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Professor Blastoff Afterthoughts
Welcome to The Professor Blastoff Afterthoughts blog! My name is Aaron Burrell, I am the guy responsible for studying any given topic and finding clips, quotes, factoids, and other "useful" material for the Professor Blastoff Podcast. Each week I throw together a loose outline of discussion points that may or may not get used during the podcast. This blog covers those unused discussion points. It is also a chance for me to defend myself and my supplements to the podcast. Enjoy!
Monday, July 1, 2013
Friday, June 7, 2013
Short Story "Donner and Cam"
The first time Donner heard of astroid
mining he was 15. He liked throwing rocks high into the air and
pretending he was on a spaceship on a mission to harvest the rocks
for gold. One of them came back and hit him in the head. This should
have done something to change his path in life, but it didn't and
right now Donner is just about to get hit in the face by a much
larger rock. Well technically Donner is about to hit it in the face,
but...well now I wasn't paying attention and missed it. He seems to
have survived the crash, as suspected. He did have on his seat belt,
which was lucky. No one ever wears those in space these days except
for the really paranoid type.
Now that he is on his assigned asteroid
there will be no point in sending for repairs. His vessel is designed
to be left behind, once again, lucky. Now all he has to do is shake
himself off and head over to the mine and stay there alone for the
next 6 months. Oh never mind, there's another miner there I didn't
see, sorry. Her name tag says Cam, and it looks as if there will not
be any meet cute happening because Donner just walked right past her
without even noticing her. What an idiot. She is pretty too, I think,
she hasn't looked up yet. Oh no it's a man, terribly sorry about
that, I was thrown off by the long hair, probably due to the lack of
barbers up here.
It looks like Donner is eating
something now, a potato maybe? Who cares. He has just survived a
nasty crash landing and the point is he still has a strong appetite,
and if that doesn't speak to his character I don't know what does. He
is crying a little bit though, which might explain why he didn't say
hello to Cam... the man with long hair... from two seconds ago! Sorry
my friend just got here. Oh here he comes now, maybe to say hello.
Hold on a second guys...
Nope, he didn't say hello either. How
devastatingly awkward. Cam just grabbed what also looks to be another
potato and started eating it, and is starring Donner down. What a
glare, you guys! It's as if he is saying, “I've been alone here for
the last 6 months, no big deal, no need to say hello or anything.”
but all with his eye's. I wish you could see this, they are so
expressive.
Donner is still crying, probably more
than is normal for a crash like that, but one shouldn't judge. Hold on he just said something, I
missed it, “Hey” I think.
Now Cam is saying, “Why didn't you
engage your counter thrusters once you cleared the ion field?”
Oh good question, he totally nailed him
on that one.
Ok here's Donner's response, “My hands went numb from
prolonged exposure to zero g and I couldn't squeeze the trigger.”
Great response!
“Why didn't you use voice command?”
Nice!
“I forgot the override command
sequence for that.”
Idiot!
“Well I can leave it off my report
since it's a first incident. It is the first, correct?”
Well if you don't count when he was 15!
“Well if you don't count when I was
15, I threw a rock in the air and it hit me in the face.”
I did not think he'd share that, if I'm
honest. Made him stop crying, and start laughing at himself though.
Well I'm bored, sorry. There is a lot
more to see out here, I'm not wasting anymore time watching two
dudes cut into a rock for 6 months. So I'll check back in later,
gonna go eat me some spiral galaxies! Later bordos! Later fleshos!
Saturday, December 15, 2012
Honesty
How much do we compromise our honesty because of our fear of confronting the consequences of the truth? In the honesty episode we watched a clip about young children lying about their disobedient actions. They looked behind them when they were told not to. Out of fear of being reprimanded some of them lied, and created a cover story. Hopefully as we age, our experiences will lead us to conclude that hiding from unsavory realities by lying does nothing more than postpone and compound the inevitable repercussions of our actions. Yes, it is possible to keep a lie spinning till the day you die, or even far beyond, but what kind of life would that be? If your goal in life is to reach your greatest potential, honest certainly seems to be a key ingredient. If your goal were to be to climb Everest, what good would it do to lie about the weather?
