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About The Clackamas print. (Oregon City, Oregon) 1989-2019 | View Entire Issue (Feb. 8, 2012)
e Clackamas Print aced @>clackamas. edu Wednesday, Feb. 8, 2012 ulture English instructor discusses apocalypse By Isaac Soper Arts & Culture Editor Social networks cause antisocial behavior By Isaac Soper Arts & Culture Editor I have no friends, I retract th a t statem ent; I have no “F rien d s” on F acebook th a t are n o t actual friends, fam ily or colleagues. I make great effort to never offend any one,, b u t if you p u t any th in g on m y “w all” th at is offensive or rude, I will delete it. Please refrain from using psuedo-w ords like “ch ats ta b b in g ” o r “chatversatio n Facebook is going p u b lic soon and they w ill be selling stock in tn eir com pany for an undisclosed a m o u n t o f m oney. T h e New York T im es claim s th a t the com pany may be w orth up to 1 100 billion; m aybe they’ll give us som e free shares if we have m ore “F rie n d s” th a n anyone else. I t’s really sad to m e to see people that- u p d ate th e ir “sta tu s” all or th e tim e. As a cultu re, have we becom e so broken and -alone th at we need co n sta n t approval from o th ers, including those w ho we d o n ’t even know , to know th a t w e’re okay? T h a t’s an easy answer: Yes. H ave we changed the defi n itio n o f “Friend?” Are the people we call “F rien d ” on Facebook any d ifferent from a childhood im agi nary friend? I rem em ber b ein g a kid and having an im agi nary friend, his nam e was C ow boy Jim . In m y m ind, social n e t w orking has its roots in A O L ch atro o m s, w hich spread to instant-m essag ing and creating “your own w ebsite” th ro u g h a m yriad o f free w ebsite creators like A ngelflre. T h is spread to th e M yspace page, w hich quickly becam e th e heavi ly-custom ized, m usic-blar in g , h e'ad ach e-in d u cin g M yspace page. Hey, th ere’s so m e th in g g o o d ab o u t Facebook, no cu sto m iza tio n ; way to ,go guy from “T h e Social N e tw o rk .” Sorry preteens, I use m y F acebook account for three things: u p lo a d in g p h o to s from recent hikes th a t I’ve been o n , u n iq u e th in g s t h a t . I’ve d o n e w ith my jo b and “p o k in g ” one o f my good friends w ho I haven’t seen in a few years, o th er th an th a t, my page goes rela tively unused? I used to go on Facebook once per week w hen I sta rt ed th e account. T h a t dw in dled to every o th er week an d th en every m o n th or so. D ue to th e “private groups” fu n ctio n , m y job uses Facebook and I ’m on it nearly every day now. So I w ould like to ask F aceb o o k users, please d o n ’t p o st an ything stupid. Ail o f th e in fo rm a tio n , ph o to s and video posted on [insert social netw ork here] becom e “p u b lic in f o rm a tio n ,” m e a n in g anyone can use it for any pu rp o se. U n d er 21 and drinking? You m ay w ant to save those p h o to s for your scrapbook instead o f your Facebook. I f I rem ove so m e one from m y “F rien d s,” does Facebook say, “Isaac Soper no longer w ants to be friends w ith you and w ould like you to keep your distance?” Som eone to ld me th at M yspace is m ain ly used for m usicians now, w hich m akes me happy; using a social netw ork for som e th in g o th er th a n m aking p re te n d frien d s, w hat a novel idea. I d o n ’t mean to sound like I ’m c o m p la in in g ;* F aceb o o k an d T w itter have th eir purpose. Even YouTube can be used for good, T h o u g h I may n o t have enough “Friends” to w in any contests or any plans to invest in w hat may be th e w o rld ’s largest In te rn e t- based an ti-so cial social netw ork, I, along w ith th e rest o f m odern society, am a Facebook user. The world has been deci mated by nuclear .war. In the wake o f this tragic disaster, only few survive; those who are , still alive are in a constant battle for survival and main taining their meager existence. Dystopia is Usually referred to as the polar-opposite o f uto pia; it is the state that the world is in on the brink o f collapse. Dystopic visions o f the world have made their ytay into many forms of mass- media since