In the book Pastwatch there is two different characters that both have one extremely similar event in their life which sets them forward working extremely hard and doing anything they can to advance there lives. These two characters are Diko and Christofer Columbus. However, these extremely similar events happen hundreds of years apart.
In Pastwatch, Diko is allowed to use Pastwatch's technology and is given the assignment to help her mother by monitoring the life of Christofer Columbus and trying to find the moments in his life where he made the decision to strive for greatness. Eventually, Diko finds it and at the same time she makes her decision to strive for greatness.
In Columbus's life, he makes his decision when he questions the reasons why his father is treated differently than the gentlemen that he does business with. He asks his mother why and she responds by saying nobody with Christofer's father's job, as a weaver, could become a gentleman. After a lot of persuasion, Christofer's mom eventually convinced him that his father could never be a gentleman. So he chafed his intentions, he would become a gentleman. And from that point on, no matter what anyone told him, Christofer would strive to become successful and well known.
Meanwhile, generations into the future, Diko made the same decision. After she found the previously mentioned event in her studies in pastwatch, she was pushed to the point that she too wouldn't stop trying until she achieved what she wanted. In Pastwatch it said that Diko, "adjusted the schedule of her life to fit the hours when the machine was hers to use" (Card 73). This shows the massive amount of dedication that was gained by Diko, and similarly Christofer, caused by a single moment of motivation.
Friday, October 10, 2014
Monday, October 6, 2014
Pastwatch Reflection #2: Playing God
A lot has happened in Pastwatch since the last time I wrote about it. The first big thing to happen was the introduction of Tagiri's daughter, Diko. In Pastwatch, Diko very much aspires to be like her mother. When she was young she was always around when Tagiri was working for pastwatch so from a very young age she was able to use and interact with the Pastwatch tools like the Tempoview and TruSite. Also she follows after her mother in that she has taken on a similar goal to Tagiri and hopes to help her mother in her work.
In the first section of Pastwatch Tagiri discovered the potential to communicate with people in the past through the TruSite II. They also made it their goal to use this technology to make people in the past more civilized and to make the world a happier place by eliminating a lot of tragedy. They then discover that this can be done through the elimination of one significant historical event- the voyage of Christofer Columbus.
The first step in their plan to eliminate this event is to find the moment in time where Christofer Columbus made the decision to make his voyage. This discovery is made by Diko. In the book, Diko is looking through old recording made by pastwatch when she decides to check one which nobody else would. You see, everyone had already seen this recording made by the older technology, so why revisit it? This was answered when something particularly peculiar happened in the new recording made by the modern TruSite II. In the old recording, practically nothing happens. However, when she went back and watched it again, Columbus was visited by an apparition which appeared to be the Christian holy trinity. They told Columbus to make his journey west across the ocean and of course, as anyone of the time would, he obeyed.
This rose a lot of questions among Diko and her parents. Thee biggest ones being-
1. Was that really god?
2. How didn't we see this before?
Eventually they came to a conclusion that satisfied both questions. This was that they couldn't see it before because it wasn't god, it was actually someone using the TruSite II to communicate back to the past and make sure Columbus made his journey. They couldn't see it before because, without the TruSite II, they couldn't see people communicating into the past with the TruSite II.
This made me think a lot about the ethics of the situation. Is it really ok to literally play god like that to manipulate people and the world around you? In Pastwatch this is exactly what they do and what they are actually trying to do. So what if this power fell into the wrong hands? If people were really able to do this, how could this negatively or positively affect the world? Personally, I think the risk is too great for anyone to actually try to do this.
In the first section of Pastwatch Tagiri discovered the potential to communicate with people in the past through the TruSite II. They also made it their goal to use this technology to make people in the past more civilized and to make the world a happier place by eliminating a lot of tragedy. They then discover that this can be done through the elimination of one significant historical event- the voyage of Christofer Columbus.
The first step in their plan to eliminate this event is to find the moment in time where Christofer Columbus made the decision to make his voyage. This discovery is made by Diko. In the book, Diko is looking through old recording made by pastwatch when she decides to check one which nobody else would. You see, everyone had already seen this recording made by the older technology, so why revisit it? This was answered when something particularly peculiar happened in the new recording made by the modern TruSite II. In the old recording, practically nothing happens. However, when she went back and watched it again, Columbus was visited by an apparition which appeared to be the Christian holy trinity. They told Columbus to make his journey west across the ocean and of course, as anyone of the time would, he obeyed.
This rose a lot of questions among Diko and her parents. Thee biggest ones being-
1. Was that really god?
2. How didn't we see this before?
Eventually they came to a conclusion that satisfied both questions. This was that they couldn't see it before because it wasn't god, it was actually someone using the TruSite II to communicate back to the past and make sure Columbus made his journey. They couldn't see it before because, without the TruSite II, they couldn't see people communicating into the past with the TruSite II.
This made me think a lot about the ethics of the situation. Is it really ok to literally play god like that to manipulate people and the world around you? In Pastwatch this is exactly what they do and what they are actually trying to do. So what if this power fell into the wrong hands? If people were really able to do this, how could this negatively or positively affect the world? Personally, I think the risk is too great for anyone to actually try to do this.
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