(I have to be honest, I don't know if I made that analogy up or not.)
As I look back at the times I lied, I shake my head. I may have gained a few dollars, or avoided a day or two in detention, or perhaps a bad grade in History class, but as I break these things down I begin to see flaws in my logic? The case with the History grade stands out in particular. When given the chance to grade my own test, I was very liberal with my interpretations of the answers. I falsely represented my own understanding of the course material. Why? Because I wanted to appear to "get it". I didn't want to seem dumb, or fall behind the rest of the honors class, even though in reality I was. Now I look back and think, who cares? Why even lie about that? But in that moment, fear of appearances drove me to lie. Then later in life, when the real world tested my knowledge of the civil war, I failed. Perhaps back in school, if I were honest with myself, I would have gone back and learned the stuff I was expected to know, or at least settled for an appropriate grade.
Honesty in friendship can be tough on a different level. Sometimes we soften the truth in attempts to salvage the friendship, or sometimes we straight up lie. After all, who is going to tell their friend that they need to loose weight? A true friend, that's who! I think the level of honesty you can maintain with your friends defines the quality of that relationship. I admit, you're not going to say to a new friend, "put down that Twinkie, fatty!", but you might say it to someone you have established a certain closeness with, that can handle a little intervention. My best friends have told me, on several occasions, I have glaring character flaws. Sure, it still stings to hear things like, "dude, you need to shower more.", but I know it comes from a place of good will.
Is it easier to be blunt with strangers? This certainly would explain trolling on the internet, but is that really helpful. There are countless talk shows that display public interventions. Dr. Phil makes a living at telling it like it is. Can it be constructive criticism when there is so little invested in the relationship between troll and trollee? Of course I'm not calling Dr. Phil a troll, but these types of relationships are similar. How much do we listen to advice strangers? I suppose when they have the title of Dr. next to their name that adds a little but of stock to their words, but ultimately how much are you going to care if you hurt your Dr.'s feelings, over those of your best friends?
On the other hand, how much easier is it for us to be honest with people that know how to forgive? Sometimes we don't know how people will respond to the truth, until we test it out on them. I know I can be honest with wife because she know's I'm human. She forgives a lot. There is a threshold however, I know the lines I should not cross, but with things like spending too much on shoes, I know I can tell her and move on. I don't have to live in fear of her discovering my hidden Air Jordan's. I value that in our relationship. I hate walking on eggshells with people, and I don't have to with her, or my close friends.
Now, on a closely related topic. I want to share this bonus clip from the episode that didn't get played about facts. In school, we hear all sorts of facts. How often do we call B.S. on them and dig deeper on our own? Are you a fact checker?
(I have to be honest, I don't know if I made that analogy up or not.)
As I look back at the times I lied, I shake my head. I may have gained a few dollars, or avoided a day or two in detention, or perhaps a bad grade in History class, but as I break these things down I begin to see flaws in my logic? The case with the History grade stands out in particular. When given the chance to grade my own test, I was very liberal with my interpretations of the answers. I falsely represented my own understanding of the course material. Why? Because I wanted to appear to "get it". I didn't want to seem dumb, or fall behind the rest of the honors class, even though in reality I was. Now I look back and think, who cares? Why even lie about that? But in that moment, fear of appearances drove me to lie. Then later in life, when the real world tested my knowledge of the civil war, I failed. Perhaps back in school, if I were honest with myself, I would have gone back and learned the stuff I was expected to know, or at least settled for an appropriate grade.
Honesty in friendship can be tough on a different level. Sometimes we soften the truth in attempts to salvage the friendship, or sometimes we straight up lie. After all, who is going to tell their friend that they need to loose weight? A true friend, that's who! I think the level of honesty you can maintain with your friends defines the quality of that relationship. I admit, you're not going to say to a new friend, "put down that Twinkie, fatty!", but you might say it to someone you have established a certain closeness with, that can handle a little intervention. My best friends have told me, on several occasions, I have glaring character flaws. Sure, it still stings to hear things like, "dude, you need to shower more.", but I know it comes from a place of good will.
