A Response to The Minority Report

Through the average school day, many students face the problematic procedures that go along with creating a factual presentation on a nonfiction subject. With the project in mind many type their matter into the average search engine and most of the time the prime link is to Wikipedia. Though many have heard of its dreadful lies of false information numerous amounts of these soon to be scholars still use it to finish faster and get back to social networking. From Yahoo Answers to Uncyclopedia.com, in this day in age it is quite hard to find a reliable source of factual matter. Knowing that some things that technology holds isn't true, it is not surprising that in Philip K. Dick’s “ Utopian” world where computers are the judges and juries of all crimes, it is no surprise that a major mistake has happened and a man’s life is at stake.  Through the writing of Philip K. Dick in The Minority Report, we can see what chaos humanity would have if were to believe all that technology states is fact.

Through out time, humanity has been in need of factual propaganda, yet also as time goes on the act of finding the facts has been becoming more difficult. From simple searches on your choice of a search engine one must have a clever eye so we may not have the wrong information on one subject. Knowing this, one may be surprised about having humanity having to use technology as evidence to Precrime. PreCrime is a line of duty where officers and scientists can see the past of murderers, robbers, and other criminals through the mind of the three Precogs and stop the thugs before any harm is done. These are the oracles in the story. Semi- mentally challenged mutants, they are attached to machinery that records their garbled visions. The Precogs see the future, in particular crimes that are going to be committed before they occur.  Many may find that this story is similar to Oedipus Rex with respect to the themes of oracles, seeing the future, fate, destiny, and freewill of all. They live in an area of the National PreCrime building called the monkey block. Typically, two of the three will concur on a prediction (the majority report), with the third’s vision called a minority report. The narrator describes these variations as being out of phase. In layman’s terms, there are multiple timelines, multiple futures being predicted. Without this possibility, the whole notion of PreCrime would be a lie. As time goes on we see our protagonist in the Precogs vision and he is the murderer to be. Not trusting the Precogs he goes through out book escaping the terrors of Precrime and technology. With the plot of society against all that is electronic, many readers may find that it connects with other famous literary works such as Brave New World by Aldous Huxley in the fact that the protagonist is also trying to escape machinery. Also Arthur C. Clarke’s   2001 A Space Odyssey in the sense that man kind sees the main enemy, in this case both the Precog and the HAL-9000, of the main character as the ultimate tool. 

Through out our lives, using the wrong information can change the worse. From simply getting a bad grade for assignment, to loss of friendships via rumors, and to the extent of Mr. Dick’s world, the loss of your soul. For those who type the horrid material on the inter net what personal gain does it bring to you heart? Sure maybe a good chuckle or two but the outcome of the users of you untrue words is nothing worth a single guffaw. The shame, it brings; the lives, it has worsened. For those you who have the time to change your Wiki-crazed habit, stop as soon as possible so your label as an average citizen isn’t demolish.