The Tomorrow City By Monica City Essays - Artificial Intelligence

The Tomorrow City by Monica City PART A i) Title: The Tomorrow City ii) Author: Monica Hughes iii) Publisher: Hamish Hamilton Children's Books, Ltd. iv) Number of Pages: 137 PART B i) The plot of this book centres around two adolescents, David and Caro and an evil supercomputer which aspires to control the futuristic city of Thompsonville. Dr. Henderson, Caro's Father creates the "perfect" computer designed to solve all of the problems of Thompsonville by gaining almost complete power of the city. The computer then begins to make rash decisions of it's own. It decides that humans are incapable of making decisions of there own and soon devises a method of controlling the minds of everyone in the city. Only two young people, Caro and David, are not manipulated by the computer. They band together and work out a strategy to disable the computer. The two make a daring infiltration of the building that the computer is located and after a traumatic episode in which Caro is blinded, the computer is destroyed and the city is returned to it's previous state. ii) The theme of the book is to show that technology is not a perfect solution to the many problems faced by man. By using a product of technology, the computer, and showing how it was supposed to be a perfect solution to the city's problems, yet it made a grave error in calculations, the author is saying that many problems faced by man cannot be solved by the use of technology. iii) Technology played a negative role in this book. The computer, the major aspect of technology used in this book, used its capabilities to immorally rule the citizens and the city of Thompsonville. The computer transmitted hypnotic signals through peoples T.V. sets and would use them to carry out it's will to ultimately control the city. It then discarded anything or anyone who were useless to it's purpose including the elderly and the sick. PART C One of the major arguments that the author uses to emphasize the theme is the significant malfunctioning of the computer. It was designed to be flawless and solve the numerous problems of the city. But, the computer's rationing is shown throughout the book to be poor. The methods in which it goes about solving the city's problems were both ruthless and numerous. To clean up the city's streets the computer takes advantage of it's hypnotic capabilities to either direct out or kill any of the city's "undesirables". To make the city run more efficiently, the computer changes everyone's job on the basis of I.Q. without warning. To deal with the elderly, the computer orders henchman to kidnap the elderly and bring them into elderly institutions without anyone's consent. PART D I fully agree with the the author's point of view in the book. It has clearly demonstrated the idea of many individuals and groups of today that technology can solve all of man's problems. It is true, however, that technology has lead to many innovations that have greatly aided man such as advances in medicine. However, history has shown many times that technology can sometimes be more damaging than helpful. A major problem with technology is that it may solve one problem but as a result create many more problems than it has solved. An example would be nuclear energy. Nuclear technology has solved many problems relating to power generation but has produced such side effects as hazardous waste and weapons of mass destruction.