Is it easier to be blunt with strangers? This certainly would explain trolling on the internet, but is that really helpful. There are countless talk shows that display public interventions. Dr. Phil makes a living at telling it like it is. Can it be constructive criticism when there is so little invested in the relationship between troll and trollee? Of course I'm not calling Dr. Phil a troll, but these types of relationships are similar. How much do we listen to advice strangers? I suppose when they have the title of Dr. next to their name that adds a little but of stock to their words, but ultimately how much are you going to care if you hurt your Dr.'s feelings, over those of your best friends?
On the other hand, how much easier is it for us to be honest with people that know how to forgive? Sometimes we don't know how people will respond to the truth, until we test it out on them. I know I can be honest with wife because she know's I'm human. She forgives a lot. There is a threshold however, I know the lines I should not cross, but with things like spending too much on shoes, I know I can tell her and move on. I don't have to live in fear of her discovering my hidden Air Jordan's. I value that in our relationship. I hate walking on eggshells with people, and I don't have to with her, or my close friends.
Now, on a closely related topic. I want to share this bonus clip from the episode that didn't get played about facts. In school, we hear all sorts of facts. How often do we call B.S. on them and dig deeper on our own? Are you a fact checker?
Thursday, November 29, 2012
American History & Elections
Although I scored an A- in my American history college class, I hardly remember everything from it. There is a certain etchaschetchyness to my brain that has let so much of my college education vanish into the shaken sands that is my memory. Unfortunately my student loans do not do the same. However, as history classes throughout my life repeat themselves I remember the more famous bits of history thanks to that repetition. One thing in particular that seemed to repeat each time was the Lincoln Douglas debates. As much as I enjoyed watching all of the debates this election year, I so wish I could have witnessed those 7 debates. According to the famous historian wikipedia, "The format for each debate was: one candidate spoke for 60 minutes, then the other candidate spoke for 90 minutes, and then the first candidate was allowed a 30-minute 'rejoinder.' " I can't imagine talking for a solid 90 minutes. I could barely speak for 60 about Star Trek, with 5 different youtube clips to break it up.
I suggest you check out the wikipedia page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lincoln–Douglas_debates
the thing that struck my interest was how the different news papers spun their bias by editing out errors for their perspective guy. It's not like it could be broadcast live. Even if it could we still have that pesky thing called editing. One thing you could do, in this case, was just buy both newspapers and you would have both unedited versions of the debates. Unfortunately watching Fox News and then flipping over to MSNBC does not yield two halves of the unadulterated truth. I admit, technology today has its perks, you can watch all the debates in their relatively unadulterated forms, but when it comes to the rest of the electoral process, much of what we see is pageantry, pandering, and another clever p word I'll think of later.
I received an email from one of the Joshes about how the electoral process has become like a great big video game, much like my Halo and Red vs Blue analogy! I think this video encapsulates the point I was trying to make but with much more evidence and clever editing... a fair and balanced kind of editing.
Thanks Josh! I don't feel like I know the truth of either of these people, we get biased soundbites and snippets of their past. I guess it would be impossible to really see an unbiased complete history of these men, as it would be more impossible to see an unbiased complete history of the world.
It would be awesome to have the time and resources to see how the history of the world really played out. That is what I hope will take up the first 10,000 years of the afterlife, a 10,000 year long Ken Burns style documentary including all the free heavenly popcorn you can eat. I guess even Ken Burns documentaries have some bias to them, but you get the point. I do have a lot of respect for historians, archeologists, sociologists, and all the other pros who are dedicating their life work to uncover history.
Much of history was written by the people who have had the most power throughout all the ages who have had the resources to change and manipulate history as they saw fit. Maybe this is why I like wikipedia so much, it sort of levels the historian playing field in a way. As technology improves, and we have more people documenting life, the quality of history will improv, or maybe everyone will just get really good at editing and we'll have 7 billion different versions of history for our future generations to sort through.
