Response to "Oh, the humanity"

Issac Asimov’s predictions seem very reasonable. He talks about population control, food productions and education. Asimov says that there will need to be a way to control births so that the world's population would not be too high. The only way population has lowered drastically in history was during the Black Death in the 1300's. It caused many people to die; it killed of one third of the world's population. The Black Death caused a huge decrease in the population, however having something like that happen again is hopefully avoidable. Planning to have a horrible event like the Black Death take place again to lower the population is just mass murder and illegal. Taking that route to lower population would not be likely. However countries today have noticed the population crises and have taken control on births. In china a family is only allowed to have two children. That Limit is made by the government to control the birth rate. In other countries not many government enforced lowering of birthrate has been done but women have be steered to be interested and do other things then just focus on having children. Most women are in school or working, also most women would not want a lot of children because having children is painful and it is a lot of work. Asimov was correct about his predictions about population control.

Asimov also talks about food production. If the population goes up then food production must also go up to feed all the people. With the production of more food also comes more industrial work to make that food. Those machines then harm our environment. Then comes more pesticides and more fertilizers and also more water is used to water all the crops that are being grown. Now expensive oil is used to work the machines and we have just made ourselves slaves to all of this technology. Asimov was right to say that we have become very attached to technology. In today's society barely anyone going anywhere without their cell phones. When people are at home even in broad daylight the lights are all on. With all this technology known and used who would want to go back to sitting next to a candle and reading? No one would, we don't want to go back to how it use to be because we know how much better our lives are with all this technology. We can make food so much quicker and more of it then it was made before machines and factories. With this population increase why would we go back to when things were done slowly. With this increase in technology it has made things just more convenient and easier. Not much of a technological improvement has happened that it has changed completely. We haven’t made anything that was going to change the way anyone did anything from now on. Technology today has just made things easier and quicker to do.

Education has also changed. Before men only went to school while women stayed home and managed the home and made children and then took care of the children.  Today Women are going to school and getting good jobs to also support the family. The men aren’t the only ones who work. Not only are women now very educated the elderly are also. The elderly also now can go back to school and finish an education that they didn’t when they were younger. They are not able to go back to school and do things that they have found interest in and study that field. Asimov said that elderly people would be able to still learn about other things that they may have not had the chance to do in the past and he was right about that prediction.
Asimov’s predictions are not so far fetched from an actual reality. I feel that some of his predictions have come true and they are something that are worth working towards.

Asimov’s humor in this lecture makes his lecture enjoyable to read rather then to just read a lecture. He brings humor into something that can be bad or not great to listen to. It makes his lecture more interesting. His anecdotes are easy to understand and they tie into his lecture sow when he is talking about something he can relate it and yet also make it easy to understand so that anyone can really understand what he is trying to say. His sarcasm is easy to pick out. Like when he talked about taking a potion and sleeping for five thousand years he knows that no one would really be able to do that but he was saying that when the person who took the potion woke up he saw what had happened to the world and he told the people that he lived when the people did that to the world. Then he took the potion again because he was not safe. Asimov was trying to say with this sarcasm that previous generations will harm the generation that comes after them, and that generations will not like the one before them. It is happening now. So many people say that the generation that is not living is going to harm the one that comes next because we are hurting this planet. Yet no one really does much to change that. People still go on with their lived pollution and littering and not caring that it is harming the earth and that future generations are going to be trying to fix our mess. His sarcasm works well with what point he is trying to make.

Asimov’s lecture reflects qualities of synoptic philosophy and critical analysis. With the story about the man who drank the potion, the story is called “The Man who Awoke” Asimov uses other pieces of information to describe his point. He tells about the story and then he tells about when he was a kid science fiction was a way to escape literature and how he was sneered for that. Putting all of this information together shows the bigger picture which is synoptic philosophy.

Asimov also uses critical analysis. When he talks about the energy issues he doesn’t just touch upon it. "There are always people who think that all we have to do, after all is abandoned, all this foolish technology that we've made ourselves slave to, and go back and live like our ancestors and live close to the soil with the good things of nature." When he says this is also goes to give examples. He says that a fireplace wouldn’t heat up a whole house so we have turned to oil and furnishes. He also says that using candles instead of lights isn’t going to help because it would be too hard to read or study just using a candle. He goes into detail to explain his point. So he is critically analyzing his points.

Overall I did enjoy reading his lecture. It was on many different topics so it never got boring. It went from talk about launching a spaceship to talking about taking potions to sleep for five thousand years. It was entertaining.