The consequences of war – Reflection of Slaughterhouse 5 by Vintage Vonnegut

Slaughterhouse 5 written by Vintage Vonnegut is a book that focus mainly on the bombings of Dresden in 1945 in the end of the Second World War. Vonnergut have turned this topic into a black comical story about a guy named Billy Pillgrim that is an optician/soldier that was a prisoner of war when the bombings of Dresden took place. 

The book jumps in time from when the bombings took place to the time after the war and how the war affected Billy and how his life goes on.

There are several chapters that have affected me and made me sit down and reflect about how awful war really is.  

One piece that deeply affected me is when Ira C.Eaker is quoted on page 154 “I deeply regret that British and U.S. bombers killed 135,000 people in the attack of Dresden, but I remember who started the last war and I regret even more the loss of more than 5,000,000 Allied lives in the necessary effort to completely defeat and utterly destroy Nazism.  Page 154”

Are people in war really thinking like this? Just because 5 million of people died on “your side” it justifies you to kill 135 000, most part civilians? The parallels going on in the Middle East right now is apparent. Both the terrorist attacks that recently took place in France and the never ending war between Israel and Palestine.

First there are terrorist attacks which justifies governments to bombard several cities just to revenge the people that died in the first attack. I agree that we need to arrest the guilty people and in many cases make a statement, but I want people to think before they act and just don’t do things in anger that could affect people that have nothing to do with it, but unfortunately I have my doubts about it.

War is a terrible thing and affects lots of people, but hopefully we can react and influence our politicians to think before they act.

I want to end this reflections with a quote from the book: “Why don’t you write an anti-glacier book instead?’

What he meant, of course, was that there would always be wars, that they were as easy to stop as glaciers. I believe that too. Page 3”

Reflection on “Are droids taking our jobs”

I think Andrew McAffe is highlighting a really interesting topic that has slipped through my mind several times. Are we making ourselves a big disservice with all new technology? My personal opinion is no as long as we not invoke jobs that need a physical and human contact such as in health care and I will explain why.

Many people are afraid of technology and the evolution going on, because I think they are in nature afraid of big changes. But what many people don’t think of is that their current job keeps evolving the whole time.

Just look at a receptionist. Back in time they used a typewriter and before that a pencil in their work. Today the just use a computer and are able to handle many more tasks than before.

Programmers used to have white coats and programmed punched cards and it took days to just compile a small piece of code. Today is the response from the compilers almost instant and it will probably continue to evolve in the future.

The only drawback I can see with all the new technology coming is in areas where it’s important to communicate and care for the human being, such as in health care and in school. Who wants to be treated or educated by a droid where it’s so important with human interaction and to be treated and cared for by another human being? Not me, and hopefully no one else either..

I couldn't more than agree with Andrew McAfee when it comes to the environment. Technology is not always bad for the planet. I rather think it will help us to solve our major issues with pollution.

Technical evolution is not something new and it will continue to help us improve our work and we might not be doing what we are doing today, but we will do more fun things, and things that we used to do will be taken care of by newer technology. Why grieve the past when the future is in front of us?

 

Thoughts about - How Facebook changed the world

I think Facebook have changed the world in many ways. I remember my first interaction with Facebook around 2007 when I was studying in Australia and there were rumors going on about a big student-party. 

I asked a corridor mate about how I could get more information about this gathering and she told me that all information was on Facebook, and I remember that I was a bit confused over what Facebook was.

At the moment she introduced me to Facebook it was love at the first sight and I was stuck. The best part was that it was easy to keep in contact with all relatives and friends at home and be updated with all things going on in their lives.

Nowadays I see Facebook as a part of the infrastructure and I use it daily. Both in my personal and professional life because it’s have been more and more important for companies to know what the crowd thinks of their brand or products. 

The downside with Facebook is that people tend to building up a façade were everything in their lives are so fantastic and perfect but in the end their lives are no better than others at all. It also feels like it has become a platform for sharing news without any critical review of the information.

I can also react on that people seems to be so busy checking out what’s going on in others life so they are forgetting to live their own lives. For example, I can’t remember how many times I’ve seen people sitting and eating dinner without talking to each other, just stirring blindly down on their cellphones.

I think a big part of us needs to interact face to face in order to evolve as humans, and learn to read how people react to different facts and thoughts. It’s hard to imagine someone’s expression and reaction without physically seeing it.