Tuesday, 30 November 2010

Blog assignment 3

I am going to make my reflection about the book Out of the Dark by David Weber. Now then I am going to quickly summarize the book. Essentially the book follows several characters spread over the world during an alien invasion. We humans though are not reacting to the alien’s superior fire power as they thought we would. Because of this they decide to wipe human species out. It should be noted that they managed to kill half of all humans before they reached this decision. So humanity is doomed with no hope of turning the tide of alien’s invasion. Then it happens. Deus ex machina. 

Deus ex machina is when something extremely unexpected happens in a story that saves the cast from whatever literary corner they had been painted into. The way it is implemented in this book means that there is no chance of seeing it coming unless you have very specific and obscure knowledge about a certain subject. To avoid spoiling the book I won´t go any deeper than that.

Now to what I think of the literary device deus ex machina. I generally don’t like it when authors use it in their books but I think Out of the Dark was an okay book even though it had a deus ex machina ending. Now my belief is that generally a deus ex machina is a cheap way for an author to get his plot out of a difficult position. It is usually also inconsistent with books internal logic and challenges the suspension of disbelief. So why is it still used if it can disrupt the flow of the story so badly?  Well maybe the author just one day decided that it was something he or she wanted to write. Perhaps it didn’t feel as a deus ex machina when the writer wrote it but when looked at from perspective of a new reader it might. This question seems to have quite a few possible answers so I think I will leave it at that.

Sunday, 14 November 2010

Blog assignment 2

After watching Annie Leonard's presentation at The Story of Stuff I had a few thoughts. The first one is really a question about whether Annie Leonard's numbers and information are accurate. The second one that popped up in my head was that she is probably correct about most the existing problems in the current system. See I have managed to mostly contradict myself with my two first thoughts on the subject.

Generally I agree with everything that Annie Leonard says in the video but I do wonder about the source for her 99% of everything that you buy in a six-month period is going to end up in the trash. Is there some study somewhere that actually got this number, because to me the number seems rather high.

So what can be done? There is probably no great idea to hope that the people will just what has to be done. No you must somehow pressure the public to accept the changes needed. There is probably also a need to educate the public. At the end of the day what is needed is a well informed public.

I also happen to believe that as technological improvements increase the efficiency of our industries the problems will be lessened to some degree. Also one can hope new less resource taxing technologies are developed in the future.