One semi unrelated thing I wanted to point out was that sometimes I say things that I think are coming off as sarcastic, but I forget to tell my voice to over exaggeration, and as a consequence there may be many of you who think I really do base my vote on how my dad votes, that is only 95% true. And pulling off 5% sarcasm takes an incredible subtlety that I've not yet mastered, but I'm working on it. My dad and I do disagree on about 5% of political issues. So thanksgivings are relatively nice. I hope yours was too. I think the reason for this is mostly based on proximity of perspective. We have had similar world views, but there is a large generation gap, I went to a more liberal college than he did. As I get older my view of things differ more and more from the generation before me. It intrigues me to think how the people 20 generations back saw the world. Most generation gaps through history haven't been effected as much by technological growth as in recent history. The way our future generations will see the world is going to be mind blowingly different than how we see things today. I'm jealous.
I suggest you check out the wikipedia page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lincoln–Douglas_debates
the thing that struck my interest was how the different news papers spun their bias by editing out errors for their perspective guy. It's not like it could be broadcast live. Even if it could we still have that pesky thing called editing. One thing you could do, in this case, was just buy both newspapers and you would have both unedited versions of the debates. Unfortunately watching Fox News and then flipping over to MSNBC does not yield two halves of the unadulterated truth. I admit, technology today has its perks, you can watch all the debates in their relatively unadulterated forms, but when it comes to the rest of the electoral process, much of what we see is pageantry, pandering, and another clever p word I'll think of later.
I received an email from one of the Joshes about how the electoral process has become like a great big video game, much like my Halo and Red vs Blue analogy! I think this video encapsulates the point I was trying to make but with much more evidence and clever editing... a fair and balanced kind of editing.
Thanks Josh! I don't feel like I know the truth of either of these people, we get biased soundbites and snippets of their past. I guess it would be impossible to really see an unbiased complete history of these men, as it would be more impossible to see an unbiased complete history of the world.
It would be awesome to have the time and resources to see how the history of the world really played out. That is what I hope will take up the first 10,000 years of the afterlife, a 10,000 year long Ken Burns style documentary including all the free heavenly popcorn you can eat. I guess even Ken Burns documentaries have some bias to them, but you get the point. I do have a lot of respect for historians, archeologists, sociologists, and all the other pros who are dedicating their life work to uncover history.
Much of history was written by the people who have had the most power throughout all the ages who have had the resources to change and manipulate history as they saw fit. Maybe this is why I like wikipedia so much, it sort of levels the historian playing field in a way. As technology improves, and we have more people documenting life, the quality of history will improv, or maybe everyone will just get really good at editing and we'll have 7 billion different versions of history for our future generations to sort through.
One semi unrelated thing I wanted to point out was that sometimes I say things that I think are coming off as sarcastic, but I forget to tell my voice to over exaggeration, and as a consequence there may be many of you who think I really do base my vote on how my dad votes, that is only 95% true. And pulling off 5% sarcasm takes an incredible subtlety that I've not yet mastered, but I'm working on it. My dad and I do disagree on about 5% of political issues. So thanksgivings are relatively nice. I hope yours was too. I think the reason for this is mostly based on proximity of perspective. We have had similar world views, but there is a large generation gap, I went to a more liberal college than he did. As I get older my view of things differ more and more from the generation before me. It intrigues me to think how the people 20 generations back saw the world. Most generation gaps through history haven't been effected as much by technological growth as in recent history. The way our future generations will see the world is going to be mind blowingly different than how we see things today. I'm jealous.
Monday, November 12, 2012
Global Warming
When Al Gore invented the internet, he must have been planning to use it to raise awareness and fight against global warming. That is why I am using the internet, but is the case for global warming as clear cut as scientists have been claiming? Sure, they can point to evidence like shrinking glaciers and rising CO2 levels in our atmosphere, but do they really believe that the smartest life forms on planet Earth are dumb enough to commit matricide? Of course not, we are way too smart for that. We are simply playing chicken with ourselves because we are also the most insecure life forms on the planet, or perhaps we just hate change.
So what is the solution? My crack research has lead me to some out of the box ideas that I think might just work. One person, on yahoo answers suggested we distribute fans around the world and turn them all on at the same time. Perhaps in theory this could work but I believe that would only consume vast amounts of electricity with no net loss in temperature, but if everyone were to jump at the same time we may knock the Earth out of orbit just a tad, thrusting us further away from the Sun thus cooling us off via orbital loosening like that of a portly man's belt after a Thanksgiving feast. We only have so many notches on the orbital belt however, we don't want to accidentally run into Mars or leave the "goldy lox zone".
