The Flaws of a Singular Thought

Since the dawn of time man has relied on the technology it has created, and the technology itself has reversely relied on its human creators to become greater in its own use. The mere thought of a human singularity is flawed in the largest aspect of its being – the human flaw. This notion is only a mere dream of a man lost in his own creation, and is merely an unmeasureable concept.

The idea that technology can create itself is somewhat valid, but in measuring this we must take into account the human factor. In this article, it states that “He knew about Moore's law, of course, which states that the number of transistors you can put on a microchip doubles about every two years” (2). This measurement is only true because of the fact, however, that human creators use this rapidly growing amount of microchips to develop faster ones. So in fact, though this rapid expansion of technology only occurs because of the man-made desire to create more technology. IF, in fact, technology were able to surpass humans themselves, it wouldn’t be due to a technological advancement within its core – it would be due to the human lust for new creations.

Take, for example, the always increasing developments within weaponry research – a form of technology. The form of weapons, throughout the past 300-400 years, have increased just as rapidly as computers have over the past 50 years. Weapons have evolved from swords, to bow and arrows, to small cannons, to rifles, to pistols, to missiles, and eventually to nuclear weapons. This rapid expansion is amazing – all due to the fact that humans desired to control these weapons in a massive fashion. Even guns have rapidly expanded in the past 40 years extremely rapidly, going from the simple inner mechanisms of the M-14 during the 1970s, to the current standard issue rifle of the U.S. army – the M-4 Carbine.

This concept of “technology creating technology” is vastly inaccurate, and completely invalid. Yes, I understand how fast technology is transforming, but there will never be a time in which technology can alone surpass the human mind. This article in itself is completely biased by the most-likely believer in this concept, as shown by the statement “If you can swallow that idea, and Kurzweil and a lot of other very smart people can”(1), which is a direct insult to anyone who doesn’t believe in this idea. I must admit, after discussing this story in class I had had quite enough of this topic, and after further reading the article by those liberals at Time Magazine, I have lost all my patience with this Kurtzweil moron.

A super-awesome analysis

Kathleen E. Gilligan’s article on the topic of reading J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings from the perspective of parallelism with The Holy Bible is well versed in its reasons for analyzing the two books together. Throughout the article, Gilligan uses a wide variety of quotes, personas, and examples to prove her point that the Ring, in Lord of the Rings, represents an inner temptation suffered by all characters within the Bible.

Not to exalt Lord of the Rings to biblical proportions, but Gilligan proves valid arguing points that the Lord of the Rings series of novels were written with biblical themes in Tolkien’s mind. She does a good job in her introduction paragraphs giving background on both the context of her article, as well as the context of Tolkien’s writings. Gilligan sets the tone for her article while establishing her validity as a writer by using multiple different sources in order to prove that Tolkien’s background as a Christian creates a (whether coincidental or not) very biblically structured order of books. In his novels his characters often portray some sort of biblical figure, all of which have to overcome temptation, or  “the Ring”.

Gilligan’s description of the characters within the Lord of the Rings are somewhat brief, and cut off towards the conclusion of her description of them. This, in my opinion, is her largest flaw within her article, and it is due a lack of knowledge and/or research on the topics. For example, it is my opinion that while relating characters Gandalf and Galadriel from Tolkien’s book to Christ, she uses too many direct quotes from both scripture and the book to relate the two. She repetitively uses the same passage of scripture in order to relate the three characters, and somewhat doesn’t complete her thoughts when verifying these parallels.

In conclusion, Gilligan’s article had a strong thesis as well as introduction paragraph into the insight of reading Lord of the Rings from a biblical context, but her body paragraphs are not well –researched in their relation of the temptations of Christ by Satan to the temptations of the enormous power of the ring towards Gandalf and Galadriel. Gilligan does a good job in the wording of her article, giving it an overall formal tone which establishes, or gives credit to herself as an author.  Her analysis is very good, and even if you have not read the Lord of the Rings novels, like myself, you will give consideration to doing that exact thing after reading Gilligan’s article.