Transcription of Prezi
What is a meaningful connection? It is a bond that has significance or purpose to any being and makes a profound difference in his or her life. These connections run deeper than just surface level friendliness or daily interactions. These connections are grounded with a strong why that makes the connection special to that being.
The Singularity will heighten the connections between beings and can help create a path for the meaningful connections. This is prevalent throughout Blood Music as it primarily focuses on how the Noocytes, intelligent cells, help bring the humans in North America closer together by collecting their consciousness’s together in one big world. There are two main characters that are explored in-depth and how their connections were affected by the Noocytes, Bernard and Suzy.
Bernard is a renowned molecular biologist who lives a social but lonely life because most of his “friends” are people from big companies that he does not truly connect with, and he is distant from his wife and son because of his work. He says, “Perhaps I won’t even need an isolation chamber, he thought. I’m pretty damned isolated already.”(Bear 110). Bernard has three ex wives, a woman he is just “seeing”, and a son that is in China. Thus, he does not share any deep connections with anyone, which makes him yearn for one deep down. After the Noocytes are introduced into his life, he is unsure what the Noocytes’ goal is, which makes him very skeptical of them. However, at the end of the novel, the Noocytes give Bernard an opportunity to go back to his college years so that he could ask out the girl he truly loved after her engagement breakup. For once in his life, Bernard is able to connect with someone he truly cares about and this is only possible due to Noocytes. To Bernard, Olivia was the one girl that genuinely made him happy and he could not forget about her even after being a grown man. This elated feeling that Bernard cannot experience with any other person is the "why" of the connection that makes it so meaningful to him. There could be an argument made that Bernard and the other humans are not truly experiencing the moments because all humans in the Thought Universe lose their autonomy and only have their consciousnesses somewhere in the “cloud”. However, if the world ends up becoming a “simulation” made by the Noocytes, which it does in the book, “The inner planets cast long shadows through an enveloping haze. The outer planets wavered in their orbits, and then blossomed in kaleidoscopic splendor, extending cold luminous arms to welcome their prodigal moons home” (Bear 275-276), then the simulation essentially becomes the new reality. Since Bernard still retains his consciousness in the new world, he would still be feeling the same emotions as the human version of Bernard would, except he does not have a body anymore.
Despite the fact that Suzy had a mental disability that isolated her from others, she shared a lot of meaningful connections before the Noocytes had come into her life. She had her family members, friends, and fiance that she all cared for deeply. Unlike Bernard, she had strong ties with the people close to her because she loves them and they love her back equally. However, these are your atypical human meaningful connections that any human can experience on Earth. After the Noocytes come into her life, she loses all her connections and instantly becomes isolated as she is one of the very few people remaining in North America. Towards the end of the novel, the Noocytes offer to fix her mental disability and a place in the Thought Universe. It is found out that Noocytes cannot assimilate those that have mental disabilities and as a result people died in the trial and error. It is impossible to ignore the fact that the Noocytes have killed people, but their intentions were not malicious in anyway. They were attempting to fix the chemically different people and have them be like everyone else, the Noocytes say “Different people Some like you Died/disaster/end Set aside, conserved like parks these People/you To learn” (Bear 221). They had set aside some of the chemically different people in attempt to fix them, but in the beginning stages people died. At the very end of the novel, the Noocytes are able to fully assimilate Suzy into the Thought Universe as they have figured out how to work with the particular chemistry. The Noocytes want to bring Suzy closer with herself and other family members in ways that is not possible on Earth. When Suzy looks at her mirror image, she sees “not just herself. Her mother, too. Her grandmother. And maybe great grandmother, and great-great. Mostly Suzy, but them, also. All in one. They smiled at her” (Bear 274). The Noocytes allow for humans to always feel connected with someone internally, and brings a new dimension to meaningful connection. These people that are connected to her are family members, so there is a blood connection that makes it meaningful even if Suzy may not have personally known her great-great grandmother. In addition, Suzy now has many more relatives and friends than she could have had on Earth as her brother mentions since there are many copies of everyone in the Thought Universe.
