martes, 5 de noviembre de 2013

#edcmooc Technology in dystopian novels

In my first year at university, we read and studied dystopian novels. We mainly worked on "Brave New World" by Aldous Huxley, among others. It was really fastinating. Although future is pictured as negative and chaotic in dystopian novels, it was an issue that attracked me from the very beginning. Its basis is the fear of technology, not only because it could in a sense become a "self-sufficient machine", but the irresponsability of those who program and design those machines. Obviously, technology is meant to have many different purposes, they might be possitive or negative for humankind. Dystopian novels depict societies in which technologies are demonised, where machines develop more and more power and where people became slaves of technology. 

Now, technology is part of our lives but we have to take into account the fact that a century ago, it was a real threat. We got used to technology but some may say that the threat is still there. Furthemore, it might even be more threatening as most people don´t fear technology anymore.

I would like to share this .ptt file by Ivón Rivera which is both simple and clarifying to understand dystopian narratives.



1 comentario:

  1. What a brilliant post, Lydia! Thank you for taking time and going beyound the course material to share this with your readers. I personally really appreciate the link to the PPT by Ivon Rivera - that's a very interesting piece indeed, with all the quotes, definitions and examples. I watched "Frankenststein", "Terminator" and "Matrix" films some umpteen years ago, but it's fascinating how one can consider the same films from a very different perspective, i.e. with the technological deteminism theory in mind. I think the PPT will come in handy when reviewing short videos on EDC MOOC. I hope other fellow-students noticed this post as well.

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