Wall-E is the best science fiction film in the last ten year. The best about the movie Wall-E is that there is not much dialog between the robots Wall-E and Eve just beeps and clicks, but they communicate through body language which gives them a human characteristic. The movie begins by showing Earth fills with skyscrapers that turn out to be trash. The story takes place 700 years after the human went to space on the spaceship called Axion because Earth is too polluted for habitation. Wall-E (Waste Allocation Load Lifter, Earth Class) is the last robot that the human left on Earth to clean up the trash. His only companion is his pet cockroach until a new robot named Eve arrives on Earth. Eve is sent to Earth by the humans living aboard the space cruiser Axiom to find plant life on Earth in order to decide whether it's safe to return to a home these humans have never seen. When Eve went back to Axion, Wall-E goes along. At Axion, Wall-E helps the human to fight Auto, the piloting system that takes the form of a ship's wheel with a red HAL 9000 eye in its center. The movie Wall-E has brought up many problems that we are facing right now and future problem. People relay on technology too much that they lose their ability to walk, think and read. We will see how the people who live on the Axion represent the concerns the Nicholas Carr present in his article, “Is Google Making US Stupid?”
The picture above shows the live of the human in Axion. Every red dot in the picture is a person traveling by a moving electronic chair. The movies show the expediency culture, as the humans on board the Axiom travel around the ship on hovering chairs. They have grown fat on their diet of junk food serve in drink form that they lose the ability to walk. People communicate through a holographic video screen. Transfixed by the screens in front of them, they have seemingly lost the art of communication which is face to face communication. In one of the scene, two people are talking with each other through the screen when they are actually sitting next to each other in the corridor. They do not any contact with their children. They depend on the robot to raise and teach their children. The ship system controls everything on the ship from when to eat, sleep, wake up, and what to wear. The sad part is the people willing obey the system. This proves Carr point, “intellectual technology, the tools that extend our mental rather than our physical capacities-we inevitability begin to take on the quality of those technology.” We began to obey the system and ignore our sense or conscious. Like Carr’s example of the invention of the clock, before the invention the clock people base on their sense but the arrived of the clock people started obeying the clock.
Carr also worries that rely on the internet too much we began to think read like a computer. He tells us how he and his friend lost the ability to concentrate in a novel or long article. Well, his concern is show in Wall-E. People on the Axion have lost the ability to read. When Eve came back with the plant, Auto gives the captain the manual how to process the return. The captain is lost and confessed that he does not know how to read, so he asks the computer to show him the process. This shows Carr’s concern, “as we come to rely on computers to mediate our understanding of the world, it is our own intelligence that flattens into artificial intelligence.”
The people on Axion are the result of Carr’s concern of the technology impact on us. Wall-E has given us the prediction of the future if we continue to rely on the computer or technology too much. Many people will argue that this is just a fiction and it not true. “How different is the life on Axion than our lives now?” This demonstrates the people who become addicted to the web of media messages from television, video games, cell phones, movies, and other sources which are a part of our everyday reality. As our intellect levels disintegrate, our consuming nature takes over everything we do each and every day, so our planet filled with garbage and waste. We are too busy to prepare healthy meals, so we purchase convenience foods which provide no nutrition or fast food which lead to obesity. After work and responsibility are completed, we are too tired to exercise and engage with real people so we sit in front of the television or the internet and spend hours allowing our minds to escape into some alternative reality. We spend our free time in movie theatres and in front of computer screens while neglecting the relationships with others. As we spend times surfing the internet, our reading and critical thinking decline. People on Axion will be our future if society continues to be lazy and rely on technology. How can we prevent Wall-E future from happening? Maybe what we should do is take business into our own hand by turning off the computer and enjoy nature activities just like the captain in Wall-E turn off Auto, so they can return to Earth.
1 comment:
Dieu, this is a very interesting post because of the connections you make between the film Wall-E and our article in class. I have not yet seen the film, but you summarize the narrative quite well and you do an excellent job connecting the main arguments of the film with Carr's article. You effectively put into perspective the tendencies and concerns that Carr discusses in his article with your reading from the film. Wall-E may be an exaggeration of what Carr argues, but nevertheless, we may be on that path.
There are some patterns with your writing that need to be addressed, namely issues with singular/plural nouns and verbs. For example, "The picture above shows the live of the human in Axion," should read "lives" and "humans." We can work on this together in my office hours or remember to utilize other readers as well. Overall, this is a great post and you have improved in important ways from your first two posts.
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