Mary Shelley’s, “Frankenstein/5 In, June of last year, Daniel H. Wilson, a Portland resident who has his Ph.D. in robotics, wrote a dystopic novel entitled “Robopocalypse.” The book takes place in the near future, j in which human civilization faces7 extinction due to a sen- 1 tient robotic uprising. / Starting tomorrow, Feb. 9 at 7 p.m., the Oregon City Public Library (which is located at the Carnegie Center; Fifth and Jefferson, in Oregon City) is j hosting a string or stents, lead ing up to an appearance and community . read by Wilson himself. “We made the decision that we would do the title ‘Robopocalypse’ for a commu nity-wide read this year. I read it, one o f my staff, gave me the idea, and I loved it,” said Maureen Cole, the Director o f the Oregon City Public Library. “Other libraries that have community-wide reads often do things where they have related events but we’ve . never really dofte that.” The event tomorrow night entitled, “Where is Dystopia?” ( will be- hosted by Clackamas Community College English Instructor Trevor Dodge. It will be, according to Cole, a more “adult-focused” exploration and discussion o f dystopic lit erature, including books, films, comics and video games. “The Carnegie building is a great place to hold an event: it’s cozy, artsy and scholarly and the community who attend these events are really engaged in the conversation. Trevor’s topic sounds fascinating,” said CCC English Instructor Trista Cornelius, who introduced Portland author D aniel H . Wilson w ill be discussing his novel, “Robopocalypse” a t the Oregon City Public Library on Feb. 23. Cote to Dodge. “Where is Dystopia?* is going to be an attempt to give context for the book, focusing on the broader idea o f dystopia and what the term entails, “The talk is going to chart those ideas through literature at one level and then I want to problematize what I mean by literature. W hen [people] hear that word, they think of things on a bookshelf. I quibble with that definition; literature is simply a grouping o f some thing, said Dodge. In the classes that he teaches, such as “Games & Literature” and “Comics & Literature,” Dodge has been known to push the envelope on what is com monly considered “literature.” “A dystopic literature doesn’t have to be just about novels, and doesn’t have to be about filmic représentations o f those ideas either. W hat I want to do is chase dystopia through other popular mass-media forms. Novels and films and I want to talk about them in comics; I want to talk about them in ‘Robopocalypse” Events Thursday, Feb. 9 at 7 p.m. W h ere is D ystopia? Hosted by Trevor Dodge LEGO Robotics Friday, Feb. 17 at 10 a.m. Hosted by Redland Elementary “Robopocalypse” Author Visit Thursday, Feb. 23 at 7 p.m. Hosted by Daniel H . Wilson video games,” said Dodge. He mentioned -discuss ing such titles as Cormac McCarthy’s “The Road,” along with popular post-apocalyptic video game “Fallout 3.” “There’s lots of avenues to talk about, lots o f times we see dystopic work as the funnel- ing effect of technology and having too much too soon; we can trace that all the way back to ‘Frankenstein,’” said Dodge. The same themes may be connected to the present time, with the success of the human genome project. W hat happens when we create something that we are unprepared for, perhaps our own version of Frankenstein’s monster? “Largely, what I want to do is to have the conversation about how do we project our selves into [dystopia] and why do we go to it,” said Dodge. After “Where is Dystopia?”, the next event discussing robot ics will take place on Feb. 17 from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., which will be a LEGO robotics dem onstration and the first annual LEGO League competition, hosted by Redland Elementary School. Wilson will be visiting the Oregon City Public Library on Thursday, Feb. 23 at 7 p.m. He will be there to talk about robots, robotic uprisings and answer questions regarding the subject, along with his new book. Wilson has been praised by critics and authors alike, currently he is working with Steven Spielberg, who is doing a film adaptation o f the book, which will be released on July 3, 2013.
