Last blog of the year!~!!!!!

SOOOO HAPPY TO BE DONE! It is bittersweet, but still - I'm glad we're about to start a new chapter of our lives. Obama isn't coming to our school :( boohoo

This week!

Hooray, we have gone almost to the end of our senior year! I am still doing well in school. We watched some presentations today for people's inquiry projects, that was interesting. Right now I'm listening to some hip-hop. That isn't exciting, but I'm stoked by it. My show opens on the 14th! COME SEE IT THAT NIGHT! :)

This weeky deeky

Everyone seems to be deciding where they are going to college! It's very interesting to see where everyone will end up come next fall. We are finishing up our abstracts and projects currently. Actually right now, Danny is talking on the phone to a man named Bruce that we will be interviewing for our project.

Braaaahwp!

Bloggy Doggy

I officially committed to USC this week! Now to deal with the rest of the college experience - taking tests and stuff. I'm currently looking for a roommate and it's very stressful. For some reason it's a lot like dating. I'm sure everything will work out for the best, though.

Anyways, next week will be truly getting down to the final steps of our inquiry project. I'm currently reading at Rainbow's End and it's very interesting. I hope to finish it within the next few days.

This week

This week we wrapped up the Twelfth night project. We weren't able to do ours because both of my teammates were not here, but we will do the project sometime this week. We also are expecting to get our new book in this week! I am excited to wrap up our singularity unit, it should be very interesting. I'm happy to be back from spring break, and am excited to hear about where everyone decides to go to college. It's crazy how close May 1st, decision day, is. It's incredible that this year is coming to a close.

Spring Break!

I'm going to Greece and briefly to Turkey with school, departing next Wednesday.

Here's my Future Shock essay. I think I put more work into my Singularity essay because I enjoyed the book more. This essay, though it did take me a while to formulate, I don't like quite as much.

As a society, we dedicate the majority of our thought toward the world of tomorrow. In the late
20th century, many filmmakers and authors profited from what they believed was going to occur in the
2000’s. Despite 2001 Space Odyssey did not actually happen, some of the thoughts of technological
futurists during the early 1970’s still hold true today. In retrospect here are many fallacies in their
arguments when compared to the state of modern society. This can be noticed most prominently in Future
Shock by Alvin Toffler,. the second novel in our study of futurist’s theories from both past and present.
After reading the Singularity is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology by modern day futurist icon
Ray Kurzweil, we chose to read a book that could be labeled as a little more dated. The goal of reading
this book was to find how theories change over time, and also somehow relate his theories to a broader
audience in layman's terms.
“Future shock”, the title of the second book in our a term coined by author Alvin Toffler,
essentially describes a condition that society will be afflicted when the pace of societal and technological
change is simply too fast for humans to comprehend and cope with. Toffler describes this as
being “information overload”, quoted directly from his novel as being “[Future shock is] the shattering
stress and disorientation that we induce in individuals by subjecting them to too much change in too
short a time.”. The theme of Toffler’s novel is the transition between an industrial society and a postmodern
society centered around information technology - in the novel, he describes this imminent
period as being the state of a “super-industrial society”. The “disease of change” that comes along with
rapid technological change comes with an overwhelming amount of symptoms, such as stress, anxiety
and general restless behavior and tendencies. He compares these uncomfortable feelings to someone
undergoing culture shock - a sense of being an outsider, or being thrust into a whole new world without
a map. The main difference between these two is that culture shock is ephemeral. Toffler believes the
effects of future shock to be permanent.
The author states that despite the fact that our society is indeed ever-changing, that in recent
years (in context, this would be in relation to the late 60’s and early 70’s) that the pace at which things
are advancing and changing has been greatly accelerated. This, for me, immediately drew a parallel
to our previous novel and Kurzweil’s theory of the Law of Accelerating returns, where he states that
technological growth is increasing exponentially. Toffler even goes as far to say that if there would be a
graph of the change, the end would “nearly go straight up the page”. This equates directly to Kurzweil’s
theory - which adds to its burgeoning credibility. If it can be upheld for over forty years, the theory must
have a great deal of truth to it.
Though the pace of change seems to be inarguably exponential, an often debated topic between
futurists is the nature of the change - good or evil? Both authors that we have read could not have more
different opinions. While Kurzweil praises the singularity and technological change, stating that we must
improve it and never seek to hinder it, Toffler believes that technology is imposing on our moral, cultural
and religious values. In Future Shock, the author’s conservative tendencies were blatant and, at times,
overwhelming. Future Shock delves into is the lack of human relationships and morality that come along
with a rapid pace technological change. He believes that technology corrupts important institutions that
define our morality and religious values as human beings. The whole novel seems to be regarding change
from a truly right-wing ultra-christian point of view. Whilst reading the book, I was disturbed by his
tirades against such things as birth control. This made me take his scientific views and opinions on the
negativity of change with a grain of salt. The main difference between Toffler and Kurzweil is the attitude
they have towards change. While they touch upon many of the same topics, such as the pace of change,
biological developments and artificial intelligence, Toffler somehow manages to regard all of these things
with an overly fearful attitude. Kurzweil is enthusiastic about the impending singularity, while Toffler is
overly pessimistic about the change that, presumably, is to come. To me, it seems that he definitely had
a social, religious and political agenda behind his book which only became more apparent the further
you delved into the text. I preferred Kurzweil’s more objective and realistic take on the future, because
somehow he still managed to make it all seem positive.
Toffler’s predictions proved to be both right and wrong in many ways, but it was his stance that
proved Future Shock to be a less enjoyable read than Singularity. The novel however did prove to be a
different stance on the same issue, which will be helpful in formulating final conclusions and answering
our essential question.

