Final Essay Instructions and Rubric
Due Apr 26th by seven pm

The final research essay will be an 8-10 page research essay, using APA style formats and citations. You will be required to use either Bazerman on genre theory or Lakoff on metaphor theory and film theory handouts as minimum scholarly citations. You will also be required to use one additional scholarly source for a reference that will come from your research depending upon the science fiction story or selections that you use to examine.

Please write a reflective argument about the role of technology in culture. Using science fiction stories (Algorithms of love, Harrison Burgeron by Vonnegut, Liar by Asimov or others) and films ( Artificial Intelligence, Time travellers wife, E.T., BladeRunner) balance your viewpoint/perspective about the ability of science or technology to solve many of humanities problems. You might consider many of our cultural concerns about governance, education, crime, politics, aging populations, disease, environmental pollution, transportation, telecommunications, computing, robotics, nanotechnologies, etc. In other words, one extreme viewpoint might be that technology will solve all our problems and the problems that those technologies cause can be solved by future technology, or that technology is a rabbit hole down which we will all be led to a kind of apocalyptic hell-that mankind is doomed! Why don’t you try to discover a middle if possible that might be considered when you consider not only the possibilities of science, but the possibilities offered by science fiction?

So, you should use some of our stories and films we’ve watched this semester and some of the scholarly articles (Bazerman/Lakoff and Johnson) to articulate your own theory, but you should go ahead and read some more online like stuff you’ll find in Science or Popular Mechanics, etc. I’d pick one type of problem or technology to focus on as an example and argue that your concerns probably can be generalized to many different kinds of similar concerns/technologies.