Saturday, March 28, 2015

THE MAN NAMED JOE

To think that this story was written almost 70 years ago is absurd. On the basis that we have almost all the same advantage and disadvantages that the story has, it really is just matter of opinion. Being able to guess some of the things that we use in our lives today almost 70 years ago is something that really shocked me. Given how little technical advancements came in that area, it’s almost mind blowing to think someone had that much foresight into what will come.
The story is all about the temptation of technology that people in the story and our lives will face and have faced. The ‘logic’ in this story has some real similarities to some of the technology we use in our lives today.  The first similarity between the two was the searching for answers. The story used its logics to find answers, we use search engines. There are some similarities with the two being that it gives the best answer the system can give. The difference is that search engines do not give the exact answer to ever question. But the logics in the story gives an exact answer to whatever question is asked in the story. The story gives there logics more power than the people. But with our search engines there is only so much knowledge that a person can gain given they are powered by what people know, it can’t generate answers to things that are still mysteries to use.
I want to touch back on the use of search engines, and how in the story they almost felt naked by the ability of people being able to see their personal business. This is not similar to us at all, we all live in a time that it is just common knowledge you can find out anything about anyone. I could go online and look up anything about anyone, this is just the day and age we live in. besides that people that go on Facebook and divulge their lives stories anyways. Modesty for personal information is dead unlike the story where the people felt so violated by this.
The story talked of the use of censors and the errors that still occurs even with them. I found it interesting that the story spoke of being able to use logics to find out how to better perform criminal acts. I can compare this to our use of the web, you can find out how to build bombs just by jumping on the internet. This really seemed to me to be prophetic, being able to see that people would abuse the use of the technology was very apparent to the author of “A Logic Named Joe”. I’m sure he just understood human nature, and knows that given the chance to use it for wrong, people would. Also I felt that in the story and in our world, we both search and find things that really should not be found. You can almost type in any word on google and have something inappropriate pop up.  In the story you could ask how to kill someone and it would give you the exact info you need. This is a sad truth, but we can’t use the internet without running into these sickening things. The story had the same end result of too much info on things we do not need to know.
These things I have talked about in this paper are the subject I found to be prophetic in the story of “A Logic Named Joe”. I also just wanted to show how they compare to our use of technology. The fact that someone could really see all these things come to shape is truly amazing, but the author just did not see that we would become so desensitized to it all.



1 comment:

  1. It is strange to me how open we have become about our lives and how ok we are with it. People are always talking about wanting privacy and being able to conceal their personal lives, but social media has almost turned that thinking on its head. People are excited to share personal things so they can get likes and comments and feel important. It's kind of crazy.

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