Kurzweil's Singularity

okay. so i read the article and honestly it is the same thing as the movie that dominguez showed us the trailor on. so i kinda got a double dose of it. this is good though because me, wyatt, davies, jeff, aleks, and niel had a pretty good debate. heres some things that i picked up on.

okay. so my position is that there should not be a singularity and that it is too dangerous to consider trying. why? because the situation is that we dont know what the singularity will bring. thats what everyone is saying and the scientists are saying that there willing to take the risk. (or at least some are) what risk is this??? loss of humanity, loss of freedom, death, etc... people say that you cant say that that will happen. but i say they cant say it wont. would you really want to risk it. i mean your life is worth so much and your life is actually a very good one. technology can improve so much. true, but i think striving for the singularity is like buying a super lotto ticket and if you dont win... hello slavery to machines that you wanted.  how could you even say yes to the singularity with even the slightest chance of death or loss of humanity. that was one question that came up at davies house. when do you lose humanity. i think its the moment you switch out a finger for a machine finger. that finger doesnt have life. one thing we said and agreed on was this. humanity is made up of 2 things. life(just living breathing) and conciousness. dont you agree???

oh and if you couldnt tell. i think bernard is on to the very thing that will save us from the singularity. it is not iminent as kurzweil says. "He believes that this moment is not only inevitable but imminent."

it is possible to stop it. how can it be unstopable if we still have control. is it impossible to just stop??? prove me wrong.

i wish i could sTAy cause i have so many other points. but we'll probably talk in class. bye bye

Rhetorical Analysis

Eric Jett

            The writer’s purpose in this movie analysis is simply to describe the transfer of masculinity and femininity from a male to a female and vise versa.  Written by Tori Gibbs, she describes the transfer in the movie Fight Club between the characters Marla and Jack/Tyler. She uses Fight Club because Jack and Tyler are the two personalities in the same body. The feminist being Jack, who cries and looks both ways before crossing the street, and the masculine Tyler, who sleeps with women and starts the Fight Club.

The intended audience would probably have to be a teacher. The fact that Gibbs uses ethos in her essay leads me to believe that she was taught what ethos means that week in class and wanted to impress the teacher by using it. I think it would have been more impressive to get the point across with the definition of ethos and how it applies and not just stating that ethos is relevant to the relationship between characters.

            The subject is one of masculinity and femininity through a movie, which is a good way to involve many people that may not read. It is a ongoing issue with feminists pushing for the “blur” of the lines of gender constructs. And Gibbs offers a different view of the importance of differences in gender. She focuses on the importance of learning from the opposite sex to become a better person.  I think it would be appreciated by the audience because it seems to be an original thought that contradicts popular feminist movement.

            The evidence in Gibb’s piece is the plot of the movie. There is not so much a detail that she is thriving on but she is taking the beginning, where Jack is a feminist type, the middle, where Jack splits into Tyler, and the end, when Jack kills Tyler but still ends up with some of his traits. This makes Jack a well rounded person. Gibbs just uses the plot as her evidence.

            Gibb’s piece is arranged into a somewhat confusing somewhat summary type of essay. I mean of course the audience needs to be up to date with the movie but there seemed to be a little too much summary. I had to read all the way to the end to finally get what she was saying but at the end I did feel satisfied. So she wrapped it up fairly well. It just seems choppy with the, “Heres what im gonna do and not tell you why kinda deal.” However she pulled it together in the end.

            Gibbs seems to have wrote an analysis of Fight Club to prove a point, and in the end she did prove her point, but it felt as if she kind of stumbled into it instead of giving you the opinion clearly in the beginning of the essay. For this reason I would not consider her an expert but someone with an opinion. Although it is valid, she seems a little unsure herself.

            The essay itself does surprise me in that it is a challenge to historical and modern feminist movement. I am impressed with her willingness to find and say that the sexes learn from each other and make themselves better as a whole. It does seem to break the, “do not summarize” rule; however, I believe that somewhat of an overview more than just, “here’s the main point” helped tremendously, especially to those who have never spent the time watching the movie. It breaks that rule and I believe she was just in doing so. However she did go a little too far for my taste as well.

http://www.studentpulse.com/articles/227/1/a-generation-of-men-raised-by-women-gender-constructs-in-fight-club

anyone???

did anyone have trouble finding a url that hasnt been taken???