Connecting the Dots

I went to Palm Springs over Easter weekend, and on Easter my parents invited over an older couple who they have known for a long time. I don’t know their exact age but I’m guessing they are in their late 70s to early 80s. During brunch, my mom made a comment about not counting age after 50, because supposedly that’s where things start going downhill. In response to that, the older man said that the 50s and 60s are great it’s not until the 70s that things go south. I found this interesting because it directly relates to the conversation we were having on the day of my show and tell, and actually helped me connect the dots for my end of the year project. We talked about how we always fondly remember the past, thinking that everything was better then. In South Park, they used member berries to explain the phenomenon, but really these berries aren’t necessary for people to bask in the past, even if the past wasn’t necessarily better. Thinking about the comment made over the weekend caused me to come up with overarching topic in my final project. I will look at both the past and future, and discuss the importance of continual progress and also remembering the past. Originally, I wanted to write about whether or not artificial intelligence was worth it, but this week I realized that this issue is only a small one in relation to the larger question. I will be analyzing the pros and the cons of living in the past and the idea of working for the future. Are all of the advancements worth what we give up for them? Must we keep moving forwards in order to survive? Would returning to the past hurt or help society? Was the past really as great as we remember it? These are the kind of questions that I will answer in my project by connecting my other blog posts about AI and South Park with many of the texts we have read/watched over the course of the semester. As for my opinion on the issue, I am a little conflicted. A lot of what I’ve seen in show and tells and in the movies we’ve watched about the future scares me, but I also recognize the importance of progressing as a society. On the other hand, South Park showed me the dangers of living in the past, and how the past is not as great as we remember it. I think in my project, I’m going to end up advocating for a mixture of past and future, but we’ll have to wait to see how that turns out.