*****SORRY ABOUT SPACING****

Dis week

We have read the end of TN and finished the movie. We also watched She's The Man. This movie was a very interesting interpretation of the play. It was very strange. Anywho, I also had a very fantastic time this week with our cooking project. There was a lot of great food. I am also reading future shock, which should be interesting. We have an essay on wednesday.

Right now I'm sitting in advisory

Tomorrow and Friday, I will not be in school. I'm going up to Los Angeles to do an interview with USC. I'm really excited and nervous at the same time. We're leaving tonight. Before that, though, I have to do a callback for an audition for a show called Children of Eden. If I get in, I'll post more about it. This week in English, we read more about 12th night and Stephanie did a really good job of convincing us that she found a love letter, but really it was one she had made herself supposedly from Malvolio. Anyways, that's all from me for now. I'm posting this blog earlier on in the week (also known as today) so that I don't have to be on the computer while I'm gone. Anyways, wish me luck!

Twelfth Night

Today we watched a section of Twelfth Night, with Helen Hunt as Viola and Kyra Sedgewick as Olivia. It was pretty odd. Helen Hunt was not a very good Viola. I have ever seen a lot of better Viola's grace the stage - no offense. I am currently working on paraphrasing the scenes from the show and adding some direction to them. I think that it is fun but that's just me. Later!

This week

We started Twelfth Night this week, which is legit because I love shakespeare and Twelfth Night. I have seen the show many times so basically it is all kind of review for me, although I do hope that we watch the film version (I believe it was a BBC version) because it's super good. Anyways, I really like Shakespeare and I hope that people in my class are enjoying it as well.

Emma at the Globe and other fun stuff!

We went to see Jane Austen's Emma: a Musical Comedy at the Old Globe. It was legit. I really enjoyed how much fun the actors seemed to have with us as an audience. I really enjoyed the fervor of their performance, and the music was great. We tied it in to our romantic comedy unit and what the implications of the play were. I really enjoyed the story, and how Jane Austen came to life through their performance. Usually, I would find Jane Austen pieces innately boring and outdated, but this play was classic. I liked it a lot.

Feb 4

Hey everyone. I'm updating with another blog post. Next week we are going to go see Emma at the Old Globe. I'm really excited to see it, being that I love theatre. We are also having another field trip, and next week is spirit week. It should be pretty intense. In english, we're just learning about romantic comedy, and I believe we are starting to read a Shakespeare play soon. It should be pretty sweet.

GOODREADS

Check out my books on Goodreads: http://www.goodreads.com/profile/naomimcfearsun

This week

I emailed some scientists to see if they would be willing to talk to us about the singularity and the future of neuroscience. I don't know how that will go, but we have one response so far! I'll update with the questions I ask him and his responses. We'll see. I have really awful senioritis. Like it's terrible. I need to seek help, hahaha. Anyways, we have a 3 day weekend so that's awesome!

See my diigo profile here

This week

Over the weekend, I had an audition at UCLA. The college process is truly closing in upon us and it's definitely a surreal experience. As the end of the year approaches, our lives are truly laid out in front of us, depending on where we choose to attend school. I'm a little bit nervous, but hopefully everything will work out fine.

As for English? Well, we're having an exam on Beowulf and also we are beginning to read our choice study group novels. I have yet to acquire the Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology (my first book). We will see when I get it. I'm a pretty fast reader, so a few nights of dedicated reading and I should be able to plow through it.

Beowulf

I read Beowulf in class this week. It was very long. Also rather unrealistic, considering Beowulf could breathe underwater for many hours. It was pretty interesting. We also watched a snippet of the movie, in which Grendel is a mucus covered giant baby. It's awesome. I love listening to people read outloud. Especially the ones we listened to because they all had sweet Scottish accents. Next week, I believe we start focusing more on reading our books! I'm reading the Singularity and suuuuuuch other novels.

New semester!

We watched this really awesome video in Friday's class about the origins of the English language from a college lecturer. We are also apparently going to begin reading Beowulf. I've done some research and read some excerpts of it. It seems to be quite a difficult read, being that it was the first book...ever. However, it is definitely easier to understand than Shakespeare (I love Shakespeare). I didn't see the Beowulf movie, but perhaps I will do so whilst we read the story in class....we will see

Happy week-after-winter-break!