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technology affecting communication
technology affecting communication
impact of technology on communication
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Technology has long been recognized as a mixed blessing. Its up/downside nature was illustrated nicely in Walt Disney's Fantasia by the myth of the Sorcerer's Apprentice:not only does the "magic" of the machine produce what you desire, it often gives you much more than you can use--as Oedipa Maas, the heroine of this stark American fable, discovers on her frenetic Californian Odyssey. Information which strains to reveal Everything might well succeed only in conveying nothing, becoming practically indistinguishable from noise.But there is noise, and Noise. Many of the devices Pynchon uses to establish informational patterns in Lot 49 are metaphors for life in a mythic, fractionalized and increasingly noisy modern America.
Hapless Oedipa returns from an afternoon tupperware party to find she has been named executrix of immensely wealthy and fiendishly reclusive Pierce Inverarity's complicated estate.It is not a responsibility she desires; it is one she accepts.In doing so, she begins what is at first an active pursuit of information relating to Inverarity's eclectic holdings, but which soon metamorphoses into a passive role as a receiver of incomplete and contradictory data.Eventually, as Mendelson points out, she "receive[s] evidence far more frequent[ly] and insistent[ly] than she found when she was actually looking for it."Eventually, Oedipa becomes something of a receptive "coil" exposed to a communicative medium over-rich in signals.
Soon there grows a sinister urgency about Oedipa's urge to decipher, and she sacrifices all--life, husband, lover, stability--to what becomes her cause celebré:differentiating meaningful information from meaningless noise.And we come to understand that Oedipa's urgent meaning--that quality ...
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... must be recognized as the one piece of incontrovertible data Oedipa has received.That there is ìsome kind of dignityî about it remains, as does Inverarityís legacy, uncertain.Yet, the silent belief in the possibility of redemption, of individual, anarchic freedom from the isolated, paranoid, hellish desert of Noise uninhabited by the Mucho Maases--perhaps a personal, apolitical belief in such a freedom, is transcendent and redemptive in and of itself.
It is the potential for a Word, rather than a word proper, which offers this redemption.Belief in such a potential might be taken as a latter-day definition of faith; faith in the intrinsic worth of human contact and memory, in a wasteland of separation and fleeting images.Thus, Oedipaís Odyssey has become not a metaphorical search for material truth, but a lesson in the liberating power of spiritual uncertainty.
Personally, I love seafood. I have had the privilege to eat the freshest of fish from both the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. I have been able to enjoy many types of fish cooked in many different ways. With that said, I was interested in Paul Greenberg’s, Four Fish: The Future of the Last Wild Food, due to my simple curiosity to what it is that has made fish so popular.
...” In Twentieth Century Interpretations of Oedipus Rex, edited by Michael J. O’Brien. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1968.
Gladiator fights were first introduced to Rome in 264 BC, when the sons of Junius Brutus paid honor to their father's funeral by showing three pairs of gladiators fight. This ritual caught on and was performed to honor significant men. As the years passed, the ceremonies became more promoted and emperors began to present the games to symbolize their power.
Oedipa Mass is forced to involve herself in what seems to be a conspiracy. Her job can be compared to that of Maxwell's Demon. "As the Demon sat and sorted his molecules into hot and cold, the system was said to lose entropy. But somehow the loss was offset by the information the Demon gained about what molecules were where¨ (p.105). Perception is blurred in the novel through the use of alcohol and drugs and the blurring of communication systems. In this case a form of entropy linked to the chaos of a communication system is embodied by the W.A.S.T.E. system Oedipa stumbles upon. She must attempt to separate what is real and what is fantasy, to decipher what is important and what is useless information. Pynchon's use of detail makes this a difficult task, and the reader is caught up in her world of symbols and imagery. His mixture of fiction with history further confuses the reader with the Thurn and Taxis system and the Peter Piguid Society one is drawn into a world where he/she is reliant upon Oedipa to decipher the clues.
