quinta-feira, 25 de abril de 2013

GATTACA is after-postmodern mythology


In 1997, maybe the movie Gattaca could seem strange, or just Sci-Fi, or not real, but now, in the after-postmodern times, it seems more and more real.
In the beginning of the picture, the couple that wants to have a child in the “natural way” is featured as a kind of “old fashioned people”, dressed in a kind of “pre-2WWar way”, or in a “modern”, or yet “old modern” fashion.
So, we can see that Gattaca is pointing to what comes next to that “old fashioned couple”, it is pointing to a “postmodern dream”: control and efficiency.
But the “postmodern dream” came in the “after-postmodern times”, and so it comes with failure in control and efficiency.
Gattaca shows an “after-postmodern mythology”, in a Jungian sense where “mythology” is something deeper than the apparent reality. The Greek myth of Procrustes is represented in an opposite way: the main character make some kind of surgery to stretch his legs, instead of cut it. That main character is a symbol of someone that trespass time and space, he comes from modern, trespass postmodern and arrives at post-modern times achieving his own dream of freedom, despite the supposed control and efficiency of a world dominated by gene-owners, gene-rulers, gene-power.

quinta-feira, 11 de abril de 2013

Innovation in after-postmodern times


Thomas L. Friedman, at The New York Times, March 30, 2013, wrote about Tony Wagner ideas. Wagner is a Harvard education specialist that said about his job today that is to be a “translator between two hostile tribes”, the education world and the business world. He said also that young people still need basic or academic knowledge, but also skills and motivation. “Of these three education goals motivation is the most critical”, If someone have motivation, he can get knowledge and skills continuously.
Traditional careers are changing or disappearing. Today someone can even create a new job, and so, can innovate.
Creativity and innovation can be the main tools for new business and jobs. Skills like communication, critical thinking and collaboration can be more important than academic knowledge. Wagner also said that the schools of 21st century must change to teach all these goals.
We want to add “information” as a “transversal” element to those three cited factors. Information is a biologic, cultural, cybernetic “fluid” among all kinds of knowledge, skills and motivation.
We also want to add subjectivity and emotion. When we talk about motivation we talk about emotion and subjectivity; when we talk about innovation capacity we talk about emotion and subjectivity.
But, as Felix Guattari wrote, if we do not cultivate our own subjectivity it will be “cultivated” by some kind of “power” of someone else…
Anyway, After-postmodern is an “open space” for innovation…