Google The Great(or not)

I hope y’all had a good weekend! Well where to begin…

It is evident from Karr’s article that people (myself included) have developed an inability to focus on lengthy texts due to the internet. “A new e-mail message, for instance, may announce its arrival as we’re glancing over the latest headlines at a newspaper’s site. The result is to scatter our attention and diffuse our concentration.” Our brains can no longer retain depth from reading, since we learn the art of skim reading on the internet. While typing an essay, it becomes distracting being on the computer. I take numerous breaks going on Facebook, playing solitaire, and checking emails. The internet is literally turning our brains to mush.

In postmodernism, there is a decentering of values. There are an infinite number of metanarratives making there no central focal point. I think this reflects how people can no longer focus or comprehend a sophisticated understanding of any one thing. Vonnegut most likely made Cat’s Cradle with short chapters that had a different topic for almost every chapter because he knew people would be incapable of focusing on any one topic for an extended period. One such character, Mona, has an inability to focus on one man. For instance, when John knows he is going to marry Mona, he wants her to only love him and she tells him that, “[she] loves everyone” (207). Mona cannot even focus on being committed to one man. If she were dedicated to John, she would learn the depth of his personality, but by being promiscuous, she can ‘skim’ over him and other men.
The internet has even corrupted marriage in today’s society. More than 50 % of marriages end in divorce. People become disinterested in there spouses because of the lack of focus promoted by surfing the net. Apparently, even Barbie and Ken, after years of marriage, are now divorced. As you can see, the internet has turned people into mindless zombies.

Hypertechnology

Imagine you are sitting right next to your friend and both of you are texting one another instead of talking. How pathetic is that? Even though you are with company at the same time, you are isolated. Today we are living in a pseudo-modern world, since technology has abolished meaning in life.
In pseudo-modernism, authors have little purpose.
In Dr. Kirby’s article he states that, “In all of this, the ‘viewer’ feels powerful and is indeed necessary; the ‘author’ as traditionally understood is either relegated to the status of the one who sets the parameters within which others operate, or becomes simply irrelevant, unknown, sidelined; and the ‘text’ is characterized both by its hyper-ephemerality and by its instability.” Writers have no purpose in dictating their own work. The writer of a show is invisible to outsiders. Shows such as American Idol are entirely dependant on the voting of viewers. The creator of the show does not get to pick the winner, only the voters who text in their vote. An essay must present an argument to be worth reading and analyzing. Reality shows, on the other hand, bring no thought provoking conversations. Shows and authors become void of meaning. The writer becomes a waiter asking the ‘customer’ if they would like beef or chicken. The waiter cannot control what the customer orders, in the same way, that a writer cannot control the outcome of his/her own work. Ironically, technology was meant to improve our society intellectually, when in actuality, it has diminished our ability to expand our knowledge.

Where does all of this leave us? Is technology more evil than good?

Cat's Cradle/ Postmodernism

“Postmodernism cultural forms reflect the dislocation and fragmentation of language communities- splintered into small groups- each speaking a “curious private language of its own, each profession developing its private code or dialect and finally each individual coming to be a linguistic island, separated from everyone else” (PCS 14) (Postmodernism For Beginners 37). People are isolated in small distinct discourses and then eventually these discourses branch out even farther, so people have their own individual opinion just to themselves. People become alienated from their own loved ones. In Cat’s Cradle, Newton Hoeniker writes that when his father won the Nobel Prize his, “Mother cooked a big breakfast. And then when she cleared off the table, she found a quarter and a dime and three pennies by Father’s coffee cup. He’d tipped her” (14). Newton’s father, Dr. Hoeniker, views his wife as a mere waitress who is not really a part of his life. He does not think that she made him breakfast because she loves and is proud of him but because she is obligated to as part of her job. His relationship to his wife is one of a business transaction, where she takes care of him and he brings home the bacon. He feels no love for her. Dr. Hoeniker’s only relationship is with science.
Cat’s Cradle exemplifies the postmodern concept of detachment from family. Dr. Hoeniker fills the void in his life with achieving his goals in science, which become his sole purpose in life. He does not cherish his family because that would distract him from attaining his dreams. His wife and kids are just daily encounters he has like tipping a waitress at a local diner. Dr. Hoeniker is the sole member of his own discourse adhering to his own beliefs that are legitimate to him.