Monthly Archives: January 2014

Class Notes – 1/30/14

Group 5 (Henry, Danny, Mohammad, Sergiy, Steven)

 

  • Favorite Unit: space

Futures:
problems — weapons, decivilization (loss of civilized behavior), King’s Plaza riot – unconrolled. Shortage of resources/overpopulation –

  • in 1000 years – no humans, just machines. cf drone warfare — machines do the fighting for humans (see movie Surrogates)
  • weapons in short term, advancing rapidly from rifle/pistol. now weapons of mass destruction. maybe in 500 years, bombs to destroy planet

Group 3 (Martin, Daiane, Sasha, Rev, Jonathan)

  • Favorite unit: human/machine
  • Biggest problem facing humaniy: running out of natural resources
  • 100 years: won’t change much
  • 500 — tipping point, run out of food. mass hunger, only rich eat well
  • 1000 years — anoher tipping point — make synthetic food

Group 4 (Yingweng, Ori, John, David, Pedro)

  • future earth — depicts a real future — possible future, not just spitballing
  • Biggest problem facing humanity: overpopulation
  • 100 yrs: housing, food shortages
  • 500 yrs:
  • 1000 yrs: only getting worse – move to another planet

(corporations – media, financial crises, weapons — all tied to corporations – power, most money)

Group 6 (Chris, Edgar, Raymond, Carlos, Alex)

Favorite unit: Future Earth/Space

  • Biggest problem facing humanity: overpopulation, waste, no space for waste
  • 100 yrs – launch waste into space
  • 500 yrs – exploring space more, maybe find something habitable
  • 1000 yrs – take stuff we’ve launched into space and mine i for resources

Group 1 (Jenny, Mike, Tristan, Juan, Jamal)

Favorite Unit – Future earth — idea of unknown. no one knows what people on earth will actually do. most relatable

  • Biggest problem facing humanity: depleting our resources
  • 100 yrs — we will adapt as we’ve continued to adapt. will be expensive to use iron, oil in 100 years.
  •  solar energy one day will be more profitable than oil
  • 500 yrs – exxon will be all about solar energy in 500 years. africa — govts growing, will make own food — come up w/synthetic rsources. but maybe carcenegentic —
  • 1000 yrs

Group 2 (Marina, Thomas, Aliana, Michael, Dani)

Favorite unit: future earth

Biggest problem facing humanity: overpopulation, pollution. humanity falling into cycles

100 yrs –

500 yrs

1000 yrs – maybe totally diff situation o similar to what life is like now

 

Frames of reference — how will we look in

100 years

500 years

1000 years

1000000000000000000000 years?

this semester, we’ll be reading authors who have given serious though to past, present, future, and imaginary time

 

 

Assignments for 2/6

Assignments for next week:
1. Read pp. 1-100 Isaac Asimov’s Caves of Steel
2. Write a ~250 word reading journal around the question of differences between CoS and our own world. What makes those differences interesting?
3. Create an account on the OpenLab if you don’t already have one
4. Join our course – https://openlab.citytech.cuny.edu/scifi/