#1- "Those heavily invested in the status quo had difficulty thinking outside of it- and were often tainted by it." (18)
Grady is a college dropout because he did not really mesh with the school system, but he is different because he interacts with music and numbers differently then most students. This quote is really significant in today's society where all the focus is on grades and making sure your transcript looks perfect for college with the perfect doses of dramatized achievement and "selfless" service. There was a study in psychology about functional fixedness which states that people who know how something is supposed to work rarely use those same objects for different purposes. The school system is designed off of this principle of teaching students how to find answers when the true answer to innovation is breaking out of that mindset and pushing the limit to things that we already know work for a specific purpose. Not all great minds leave the school system however, the visions these people have has nothing to do with what they have learned but it is just within themselves that they see the same objects in a different light which is something that cannot be taught. It is curiosity that leads to discovery, and there is no algorithm that can replicate innovation because it is spontaneous.
#2- "...sequences that give her longevity, intelligence, and perfect form." (41)
This BCT has hundreds of years of intelligence that has never been seen by anyone in the outside world. They have the technology to make the perfect women, a woman that does not just have more information than any single human could contain but also the appearance of the highest esteem. This group of people break down every major discovery and push it to its limits just like making a women with the most superior DNA that gives off only the most appealing hormones. This book challenges the state of civilization today. The author is saying that we all had visions of flying cars and much more by this time, so there must be a reason why we have not reached such a state. If this were true how could the government justify the concealment of such discoveries. I for one do not believe this is the case because the technology that the author describes seems far beyond the realm of reality which is why the novel is sci-fi, but does that completely negate the thought of the government trying to conceal some discoveries from its citizens. If there were really a cure for cancer at this moment would it be risky to have it be released immediately? There are a lot of risks and rewards to discoveries like this which could lead to probable cause to keep these things a secret.
#3- "By comparison my intelligence is... approximately one billion times less energy efficient." (86)
Even amidst all of the great technological advances there is great cost. The BCT is able to create amazing machines of raw computing power but at the cost of massive amounts of energy. Early the machine talks about the human brains ability to generate great power inside just a small amount of tissues. Humans are really quite amazing though. The capacity to learn and rationalize is astounding. I find it weird how we created our own system of how to interpret and process information around how, yet we never fully understand what we have made. Math is one example that comes to mind. We create numerical values and equations to explain various observations that are made and yet there are still ideas we are unraveling and thus learning new things about a system we created. One other thing I find mind blowing is the idea of light speed. Einstein did a lot of research on this topic and with his help it was discovered that if one were able to travel at the speed of light then by the time he came back to earth, the people who he once knew would be far older than himself because time is relevant.
Grady is a college dropout because he did not really mesh with the school system, but he is different because he interacts with music and numbers differently then most students. This quote is really significant in today's society where all the focus is on grades and making sure your transcript looks perfect for college with the perfect doses of dramatized achievement and "selfless" service. There was a study in psychology about functional fixedness which states that people who know how something is supposed to work rarely use those same objects for different purposes. The school system is designed off of this principle of teaching students how to find answers when the true answer to innovation is breaking out of that mindset and pushing the limit to things that we already know work for a specific purpose. Not all great minds leave the school system however, the visions these people have has nothing to do with what they have learned but it is just within themselves that they see the same objects in a different light which is something that cannot be taught. It is curiosity that leads to discovery, and there is no algorithm that can replicate innovation because it is spontaneous.
#2- "...sequences that give her longevity, intelligence, and perfect form." (41)
This BCT has hundreds of years of intelligence that has never been seen by anyone in the outside world. They have the technology to make the perfect women, a woman that does not just have more information than any single human could contain but also the appearance of the highest esteem. This group of people break down every major discovery and push it to its limits just like making a women with the most superior DNA that gives off only the most appealing hormones. This book challenges the state of civilization today. The author is saying that we all had visions of flying cars and much more by this time, so there must be a reason why we have not reached such a state. If this were true how could the government justify the concealment of such discoveries. I for one do not believe this is the case because the technology that the author describes seems far beyond the realm of reality which is why the novel is sci-fi, but does that completely negate the thought of the government trying to conceal some discoveries from its citizens. If there were really a cure for cancer at this moment would it be risky to have it be released immediately? There are a lot of risks and rewards to discoveries like this which could lead to probable cause to keep these things a secret.
#3- "By comparison my intelligence is... approximately one billion times less energy efficient." (86)
Even amidst all of the great technological advances there is great cost. The BCT is able to create amazing machines of raw computing power but at the cost of massive amounts of energy. Early the machine talks about the human brains ability to generate great power inside just a small amount of tissues. Humans are really quite amazing though. The capacity to learn and rationalize is astounding. I find it weird how we created our own system of how to interpret and process information around how, yet we never fully understand what we have made. Math is one example that comes to mind. We create numerical values and equations to explain various observations that are made and yet there are still ideas we are unraveling and thus learning new things about a system we created. One other thing I find mind blowing is the idea of light speed. Einstein did a lot of research on this topic and with his help it was discovered that if one were able to travel at the speed of light then by the time he came back to earth, the people who he once knew would be far older than himself because time is relevant.