Oedipa's purpose, besides executing a will, is finding meaning in a life dominated by assaults on people's perceptions through drug...
Oedipus at first finds the implications of killing his father and sleeping with his mother difficult to tolerate as a factual manifestation of his past. He disputes the fact that he had caused suc...
During the middle and late third century Roman republic era gave rise to the arena games and became a great phenomenon for the Romans. An amphitheater, also known as a coliseum, housed these dangerous games that potentially harmed the audience as well as those who participated in them. Gladiatorial combat originated as part of funerals for deceased influential Romans. These large gladiatorial games were held by emperors during funerals of important roman officials, but were also included during other occasions. Over time the connection among the gladiator games and funerals decreased, and the upper class put on the games mainly to raise their social standing and gain favor with the public. Many politicians held these highly known games to help them sway votes of power and popularity (Meijer 2003, 27). “The arena was the embodiment of the empire.” (Futrell 1997, 209). The contestants, or the gladiators, had more significance of the Roman Empire beyond that as their role of entertainment.
Much like today’s athletes gladiators competed with one another to decide a victor and is a form of entertainment for people spectating. But Gladiators competed much different than professional athletes do today. Gladiators were forced to fight for the entertainment of others and were considered slaves (“ The Roman Gladiator”). Gladiators did not just fight for friendly sport either they had to fight to the death. This made the gladiatorial games so exciting for the people watching. The people loved to watch others fight and the gore that they would see while the gladiators were fighting. It may sound horrible in today’s society but back then it was the most prominent form of entertainment. Different from today’s athletes and entertainers, gladiators were slaves and were told what to do against their will. Much of the gladiators were slaves, criminals, and prisoners of war. Gladiatorial games were mostly held by the Roman Republic and forced there enemy’s to fight for their lives in the...
Ultimately, Oedipus the King serves to clarify the reasons for human enduring. Despite the fact that Oedipus' destiny is resolved, the peruser still feels sensitivity for the shocking saint, trusting that by one means or another he doesn't merit what at last comes to him. Here, Sophocles characteristics, in any event in part, human enduring to the insignificant will of the divine
Cameron, Alister. The Identity of Oedipus the King: Five Essays on the Oedipus Tyrranus. New York: New York University Press, 1968.
Goux (1993) defines the interactive aspects of fate that bind Oedipus to the community, but more importantly to obligations of the Oracle that cannot be reversed: “The meaning of the Oedipus myth is that of a deviant initiation” (Goux 76). This form of “initiation” defines the role of fate as the driving force in Oedipus’ life, which denounces any type of control over the doomed prophecy that he has been accused of by the oracle and
We begin to witness the interaction between Iocaste and Oedipus about where and when the murder of the king occurred in scene II. Oedipus begins to find similarities in the tale of the king’s murder and his own situation. He starts to come to the harsh realization that the very man she speaks of indeed the man he had slain:
“Oedipus complex.” Encyclopaedia Britannica. Encyclopaedia Britannica Online. Encyclopædia Britannica Inc., 2014. Web. 1 Apr. 2014. .
Dodds, E. R. "On Misunderstanding the Oedipus Rex." Twentieth Century Interpretations of Oedipus Rex: A Collection of Critical Essays. Ed. Michael J. O'Brien. New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1968. 17-29.
Throughout the centuries, the play entitled Oedipus the King written by the Poet Sophocles has been thematically understood as a tragedy with the title character prophesied as a pitiful victim of fate or a pawn of the gods, with little or no control over his life. However, some scholarly reviews of this play contend that Oedipus was stereotypical of the individual that chose to pursue the truth to its conclusion with the full knowledge that their choices could either bring great joy or great heartbreak. This analysis will support the idea that Oedipus was such a man; one that had been warned of the repercussions of his actions, but freely sought truth even when the consequences were destined to destroy him. He displayed the same imperfections