PEDES3ANTECH

Imagine a world where everyone is happy because nobody is happier than the other. Imagine a world where everyone belongs to everyone because nobody belongs to someone. This may sound confusing but this is the world that Aldous Huxley creates in this book. The world that Huxley creates is one where technology has complete control over society. This control is shown from the beginning of the book where the story opens inside the Central London Hatching and Conditioning Centre. Here we are shown how technology is used to engineer human beings into different classes each with their own unique conditioning. Each class is conditioned to act, think and feel in a certain way that contributes to the overall harmony of society. Technology's control over society is very evident from the very beginning. Although technology today is not as intrusive as the technology portrayed in the book, the question on whether technology is controling us is still very much relevant today. From th...

This post is long delayed. I apologize. I will be honest, this book was hard to read but it was rewarding at the end. One of the biggest challenge for me in reading this book was the language used. It was written in old 19th Century English where the sentence construction is totally different from what I am used to. Let me give you an example: He is alive. Greatly changed, it is too probable; almost a wreck, it is possible; though we will hope the best. Still, alive. Your father has been taken to the house of an old servant in Paris, and we are going there: I, to identify him if I can: you, to restore him to life, love, duty, rest, comfort. I found it hard reading these types of sentences, and the book was full of it. What I noticed is that the sentences made it hard for me to get a feel of the ideas flowing. I had to stop a few times and re-read some sentences to fully understand them. Maybe this was intentional to convey a sense of uncertainty as the story unfolded and as the ch...

My humble book collection.  Almost everyone everywhere every year comes up with their own new years resolution. My wife, my son and I are no different. This year we decided to start a family project - to come up with a list of 100 books to read in our lifetime and start reading them. We got this idea when we were watching The Equalizer by Denzel Washington. In this movie Denzel Washington's character had a list of 100 books he wanted to read in his lifetime - an idea he got from his wife. The movie got us interested in this project and we decided to do it. There are a few immediate benefits to this project: It is very cheap - we both love going to the Public Library so access to these books was fairly easy and cheap. Some people want to go on a trip or buy a cool new gadget but this project costs nothing.  It is very easy to do. Me, my wife and my son can read and that is basically all that is required. It does not require any preparation, special skill or equipm...