While Suzy and Bernard were offered and not forcibly assimilated into Thought Universe, the majority of the human population in the U.S. at the beginning and world at the end of the novel were forcibly assimilated. There could be an argument made that the Noocytes have a bigger plan and are not doing it for the benefit of humanity. However, Suzy’s family and her friends describe the feeling and the true motives of the Nooyctes. Cary, Suzy’s friend, says “They give us time. We’re honored, Suzy. They know we made ‘em and they treat us real good…. I didn’t really have any choice when I joined, but I don’t regret it. I wouldn’t have ever been as much in Brooklyn Heights as I am now” (Bear 250). This gives insight as to what the Noocytes feel about the humans, which is respect and honor, so they truly wish to help humanity and bring it closer together. The humans would not be as connected and happy as they would have been on Earth, so the Singularity(in the form of the Noocytes for Blood Music) brought about positive change.
At face value, WALL-E criticizes the way technology has consumed and will continue to consume our humanity; however, the irony of the film lies in how robots who were created by humans are the ones to gain empathy and compassion, not the humans who are supposed to have these as their defining traits. One robot in particular, WALL-E, who starts out as the most isolated and lonely character in the movie, unknowingly starts a chain reaction of compassion and connection in his fellow sentient beings through his desire for connection. WALL-E, who is undoubtedly the result of a technological Singularity, is responsible for connecting not only other intelligent robotic life, but also heightening the connections between the humans and paving a path for the meaningful connections the humans had lost. WALL-E lives nearly completely isolated on the Earth and he knows he is missing something from his life. This is displayed when he watches the video of the guy and girl holding hands with each other and experiencing meaningful connection. He yearns for the true meaningful connection that most humans had on Earth before it was abandoned, but has no one to share it with. For him, it will always be a dream and has to pass the time with his cockroach friend. This is all changed when he encounters EVE, a flashy, high-tech scouting robot from the Axiom. WALL-E finally understands what the people in the video were experiencing and pursues EVE. Despite repeatedly ignoring him and focusing only on her “directive”, WALL-E continues to take care of EVE even after she shuts down, which displays his meaningful connection. This is all changed when he encounters EVE, a flashy, high-tech scouting robot from the Axiom. WALL-E finally understands what the people in the video were experiencing and pursues EVE. Despite repeatedly ignoring him and focusing only on her “directive”, WALL-E continues to take care of EVE even after she shuts down, which displays his meaningful connection. EVE eventually sees all the things WALL-E does for her while she was shut down and realizes herself what it means to be truly connected. At the end of the movie, WALL-E sacrifices himself to return the humans to Earth, to return to them to their “humanity,” converting back to his factory state, unfeeling, unmoved, a robot. He doesn’t even react when EVE holds his hand, which was what he desired the most throughout the movie. However, WALL-E’s “soul” is rebooted through genuine connection. EVE holds WALL-E’s hand; a symbol he has associated with meaningful connection. This connection is unlike Suzy's connection and more similar to Bernard's in that both WALL-E and Bernard got to experience the genuine connection that they never did back on Earth. Overall, all the characters have heightened their connection from before outside influence.
Aboard the Axiom, an interstellar cruise ship and the last bastion for human life, technology and convenience have consumed humanity’s desire for meaningful relationships. Because they are so isolated from one another, the humans do not even know the extent to which their lives lack deep, valuable connection. One scene where we see two men on the Axiom chatting with each via video chat, only for the shot to zoom out to reveal that, because they were so consumed by technology, they did not notice that they were immediately next to each other the whole time, because they were so absorbed in their tech. (isolation). They experience a sort of trivial technological connection, rather than a deep and emotional one. This begins to change when WALL-E starts to connects with the people on the axiom by accident on his quest to get EVE back. He accidently knocks over a women’s screen and she sees life beyond the scope of the technology. Another guy who WALL-E also interferes with and makes him realize that there is much more the Axiom had to offer. These two people begin to connect with WALL-E and start having normal human interactions with one another. This connection is by no means a very “deep” connection, but is a significantly heightened connection than before. At the end of the movie, the humans repopulate Earth and now have the opportunities to build meaningful connections humans once had due to WALL-E’s interference.