A Sound of Thunder, All You Zombies and Into the Universe with Stephen Hawking.

In my Sci-Fi class, we are now on our last unit and we are studying paradoxes and time travel. There are also things that we are learning about called the "butterfly effect" and the "grandfather paradox." The butterfly effect is a phenomenon whereby a minor change in circumstances can cause a large change in outcome. Then the grandfather paradox is quite simple, its saying that if you time travel into the past murder your grandfather before he sires your mother or your father, then where do you come from?
We watched some of Stephen Hawking's "Into the Universe" and he explained that we would never be able to travel into our past because of the paradoxes and loop holes we would create. Nature, he says, would not let us create something like that. We are able to travel to the future as much as we want, and how we do that is we travel just barely under the speed of light, because nothing can ever exceed the speed of light, it's nearly impossible. But then it brings up the question, should we, or even do we want to? If we do travel into the future there is no coming back since we can't travel back in time, ever. Of course I believe that we can; it would just be on a different time line. So let's say you time traveled from your current time to somewhere in the future. Well, the time you jumped from would continue on with a future without you in it; and if you jumped back to the time you jumped from it would be still a different timeline because the time that you originally jumped from kept going and so now there has to be a future that has you in it, so therefore it wouldn't be the same timeline you jumped from originally.
We also read two short stories, one was by Ray Bradbury called A Sound of Thunder, the other one was by Robert A. Heinlein which was called All you Zombies. In A Sound of Thunder the people go back in time to go hunting, so its like a more riskier version of any hunting we could come up with today. We don't go around hunting Tyrannosaurus Rex's. When they go back they have this hovering path that they have to stay on otherwise they might step on something that could spring out huge changes in the future. When the dinosaur is coming and in range the new guy on the team mistakenly steps off the path. But how can one step change the future? It turns out that he steps on a butterfly which then, they discover when they get back to the present, has caused everything to be different and nothing is the way it was. (Hence the "butterfly effect") It's saying that by going into the past, something so small as stepping on a bug could create huge changes that were never meant to happen. Of course some would argue that we were supposed to go back in time then and supposed to step on that bug, so that the future would work out that way. That also brings up the question; if you could go back into the past without knowing what was going to happen to the future you came from, would you still go? I personally would not, I like how things have come out, and without all of the things that have happened to me or the world around me, who would I be today? Everything we go through and how we react to things is what creates who we are as a person in the future.
All you Zombies was far more confusing. It was harder to wrap your head around the idea of the paradox, but once you got it, it was really pretty cool to think about. In the story all of the main characters ended up being all the same person. He was once a female who had both male and female parts, so he had a sex change then went back in time a impregnated his female self who got pregnant and had a baby girl who ended up being him who grew up, and the circle repeats itself. In other words he was his own mother and father. It kinda crazy and very weird to think about but it brings up the question; how did it start? Who did it start with? Who was the original "Jane"? I really don't know the answer to this question. It throws me for a loop...haha.
Time travel and paradoxes have to be one of the more interesting topics, even though I like all sci-fi topics, this one has to be one of the most fun to explore.

I Borg

The Star Trek: Next Generation episode "I Borg" uses an altered robot-like being, Hugh, to let us examine new questions about our own individuality. If our individuality was stripped from us, it would actually be worse than dying because we would have no ability to think for ourselves.  As individuals we should question what we have been told.  Hugh has it ingrained in him that "Resistance is futile," but he learns that resistance is not futile. It's always our choice to make, no one has the ability to make choices for us that we are unwilling to make. In fact, Hugh has the ultimate realization of self when he decides to sacrifice his freedom to save his new friends.

Reason

In the story Reason, the author Issac Asimov makes us think about some important questions. Questions such as: What will it be like when human jobs are replaced by robots? More importantly, what if those robots began to see themselves as superior or more valuable than the humans? What if they start to believe they are on a mission from a higher power?  In the end, the characters Donovan and Powell decide that it doesn't necessarily matter what Cutie believes as long as the robot is doing what he is supposed to do. Underneath all of Cutie's reasoning and thoughts on his purpose of being, he still is ultimately obeying the Three Laws of Robotics whether he realizes it or not. He keeps the station functioning perfectly and so keeps the humans and Earth safe.  It does make you wonder how the next caretakers of the station will deal with Cutie's "Cult of the Master" though. I would have maybe given them a little more of a heads-up.

Measure of a Man

   In class we watched the Star Trek Next Generation episode: Measure of a Man. It is about when Data is put on trial to decide if he should be decommissioned. The conflict is: Is he too human or not? Does he have rights? Is he self-aware, etc... Data is a robot but can think and feel just like a human can. They also brought up the point that if they created a race just like Data so they can serve us, is that slavery? And when do we draw the line where we have to give them rights? In history we did enslave the blacks, but they were there own people before. So if we create a race to serve us, is it really slavery or not? I think if they are self-aware, and have human emotion then yes, it is wrong. I think the line is when they become self-aware, and have a conscience and can tell what is right from what is wrong even if it is not the most logical choice. To compare this to I-Robot, the robots in there didn't save the girl in the car crash because she had a less likely chance of living but any human would still try to save the girl no matter what the odds are.
   I think we will get to this point in our near future where this imagined problem will become reality. We will build robots who will think freely and dream. Could it take a long time? Yes. But is it possible, yes. It is possible because we have yet to prove that we can't do it.
   So back to Data. He is way too human to make choices for him, he is self-aware and portrays human emotion, therefore should have rights.

EPICAC, Eyebem, Mimicry...

Over the last few days we read three short stories, EPICAC by Kurt Vonnegut Jr., Eyebem by Gene Wolfe, and Mimicry by Maggie Slater. These stories are the perfect examples of how technology might become aware of itself and start to feel human emotion. As we create more and more things that are closer to human the line, between person and machine becomes blurry.
All of these relate to the Frankenstein Complex in that sooner or later we lose control of what we have created and they evolve on their own. We don't know whether our creations will make things better for us, or become a threat to out very existence.

X-Files: Post-Modern Prometheus

Well, in class we watched an episode from the X-Files called Post-Modern Prometheus. It was about how a doctor figured out how to create people and affect their appearance, but his experiment goes wrong and he ends up with someone with two deformed faces. Everyone is scared of the creation because he is so different from them; to them he is a monster. 

This related to the Frankenstein Complex in how people are afraid that when scientists mess with nature the result will be a monstrosity. It also shows that fear can change a few scared people into an angry mob who will stop at nothing to destroy the monster. 

This type sci-fi can serve as a warning. We have to consider how far we really want to take science, and are we ready for the consequences? When experimentation involves living beings, we can't just put ethics on the shelf so that we can satisfy our own curiosity. Just because we can do something does not always mean that we should.