Friday, March 30, 2012

Post Nine: Karl Marx



Marx:



Karl Marx is known as a German philosopher, economist, sociologist, historian, journalist, and revolutionary socialist. Not only did he play a huge role in social science but also the socialist political movement. His theories about society, economics and politics are what we know today as Marxism. Marx argues to bring about socio-economic change. He believed that socialism would eventually be replaced by a stateless, classless society called communism. During this section of the course many stories show Marx’s theories and relate to communism and socialism.
            The first story that comes to mind when thinking about the Marxism is “Dead Space for the Unexpected.” The computer at the company, rates the employees on their performance. Main character Jonathan, living a regular planned life gets rated each day he attends work. The same thing is done for Simon, unfortunately his scores were rated too low leading to termination. The way this computer operates it feels as if authority is constantly watching them. After Simon was terminated, Jonathan was sure to do his part in making the company successful. Machines and humans relate in ways that I necessarily don’t believe in or don’t want to think about just because it kind of freaks me out that our world one day could be taken over by robots/machines.
            Another story that may deal with Marxism is “Baby, You Were Great!” by Kate Wilhelm.” The world develops a type of entertainment where people with intense true emotions, place electrodes into their brains and people will purchase these helmets so they can experience the same emotional sensations. People watching each other like this, freaks me out. All this happens due to the technology where signals are sent out in the helmets and people all around the world can sit and watch this so called “reality show”. This story may not be as good as an example as “Dead Space for the Unexpected,” but they both show weird scenarios with technology. Karl Marx seems to have been an intelligent guy, his work definitely is something I liked reading up on.

            

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