Life Unlimited Post 4 Group Work and The Book

In Orfeo Els has very specific views on music that have helped my group decide on what we are going to do our documentary on. Our group is doing a documentary on music composition because of how prevelent it is in the story. One of the questions we are going to pose to some of our interviewees was "Why or how do musical tastes change over time?". I wanted to pose this question because in the story during Els's youth his brother tries to show him early rock and roll that Els truly ends up not caring for which causes his brother to get a little steamed. As I read on in the story his likes and dislikes in music seem to change from the influences of people like Clara, Bonner, Maddy and all of his teachers that helped him learn how to compose and understand music. The funny thing is I was listening to some music while reading this book almost at all times and it got me thinking about how my own personal tastes in music have changed over my short 18 years on earth. I wanted to ask our interviewees like the composers we are trying to get have any insight on why our tastes change whether it be that we get bored of what we used to listen to or if our ears change to the point where we just dislike certain types of music. Another question my group had posed was "How does music give meaning to life?". Els in the book from the way I percieve the book believe that music comes from everything from his relationship with his lovers to his daugther who he had written songs with. To me he seems to believe that music is life because of how he feels deep down inside. To me personally music gives a certain aspect of drama and setting to life and some of its moment or will give me an outlet that I can connect to. When I watch a movie or play a video game one of the things I will judge is music because it will always set the tone for what is currently happening on screen. One of the biggest things I come back to is in I believe it is Star Wars the Phantom Menace during the climax of the final fight where the music picks up at a high tempo as they fight on screen. Eventually they go into a room where each combatant is separated and the music stops and when it opens the music continues until they are seperated again after the master dies. This moment signifies to me how music is so important to setting a scene and how powerful it is. Music as an outlet to me is useful when I have a feeling whether it be anger or happyness that will amplify this feeling which is what assume the character Els feels like. These are some of the questions I want to pose in our short documentary because of I view them and how I want that view to change or improve.

Life Unlimited 3rd post Late Missed Debate

This post has been pushed because of several exams that had popped up and that I missed class Wednesday which was the debate about cloning and artificial organs I believe. I was supposed to be on the side against cloning and had several questions for the other side that I did not get to pose. Here are some of my thoughts on the subjects. Cloning to me is a strange idea because of how I have viewed it due to the media, film and books, so some of my opinions are based in what if scenarios as most are because a human has never been artificially cloned. A big part of how I view cloning is from the book "House of the Scorpion" by Nancy Farmer which is about a future where cloning is illegal except for made up country of Aztlan where a crime lord constantly makes clones to harvest organs from and in return he let's them have a short lived life. The book revolves around Matteo the clone of the crime lord. The book made me think about what human nature would take place in this situation were it come real minus the whole opium crime lord thing. I have a feeling that only people with power would abuse this technology by farming clones to steal their organs for later which I mentally compare to how big companies treat chickens and pigs keeping them in small spaces. I feel that if not that something worse which I think is inhumane because raising  a person that has the same mental capacity as me assuming it is my clone and cloning works that way. Another problem I see with cloning is related to Star Wars which is dumb and speculative, but I always think of order 66 which is where all the clones turn against the Jedi because it was coded in there genes. I have a feeling that other world powers like say Russia, China or even the United States. The clones arm race where we try to kill each other off by sending cloned soldiers to kill each other. For artificial organs and such I think that those are great because they are in production now and unlike the whole organ harvesting from clones no one gets hurt. The thought of me being able to go to a doctor for liver problems and him just taking my cells and throwing them in a machine that in front of me would print a fully functional liver that would replace my really bad one. In class we watched the video, which I think was a TED talk, and just seeing how they did that blew my mind. The future is now and everyday I realize that we make tremendous strides in medicine. The only problem I can think of would be over population of the earth due to no one kicking the bucket. The world is already experiencing this problem because of the advent of civilization and medicine. Other than that I can't think of a reason that organ printing could be terrible.

Life Unlimited Spring 2nd post Immortality

After watching the movie in class about Ray Kurzweil it got me thinking about a show on the Discovery channel which Adam Savage hosted called Curiosity with the episode titled "Can you Live Forever?". It talked about the theory of being able to live forever through the means of various different technologies and theories both fictional and non-fictional. The show and Kurzweil's moves had many of the same ideas about ways in which we could live forever. The Curiosity show first went over 3-D printing organs after and unfortunate accident involving Savage and a truck. This relates to Kurzweil's ideas on technology advancing enough to be able to keep his body able to go on until he can move his mind into a computer or some kind of cyborg robot. The show then moves forward in time to when the world is plunged into some kind of world war and Savage is forced underground during such a time he shows off the technology using stem cells to create new limbs from scratch and the ability to add technology to our brains to upgrade our memory storage so that we don't suffer from information overload. This is due to the rapid growth of technology due to the singularity which has given him the ability to do all of these things like how Kurzweil predicts it will. The computer brain hard drive upgrade reminds me of how Kurzweil wants to bring back his father by using computers to replicate an A.I. to be exactly like his father. This could be possible if the shows theory and Kurzweil's predictions are correct. The show ends with the possibility of humanity being able to transcend their bodies by giving them the power to be able switch between a selection of robots or clones to be able to switch between one for every occasion. The episode closes on him at his like thousandth birthday with his grand kids about 5 generations later supposedly. Kurzweil like the show have there own ideas on living forever, but I think the difference between the two is that Curiosity talks about it like a theory while the other is blinded by the idea of bringing his father back and not dieing. The show makes it a point when talking about certain tech I believe, it has been about 5 years since I have seen the episode, that some of the tech will take years to develop while others such as the 3-D organ printer are in development. I find that the show managed to perfectly talk about how the singularity would help us live forever unlike Kurzweil's documentary which was clearly biased due to most of the content trying to support his claim with the small bits of people disagreeing with him only to make him seem more human. Not to say that he has been wrong in the past about any of his other claims its just that his bid on immortality is a bit skewed because of his obsession with not dieing. Both forms of media are great at showing the ideas of living forever overall and are great to watch.

Spring Term 1st Post Peter Els and Ray Kurzweil Comparison

For my first post I just wanted to compare some of what I have read in Orfeo to the movie The Transcendent Man as these are the two things we have seen and read first this term. This blog post is just to make a comparison between Peter Els and Ray Kurtzweil which I think I may do a few of because they are both interesting people with one being fictional and the other real. Both share a connection with music which was introduced to them from a parental figure with Els from his mother, a pianist, and Kurzweil from his father who was a composer. Both characters are musically talented, but have had different goals in life like how Kurzweil wants to live forever and bring his father back from the dead through the use of technology/ Artificial Intelligence whereas Els as far as I have read has been in love with music and wants to make his magnum opus piece. These men also both lose there fathers while they are young from heart problems which in turn affected their opinions about life. A difference as far as I can tell is that Kurzweil is obsessed with living forever and is unwavering in his attepts which is good and scary. Els on the other hand as far as I have gotten through the book was not overly affected, but does mention that through his 7 decades before his dog had died he had only felt a certain level of grief about 6 times that had helped him have a certain appreciation for things. As I continue throughout the book I would like to go back and compare the two or compare Els to another person. His life is really interesting as his dad dies and how he views music through his own eyes and how he describes his dog Fideleo's attraction for music like how Kurzweil has his own views on the singularity and human transcendence.