Brainstorm, Pattern Recognition

Marketing

The main character, Cayce Pollard, is a marketing specialist that gets hired by Blue Ant, an ad agency, to help the business with marketing and advertising. Ironically, Cayce dislikes the duties of her job because she doesn't enjoy recognizing patterns in the social world. One would think that a person whose duty is to promote brand names would enjoy sporting material things. However, Cayce's reaction towards ads and logos is as if she is "allergic" to them; meaning that Cayce cannot stand the sight of logos. This could mean that Cayce doesn't agree with promoting brand names or material things but is rather interested in living the simple life with simple things where one is humble and not conceited or materialistic.

Internet and Social Network

Cayce spends great amount of time on a forum on the internet. Cayce's assignment is to find the person behind the mysterious videos that has leaked on the internet and has caught people's attentions. However, as she digs deeper into the searchings of this person, we find many other characters that pops into her social network life. The internet becomes a part of her daily life, as she signs onto the forum. This theme on technology depicts the lives of today and how we are all affected by the internet. Gibson is probably trying to point out that technology leads a great cause-and-effect to compare how people's daily activities have changed since before and after advances of technology.

In Tobe's POV

William Faulkner writes a short story, "A Rose for Emily", in a first person plural point-of-view, which gives us an idea of what not only the main characters think, but what the side characters are thinking as well. If this story were to be written in a first person singular, like in Tobe's point-of-view, then this story would change drastically.

Because Tobe is a servant of Miss Emily's, the story would have been more specific and in depth towards Miss Emily's life and daily activities. Rather than just hearing about thoughts from the town, we would hear more of Tobe's thoughts, and what he was dealing with by being an insider on Miss Emily's life. Through Tobe's eyes, the understanding of the relationship between Miss Emily and Homer Barron would be more clear. Comparing it to the original story, we only heard what the townspeople were thinking and therefore, Miss Emily seemed very mysterious.

Throughout Faulkner's story, Miss Emily was portrayed as a mysterious, serene, and antisocial lady. What would be more visible to the reader if Tobe was the narrator is Miss Emily's soft side when she is around Homer Barron.

However, even though both sides of the stories would give different perspectives, the theme that I took away from Faulkner would not change. In both sides of the stories, the thing that would not sound different is Miss Emily's deranged mind and belief of how death did not occur to the important men in her life. First, she denied that her Father was dead until three days later, she breaks down and brings the body out for its appropriate burial. Second, she kills Homer Barron, and still sleeps on the same bed with his decaying body as if he were still alive.

Brautigan, "All Watched over by Machines of Loving Grace"

In the poem, "All Watched over by Machines of Loving Grace", Brautigan writes about his predictions on the effects of advancing technology and gives both an anti-technology and a pro-technology message using sarcasm and similes. During the time that Brautigan was alive, many technological creation ideas were just being brought up. Electronics and technology were futuristic, and in Brautigan's poem, he writes about how these inventions will effect the world. When I first read the poem, I only saw the pro-technology message. Brautigan uses a few exclamation marks, like "I like to think (and the soon the better!) of a cybernetic meadow(1,2), which made me think that advancing technology and making computers is a positive thing because I felt that there was a lot of excitement from the writer. The writer includes a simile, "like pure water touching clear sky"(6,7), to describe the positive effect of the future with computers. In the last stanza, the lines "I like to think (it has to be!) of a cybernetic ecology where we are free of our labors and joined back to nature"(16-20), I sensed a pro-technology tone from the writer because I know that many people would feel that it is liberating to not have to deal with labor.
Although I felt that this poem was pro-technology, I also sensed some negativity from it. After reading the poem several times, I started to notice patterns and interesting choices of lines that Brautigan had written to give me that anti-technology message. In the last stanza, I felt that there was a negative message after mentioning the good effects of computers. For example, people would content and "free"(19) with not having work, but having us "all watched over by machines of loving grace" is not a sight that will lead to comfort because machines have no feelings and are programmed to perform duties. In addition, machines and computers are not perfect and have glitches so they may not be trusted to do their job without having problems. In the first two lines of each stanza, the writer includes a message in parenthesis, followed by an exclamation mark, to display sarcasm. The second stanza stood out to me because it provided me with an image that seemed like the world would be in chaos if machines and computers were to take over. For example, having a forest filled with "pines and electronics"(11) and have deers "stroll peacefully past computers as if they past flowers with spinning blossoms" gave me a feel that computers should not be invented because it is out of place and does not belong in the forest. Also, having deers stroll by computers as if computers were flowers gave me an image that the world would become crazy because flowers do not have "spinning blossoms".
Overall, I believe that Brautigan is trying to send out a negative message about technology because the negative points overruled the positive points that I had made. Brautigan uses sarcasm with parenthesis to prove a point to us that technology cannot watch over us. We cannot live in "programming harmony"(5) because computers and machines lack emotions and feelings.