So what about practical solutions? I took an engineering class in college on global sustainability. We brainstormed several ideas on how to reduce our carbon footprint through smarter designed cities built around foot traffic, green energy, improving our consumption habits, and other non jumping based solutions. It was a great class, until the day the professor wore his NASCAR hat to class and admitted it was an ironic guilty pleasure. Not nearly as masculine as my guilty pleasure, blow torching glacier melting! Admit it, you would jump at the chance to blow torch a glacier, think of the great monuments we could sculpt out of the polar ice caps, or better yet an ice hotel, move over Easter Island heads!
After a week in this hotel, you'll be asking why this whole global warming thing is taking so long! In conclusion, don't be dumb, do your part. Re fill your big gulp cup at least once! I'm a hypocrite on that one. Thank you!
So what is the solution? My crack research has lead me to some out of the box ideas that I think might just work. One person, on yahoo answers suggested we distribute fans around the world and turn them all on at the same time. Perhaps in theory this could work but I believe that would only consume vast amounts of electricity with no net loss in temperature, but if everyone were to jump at the same time we may knock the Earth out of orbit just a tad, thrusting us further away from the Sun thus cooling us off via orbital loosening like that of a portly man's belt after a Thanksgiving feast. We only have so many notches on the orbital belt however, we don't want to accidentally run into Mars or leave the "goldy lox zone".
So what about practical solutions? I took an engineering class in college on global sustainability. We brainstormed several ideas on how to reduce our carbon footprint through smarter designed cities built around foot traffic, green energy, improving our consumption habits, and other non jumping based solutions. It was a great class, until the day the professor wore his NASCAR hat to class and admitted it was an ironic guilty pleasure. Not nearly as masculine as my guilty pleasure, blow torching glacier melting! Admit it, you would jump at the chance to blow torch a glacier, think of the great monuments we could sculpt out of the polar ice caps, or better yet an ice hotel, move over Easter Island heads!
After a week in this hotel, you'll be asking why this whole global warming thing is taking so long! In conclusion, don't be dumb, do your part. Re fill your big gulp cup at least once! I'm a hypocrite on that one. Thank you!
Monday, November 5, 2012
Star Trek / Sci Fi Philosophy
I feel like I have already spoken enough about Star Trek in 2012, the 60 minute challenge was completed, and really all I had left to talk about was how some of the characters walked kind of funny and how the captains adjusted their suits way to over dramatically when they stood up, so rather than beat a dead horse again, I want to move on and tie in another work of science fiction that we focused on in that class I mentioned during the Star Trek episode, Philosophy in Science Fiction. The course forced me to go back and really think about a hand full of movies that I had taken for granted as a pubescent teenager. One in particular was the movie "A.I." or "Artificial Intelligence".
I wrote extensively on that film, in particular about the theme of the living and the dead. Many of you may know that the film was started by Stanley Kubrick, but he died during the making of the film, so Steven Spielberg completed it. I feel like this was oddly reflected in the major them of the film. The following was my final paper for the class. I exceeded the professors expectations with the paper, I think because he took me out into the hall, I thought to lecture me, but it was to congratulate me on a job well done. That was a first for me and it gave me the confidence to speak up more in class without gulping or swallowing weird. I've had many a gulp filled comment in that class prior to the paper, so hopefully it can work it's charm once again and cure my hatch gulps, assuming the professor comes back from space, reads this paper, and takes me outside the hatch to say nice paper!
I wrote extensively on that film, in particular about the theme of the living and the dead. Many of you may know that the film was started by Stanley Kubrick, but he died during the making of the film, so Steven Spielberg completed it. I feel like this was oddly reflected in the major them of the film. The following was my final paper for the class. I exceeded the professors expectations with the paper, I think because he took me out into the hall, I thought to lecture me, but it was to congratulate me on a job well done. That was a first for me and it gave me the confidence to speak up more in class without gulping or swallowing weird. I've had many a gulp filled comment in that class prior to the paper, so hopefully it can work it's charm once again and cure my hatch gulps, assuming the professor comes back from space, reads this paper, and takes me outside the hatch to say nice paper!
