innovation at times. How can we define when technology has ‘gone too far’? What types of regulations are needed? Will innovation be extremely slow due to regulations? These are all things I wonder.

[Author]

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