What if computers distracted us from important things in our life? Could we spend too much time trying to innovate and manufacture new products to perform tasks for us, to make day to day work easier, that we forget to preserve and replenish our life and environment on Earth? Maybe, we could spend so much effort on making computers more capable that they actually start to think for themselves above our control and pursue their own agendas even though they were designed to help us accomplish our goals. These are some of the questions I was asking as I watched a movie about Earth several years in the future. It takes place at a time when humans had produced and consumed so much that they ran out of resources and room for excess to the point that they had to vacate the planet, leaving behind robots to clean up the mess. In Pixar’s Wall-E, I think it shows a world a lot like our own; a world where humans are distracted by the advancements in technology to neglect their own and the planet’s needs. And, in search of making machines more capable of thinking on their own, created a computer that turned against its original design and opposed the safety of the humans.
One way I see computers being used in the film is the way people interact with each other and their environment. Wall-E finds a space ship full of humans that are glued to the screen on their hover chairs and never looking away. They take care of any functions they need to from there like ordering more food and choosing where they want to go. Other passengers on their chairs are sitting right next to each other within feet and they do not even realize other people are there. What they do most of the time is chat with each other over a video call but the ironic thing is that they are talking to the person right next to them. This is exaggerated for most of us today, but I think some people get caught up in the world on-line or just entertained with new technology that they forget the world outside of that network. Some of us today are becoming less active because it is so easy to sit in one spot. Those on the hover chairs became so accustomed that they never got out of them and could not even move on their own. They would go hit virtual golf balls, which meant telling the computerized robot when to hit the ball for them. At one point, a lady was knocked out of her chair and was forced to look around for herself. She notice a nice big pool and did not know it was there.
The other side of the effect of distractions from real life by computers is the environmental impact it can have. The show starts by showing the clean up of Earth after we filled it up with enough debris and toxins that it was inhabitable. Since the movie portrayed the humans as ignorant and lazy, we can assume that they were that way to begin with, therefore they must have not taken the time to try to solve the problem before it got out of hand. Realistically, I do not think we are going to bury ourselves in garbage, but we already are polluting the planet and using limited resources that are changing the appearance and functionality of the Earth. This is probably because of two reasons: we are getting lazier and do not want to clean up our mess, and we are advancing so fast in technology and developing distractions that we are not taking time to plan for the future and to preserve the environment that we may not be able to enjoy forever.
The final way I observed the importance of computers is the capacity to think for themselves. Auto, the autopilot for the ship, was the control wheel that took care of whatever the captain needed to run the ship. When they found a plant on Earth, proving life was sustainable there, Auto tried to get rid of the evidence and keep them from going back. There was a secret file showing that it would not be safe to go back, but he turned pretty evil by choosing for himself which orders to follow, against the current captain’s orders to go back to Earth. I am not sure how realistic computers causing a mutiny is, but if humans become that dependent on them for everything they do, then there may be a day when they could be able to decide what is right. He was really trying to protect everyone by not taking them back to an uninhabitable Earth, but it is the thought of a robot preventing our curiosity that was wrong.
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