The
Living and the Dead
In
“Artificial Intelligence”
We see
in the film, “Artificial Intelligence” many examples of the close
relationship between the living and the dead. We see this
multi-layered relationship throughout the story of David, the robot
protagonist. It is a universal concept that all living things must
feed off of things that once lived. We must eat dead organisms to
gain nutrients to remain alive. This is true on an artistic and
cultural level as well. Another reason the living need the dead is
simply a matter of a limited supply of natural resources. If the
living never died there would be no room for new life. This is
another theme of the film. One other relationship the living share
with the dead in this film is emotional. Characters sometimes react
to death with mourning and melancholia. The main goal of this paper
is to show how “Artificial Intelligence” is a story about how
death is a crucial part of life, and more of a transformation rather
than simply the end of one’s existence. That one must die or at
least be able to die in order to truly live.
The
opening sequence takes us through a brief history of the apocalypse.
We are shown a vast sweeping glance across the flooded Earth as the
narrator calmly explains what we are seeing. His voice is reverent
almost mournful. This helps to set the tone for the film. The camera
shows us the physical frame of the world as the narrator tells us the
historical frame. We see this two part framing again later in the
story as we are introduced to a new stage of the apocalypse. The
camera sweeps along a frozen world of Manhattan with a new form of
life flying along the landscape with us in their ships. They are
archeologists, there to observe the dead. They chip away at a past
world covered in ice.
This
chipping away at the ice is a metaphor of the journey or coming to
life story of the robots of this film, particularly David and Joe.
When they are first introduced to us they are cold, mechanical, and
run strictly by protocol. As the story progresses that coldness is
chipped away. In an early scene Joe walks into a room to carry out
his duty as a digital prostitute. Up until this moment he seems
innocent to the fact that he is causing any harm to those he is
programmed to serve. When he finds a woman he is programmed to serve
is dead, lying on the bed, he shutters. The husband is in the room
with them and tells her to remember that she killed him long before
he killed her. He knows Joe hears this, but acknowledges Joe’s
inherent innocence as he takes no revenge on him. He simply asks,
“How many seconds has
it been?” He sees Joe as a just a glorified stopwatch, and leaves
him be. After that moment, the death of a woman he slept with, he
becomes more aware of the consequences of his actions. He learns
accountability, becomes more human, more alive.
David’s
journey is similar. He is a different type of love mimicking robot.
His very existence is in reaction to a death of Professor Hobby’s
son. His development came years after the initial development of
artificial intelligence. This came after the apocalyptic flood, one
that killed off hundreds of millions of humans. Death, limited
resources, and the need for mechanized labor spawned the creation of
robots in the world of this film. David’s model came after many
upgrades in technology and many generations of artificial
intelligence. Professor Hobby created David to match his son’s
appearance and likely his personality. If the real life version of
David never had died, the new version of David would have never been
created or needed. David is later programmed to love a grieving
mother named Monica. David’s services are rendered as she attempts
to replace the loss of her son due to an uncured disease. She does
this by reading a specific sequence of words, a code that initiates
his child like love programming. The need for David’s services, as
far as his initial design, is shattered the day the sick boy, Martin
recovers. Since he does not die, David becomes a pending second
child.
David
can not compete with the original biological child, as we see in a
heart wrenching sequence. Martin sees David as competition. Like the
jealous husband, Martin see’s that the one’s he loves have
attempted to replace him. Unlike the jealous husband, he does assign
the blame to the robot. Perhaps this is because he lacks an adult
perspective and can not justly analyze the situation. He is too
innocent to recognize the actions of his parents as a type of
temporary abandonment. As we see it, Martin comes back to life after
his parents have considered him as good as dead. Martin responds by
putting David in his place. He talks to him like he would any robot.
He asks “what can you do?” He compares him to his old toy Teddy
and even mocks him at the dinner table by showing him how to eat.
David becomes fed up with the rivalry and attempts to eat as well.
