Bicentennial Man

Bicentennial Man was surprisingly a good flick with the legendary actor, Robin Williams playing as the robot Andrew.  Its funny how we’re no where near having household robots in everyone’s homes, but in this movie we were suppose to have them by 2005.  The fact that Andrew started out as a normal household servant robot and then slowly started developing emotions was a cool idea for the audience to think about.  And just with the slow journey for Andrew through out time developing those emotions and wanting to develop human form was so interesting and had me hooked.  Another cool part of the movie was how everyone was aging and technology was advancing and Andrew was seeing this all.  One movie in a 200 year period.  Andrew is a perfect example of AI that’s adaptive to its vastly changing environment and immortal it seemed like.  I still find it pretty terrifying for a creation of our own to be developing emotions like Andrew.

During this spring break I read “Labors of the Multitude” in the book Rhetoric For Radicals.  It was a very relatable chapter because it talked about-facing the fears people have with public speaking and ways to improve it, a common fear of mine.  It also focused on methods to make our writing more believable; different than speaking.  Our speaking, wrting or conversations have not been the same as it was in the past because of the one thing our lives are revolved around now, that is technology.  Now a days we barley speak one on one with each other although we use social media as our way to use our voices.  But in the chapter, “public speaking is to facilitate an understanding between the speaker and audience” (40) so how can we do that when we don’t speak.  Social media is changing the way we have conversations and write as teenagers use slang they get off twitter or instagram and use it in today’s conversations.  Also with social media we can speak throughout the world through a screen rather than in front of an audience.  Its teaching teenagers its okay to hide from a rather scary audience.  “Labors of the Multitude” described a four rhetorical approach past activists have used which are; persuasion, argumentation, story telling and invitation.  With persuasion we are cable of changing, shaping and sustaining a persons view into another, one that we want them to believe.   Argumentation is used by stating a claim, providing the evidence and then putting it all together, which will leave people convinced.  We use storytelling to explain the importance of a situation or idea.  The more a person envisions the story the more realistic it is.  Finally there is invitation, a non persuasive approach, but rather letting someone see your view from your perspective and through communication and dialogue.  Now how does media input all these tactics in today’s society?  Well news networks like CNN are very biased and tell a story from only they’re perspective and try to persuade the viewers to think that they’re opinion is right, there’s one way to use tactics.  Then there are some speakers for certain movements that speak to whole crowds on their idea and try to convert that audience.  A challenging situation I have experienced that forced me to respond and analyze a diverse community and audience would have to be in one of my high school football games in the past where my team was losing.  Although it did not involve speaking, it did ask me to perform in front of a huge crowd with pressure on me and have a good return on a kickoff inspiring my teammates.  After all, actions do speak louder than words.

Reading the book Rhetoric For Radicals, the chapter “A Call To Rhetorical Action” the reader will read about society norms and the process of how the media is ignoring us and how they are shaping our society.  As it says in the Social Norms section “erasing all norms is not possible” (20). We see it as impossible because it is so difficult for a society to adjust to a different kind of living.  For example, hanging out with someone everyday and becoming their best friend, but once that pattern stops the relationship stops.  I on the other hand see it is possible to create a new social norm different from the ones we have now like sexualizing woman, thinking all men are untruthful or even all Muslim’s are terrorists.  Using technology like social media, we can spread truth and wisdom to young teens, our future generation.  Teenagers use social media so much, ideas and stereotypes are implanted in their brains and eventually becoming a social norm.  The media plays a big part in our lives stating what they want us to hear.  Using advertisements, Youtube, Facebook, etc. they are our only connection to what is happening now in the world.  “Improving our communication skills” (35) will be our way to beat the media.  Our speaking and writing skills are so important because we need to communicate to our peers in a way they will understand the problem at hand and be convinced.  That is one thing the media does well which is convincing people that what they are telling us is the actual problem and is more important than anything else happening.  In addition, the chapter brings the 5 contemporary challenges current activists face, which are intercultural exchanges, intercultural communications, culture specific rhetoric’s, translation issues and creating transnational rhetoric’s. Basically, the five challenges allows us to share cultures and perspectives with different races and by doing this we are widening our alliances and getting more of an understanding of what other region’s societies are like.  Technology can help tons on this subject because not everyone can meet someone from another culture in person, but by communicating and sharing with those people online we are accomplishing these challenges.  Definitely an interesting chapter for the Rhetoric For Radicals informing the readers on how the media works and social norms are formed.

Blade Runner was an interesting movie that was a depiction of what 1982 saw the future as like. In the year 2019, the Blade Runner setting was a dirty, dark and dull place.  AI was the sole focus of the movie where Harrison Ford, Blade Runner, had to eliminate the replicants when surprisingly he was a replicant the whole time!  There were two versions of replicants, one version in the movie were being hunted were killers who knew they were replicants, but the others, Rick and Rachael, did not know they were replicants.  Neither did I.  It made me wonder how if AI like this were to ever exist would we be able to tell which ones were AI and which were humans.  What if technology became that advanced that we had to consider AI as one of us.  Harrison Ford in the movie seem to clearly be human, but he wasn't.  It kind of explained all the hints throughout the movie such as; Rachael asking if he ever took the test himself or Rick having no family or friends.  Rachael and Rick must of been the last 2 of the 6 replicants, but probably were released due to their non threatening nature.  This movie was weird future/ scifi film and some surprising twists.