Entry 5: The Future

Watching the above clip from Wall-E is very disturbing to many of us. It reflects a little too accurately the way society is evolving, at least in my opinion. Humans interact solely through screens, even if they are in the same location as each other, requiring machines to get around and no even having the ability to walk. Watching the clip makes me incredibly sad for the future of humanity and calls into question the way we interact with technology now.

The future portrayed in the clip is a very dark and ominous future. It makes me think of times in my life where I have chosen to interact with technology rather than with real, material things. I have a group of friends which I play video games with and interact with over Skype. There have been times where we could have met up and done something together but instead we chose to talk over the internet and play video games together at our individual houses. Personally I feel it is less fulfilling to interact with each other in that manner, I prefer the face to face, real human interaction. The virtual interaction does have its merits however. There are times when we cannot all meet up in person and I still get to spend times with my friends, and it feels close to having them in the same room with me. I believe the problem comes when we interact solely with technology and ignore the real life interactions, a future portrayed in the clip. Humans must safeguard themselves from falling into this trap of solely virtual interaction if we do not want the future of Wall-E to become a reality. We must watch ourselves and others, ensuring that real interaction is happening as well as virtual.

 Humans, fat and floating on chairs, represent the way we get around now, we rely on cars for transportation, and while there are trips we need them for, other times people take them for trips they could have walked instead. More and more we rely on automated transportation rather than moving around the old fashion way. Furthermore, it highlights a decreased level of activity in the human condition in general; when the man in the video falls out of his chair he doesn’t even have the strength to get back into it. The way these people live their lives mirrors the way we live our own, albeit taken to the extreme. They turn to machines for easy and quick satisfaction, not willing to put long term effort into something for long term pay off.

The screens in front of the people of the clip are clear symbols for the way we interact with cellphones in the modern day. More and more people walk around with their cellphone in front of their face, not present in their current environment, instead existing in the virtual one. We ignore those around us when are heads are buried into our cell phones. The clip shows how unaware people are of their surroundings when Wall-E was attempting to get to Eva and the large woman interacting with her screen kept blocking him unintentionally. It was only when Wall-E disabled her screen did she notice his presence and let him pass. Furthermore, when the woman’s screen was disabled she stared in wonder at the world around her in wonder, not having seen it for a while: too busy interacting with her screen to take note of the beauty around her until forced to turn the screen off.

Commercialism is rampant in the clip. The people’s screens are littered with advertisements, ads cover the landscape of the ship, and there is no escaping a corporate sponsored message to be found. An announcement can be heard over the loud speakers “Buy and Large, Everything you need to be happy. Your day is very important to us” implying that material objects are the things that make us happy. When the children are taught the alphabet “B” was taught in the context of “Buy and Large, Your very best friend” indoctrinating children into a reliance and love for the corporation. It appears that Buy and Large is the entity that runs the ship, adding a sinister tone to the clip where not only are the people mindlessly consuming from a corporation, but that that corporation is also actually their government. Portraying the corporation as the controlling entity speaks heavily to the way many people view modern politics, viewing corporations as the real decision makers behind the government rather than the people; the people mindlessly following along with whatever the corporate “best friends” would have them believe.

Wall-E presents a terrifying future for humanity yet it is not necessarily the future we are destined to have. With carefully safeguarding our ideals and watching our actions we can find the balance between reliance on and use of technology. Technology should be something to enhance life rather than replace it.