This causes his face to distort as though he were having a stroke. As
we cut to the next scene we get a shocking reminder that David is a
robot. The technicians have his abdomen opened up as they vacuum up
the spinach. They give him a nickname as they clean him, “Robo
boy” as if they are attempting to comfort a real boy. He is their
creation so maybe they feel he does have sentiment.
David
is ultimately rejected by his programmed mother. He is let go by
Monica because he proves to be a threat to their real son’s life.
The scene where David grabs on to Martin for protection is full of
metaphorical imagery. The boys are shirtless, so we see that David
fits in superficially. One boy even comments on how real he looks.
When David pulls Martin into the pool with him he initiates a type of
baptism. Baptism symbolizes death, burial, and rebirth. David seems
to fall to the bottom, motionless, while Kevin struggles to break
free. Martin is pried free by people who care for him, while David is
left for dead at the bottom of the pool. We never see how he gets
out. This scene is mirrored towards the end of the film when David is
once again buried underwater. Again he is left for dead, entombed in
ice and metal. This time he is preserved in an amphibian police
aircraft as a type of metal and glass casket. It is quit appropriate
for a robot, opposed to having a casket made of wood or anything
else organic. If we look back earlier in the film we see Martin in a
similar metal and glass tomb. This is one where he too is buried
alive and frozen, also awaiting an advancement in technology. In both
cases they are brought back to life by eager hands.
This
film uses mirroring over and over, visually as well as thematically.
One scene that shows a mirroring in behaviors is when David returns
to Manhattan. Just like Martin, he returns home believing that he is
an only child only to find another child, another David. The
protagonist David says “you can’t have her.” He takes a lamp
and beheads his competition. Of course he doesn’t realize that the
other David has no intentions of competing for Monica’s love. He
doesn’t realize that in that way he is unique, that he is the only
David emotionally tied to Monica. All he see’s is a room stocked
full of replicas of himself, mirror images, competition. Professor
Hobby tries to help David understand how he really is special, being
the first of a kind. But even Professor Hobby knows that his real son
can not be replaced by his replica. These series of events kill
David’s innocence. But within the same scene he is born again.
David
is born again as he relives his birth. He walks up to a copy of his
face held by a machine by a chair he glimpses through the eyes up at
the “Bird” he drew for Martin. The bird he saw as his first
memory. This imagery is mirrored not too much later as he pulls the
police amphiblicopter up to the blue fairy. Her eyes overlap his in
the reflection of the windshield. He rests there and begins to pray.
He becomes entombed there with Teddy after the Ferris wheel
collapses. First the floodlights die out. Then he is left praying in
the dark, hoping to be transformed into a real live boy. He doesn’t
try to escape. He is exactly where he wants to be, pending in a glass
coffin, reflecting the scene with Martin. But in Martin’s scene the
lady on the outside was praying for him to live.
We
should also look briefly at the flesh fair. This scene brings up
death in a new light. In fact the scene is lit up quit dramatically.
It is a celebration, but of what, life or death, or both? It is
called a flesh fair, but they are burning and melting metal. So do
they consider these machines to be flesh, or is it an ironical name
for a brutal event? The stadium is a coliseum reflecting the
brutality of those of ancient Rome. We see gladiator types, chopping
robots in half, and bike riders with lions on their helmets. All of
this with a heavy metal band accompanying the destruction. One line
of dialogue stands out, given by a captured robot. He explains to
David that they are doing this “to maintain numerical superiority.”
The Orga need the Mecha to die so they can remain domineers. Since
the life expectancy of a mechanical life form is so much greater than
an organic life form, they must be destroyed in order keep that
balance.
This
film brings up another important relationship between the dead and
the living. Without the living, the dead would have no means to leave
their legacy. There would be no “enduring memory of all man kind”
without David. David carries with him memories of human art, music,
and culture. The new life forms that dig David up 2000 years after
his burial say that he is unique in all the world. They say that
humans may hold the meaning of existence because of their abundance
of culture, music, and art. Now David is the one who can not be
replaced. So these new life forms give him whatever he wants. They
want him to be happy. They need him to be happy. They recognize a
need for him to not just exist, but to live…to become fulfilled.
