Sunday, April 29, 2007

A Warning

Also from "Kinetoscope of Time"

I also was fascinated with this reading because it completely diverted from other readings that focused on man's attempt to bypass time to see the future and past. Here the man simply wanted to wait for the experience to come to him. He was not obsessed with finding out his future. He had a clear vision of what his past was and would simply wait for his future to come to him in natural time. In a way one can say that being obsessed with bypassing time can lead to one's demise. In "The Time Machine", the time traveler is obsessed with jumping over the linear path of one's time into the future. Once there, the time traveler becomes involved in a plot that is way over his head and out of his own control. Its a miracle that the Time Traveler was even able to survive his incredible trip and make it back in two pieces. The man from the Kinetoscope of Time is weary of seeing the future because he knows that precognitions of his future could severely affect him in the long run. The Kinetoscope of Time can almost be seen as a warning against obsessing over time and one's future. The author is making the statement that if one sits back and lets things happen naturally, then things will eventually turn out right. Jump ahead and your life will be turned utterly upside down. This was an interesting reading and one of the only ones in the course that appeared to downplay the role of media in bypassing linear time fragments.

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3 Comments:

Blogger BrendaFregoso said...

I agree, in the "Kinetiscope of Time" the kinetiscope's ability to transcend time is presented as a negative consequence unlike all the other media/text in the class that deals with transcending time and breaking it's linearity. Like always, man's own technological and scientific achievements can cause his his own destruction. This text is representative of why to avoid playing "God" since humans weren't built for unlinear time anyway.

4/29/2007 11:22 PM  
Blogger Frank Song said...

This comment has been removed by the author.

4/30/2007 1:36 AM  
Blogger Frank Song said...

I agree that in kinetoscope of time bypassing time seems to be shown somewhat negative. It was also insightful that you linked this idea with the time traveler in the time machine.

4/30/2007 1:37 AM  

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