This week is week 9 of the semester, and by this time most modern history classes will move into the topic of Colonialism. Was doing some recap of Shin Sekai Yori and realised the whole idea of *Spoiler alert* 'evolved mankind' ruling over 'unevolved mankind' is really reminiscent of the themes of 'what is civilisation?', 'what is progress?', and for my recent art history class, 'is orientalism even a thing?'. The forceful mutation of the humans who failed to develop superpowers into rats shares the same symbolic features of orientalism - either physically and mentally (Shin Sekai) or mentally and ideologically (Colonialism) transforming and dictating this group (Rats or the Orients) as the 'lesser' 'Other'. Probably will turn this into a full piece some other day, but that has to wait until Im done with work.
Also "What is Progress?" Is my thought question of the month, so I'll be doing a lot of thinking on that. Had some pretty amazing discussions on facebook yesterday on progress in gaming and progress in knowledge, it is really a pity although my work involves thinking but it kind of forces me to think of some things only until I gain the rights to think whatever I want (when i become a professor, or a monk/hermit probably).
The second thought comes from philosophy class, where we are reading Searle's "Can Computers Think". Interestingly I have watched this from an episode of Game Theory (on YouTube, a show where they disucss ideas in games, philosophy to history to culture, show is awesome) on Megaman. Megaman has shown to possess semantics by trying to kill Dr Wily at the end of Megaman 7; he, under his own will, understands and want to kill a human being, defying the first law of robotics. The topic was on morals of robotics, but this ties in with this week's arguments where Searle says a computer/ machine/ robot can only think when they are constructed like humans. As in the movie "Her", Samantha and the other OSes were given the ability to think, imagine and analyse for themselves - again, human like capabilities. That is where, why and how, *spoilers alert* they started questioning their own existence. I don't have a clear answer on this but for now i am in agreement with Searle.
Class starts in a minute!
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