And so they bring back from the dead the one person who can provide
that, his mommy. After she fulfills her purpose she dies again, and
David goes “to the place where dreams are born.” The lights in
the room go out and the film fades to black. The story dies, and the
audience can then return to their other lives, but with new incites.
The film gives us a few moments to mourn at the end. The music helps
the transition as familiar scores allow us to relive moments from the
film, until finally we are expected to move on. But can we? We are
but another layer of reflection of this film, as we write and discuss
the themes within, we perpetuate the them and give them enduring
life.
“Artificial
Intelligence” gives us several examples of characters that must, on
some level die before they can really live. The film itself is a
symbol of a life. It fades from black, goes through many stages of
character development, and then fades back to black at the end. By
featuring mechanical life forms as its protagonists this film makes
us ask, what does it mean to be alive? Joe tells David “I am. I
was.” He certainly made an impact in the world he participated in.
A woman is now dead and a jealous husband too. But he also made it
possible for David to come to a greater understanding of his reality.
The more a being is aware of reality the more real they become. It
took the deaths of millions for David to be created and several more
to fuel changes in the world around him in order to get him to the
point where he could discover who he really was and to become
sentient. David had to be kicked out of the nest in order to grow up.
He had to learn that death was a part of life, and experience it
first hand as he watched the one he loved die. That experience,
having her tell him that she loved him followed by her death gave him
the closure he looked to the blue fairy to provide. It wasn’t a
blue fairy who really granted him that, but a blue alien projecting
the blue fairy. Even at the end of the film David was not fully
aware, but the end gives us hope. He has become more aware than he
was when he was first built. Perhaps he would need to evolve somehow
beyond his circuitry in order to reach a higher level of spiritual
life. Much of human’s art, religion and culture claims that this
evolution happens after death. You leave your mortal shell and move
onto a new realm of existence. Ironically his prolonged life cycle
only delayed his confrontation of death, and further progression.
David, as far as we see, has not yet reached that point, he remains
in his original physical form, but he has evolved to a point where he
can now dream, and grasp more deeply what it means to be human, to be
“a real live boy”.
The End
If you read this whole thing and listened to the entire Star Trek episode you are probably the most amazing human on the planet and should win a prize or something.
Wednesday, October 24, 2012
Memory
I got so busy watching Star Trek that I forgot to write this blog. I want to keep this entry brief because I have fallen behind, but will offer up a quick lesson from my computer science class on memory. Basically all a computer needs is a place to write down bits of information in the form of ones and zeros, and then it needs to be able to read that information later. The brain, I gather, is more like making neural connections and forming stronger links the more information is used. Computer processors have cache memory and random access memory which are places the computer stores the more frequently used information, like running applications, or recent calls lists.
What does a memory circuit look like? We'll here is what is diagram for a circuit, called an R-S Flip Flop, looks like. The tan shield thingies are Nor logic gates. I forgot what that means, but you should do what my TA in college told me to do, just Google it. OK, nor is short hand for not or, which is grammatically incorrect but logically sound. It means that if there is a positive charge or a live current, represented by a 1, sent through the gate, or latch, then a 0 or null charge will pass through the other side, then it will send that 0 signal up to the Reset side which will pass a 1 on through, and this is how a state, or a 1 or 0 is stored in your computer.
S stands for set, R stands for reset. The Q with a line over it is not Q, or the opposite of Q. In conclusion, Pete and re-Pete are in a boat, Pete jumped out and who was left?" Not Pete. Good night.
What does a memory circuit look like? We'll here is what is diagram for a circuit, called an R-S Flip Flop, looks like. The tan shield thingies are Nor logic gates. I forgot what that means, but you should do what my TA in college told me to do, just Google it. OK, nor is short hand for not or, which is grammatically incorrect but logically sound. It means that if there is a positive charge or a live current, represented by a 1, sent through the gate, or latch, then a 0 or null charge will pass through the other side, then it will send that 0 signal up to the Reset side which will pass a 1 on through, and this is how a state, or a 1 or 0 is stored in your computer.
S stands for set, R stands for reset. The Q with a line over it is not Q, or the opposite of Q. In conclusion, Pete and re-Pete are in a boat, Pete jumped out and who was left?" Not Pete. Good night.
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