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Response to Li Edelkoort & Kate Fletcher– Xiaoyan Kong

Response to Li Edelkoort, Li. Anti-Fashion: A Manifesto for the Next Decade：

In the video Anti-Fashion: A Manifesto for the Next Decade, Li Edelkoort claims that “Fashion is old-fashioned” and makes her Anti-Fashion declaration. After watching the video, I think the core of Anti-fashion can be called as creative fashion, not following the trend. Edelkoort summarizes the reasons why the fashion system was broken. They can be roughly classified into six categories. There is one I specifically want to talk about – the designer is reusing the ideas from the past.

Some designers make clothes for making clothes, and they are only looking for cool and unique visual effects (to please the group of people who don’t want to understand the cultural ties behind fashion which has a large amount), but they don’t care about changing and developing their design according to the changes around them. Even if there is a change, it is only a change in the sales and display mode of the clothing. “With this lack of conceptual innovation, the world is losing the idea of ​​fashion,” Edelkoort says. Things happen around us, I always see fashion design brands in the name of “tribute” or “retro” continue to use the former designers’ designs. This is the most “in sheep’s clothing” style “fashion” – change the face but not the heart. But what makes me speechless is that these products are still hot sought after by large amounts of consumers. On the surface, what we see is that the brand still probably earns a bucket of money through these ways. However, there’s always an end for “retro”, leftovers cannot be fresh again no matter how you cook it. Then, what is the way out for fashion?

Nowadays, fashion almost equals as business, especially in the social environment where consumerism is paramount. To my opinion, I think the most important thing for the designers is to find out their own design style and stick to it. Don’t get lost in the flow of trends. If they want the consumers to pay attention to the culture value behind the products, they have to give them value first.

Response to Kate Fletcher â€śSlow Fashion: An Invitation for Systems Change” ：

After watching the speech by Li Edelkoort, reading Kate Fletcher’s article helps me gain a better understanding of why we should talk about sustainability with fashion. When Fletcher talked about fast fashion, she mentions that it is a kind of behavior that the companies respond quickly to “fashion” and then pushes the products to consumers. The ultimate goal of that is to increase sales profits. Slow fashion is a more rational and lasting fashion, emphasizing the eternal and individual style, and it is hard to copy. Its connection with business is as direct and profound as fast fashion.

I think that we can’t say fast fashion has no style. As far as I know, some e-commerce companies in the Chinese market not only have fast-paced production, but also maintain a good level of design, it can still make consumers “slow down” to some extent. But it is undeniable that most of the fast consumption has an important feature – cheap. Cheap helps to reduce the cost of people’s impulse consumption, blind waste. While impulsive consumption is an innate habit that many people can’t get rid of, cheap stuffs just make them enter a Buy-throw-buy loop.

I think that neither fast fashion nor slow fashion can be entirely praised or denied. They each have their own principles and reasons to exist. For example, H&M and Stutterheim are both from Sweden, the former is a representative of fast fashion, selling cheap clothes in their own created high-end fashion atmosphere to satisfy consumers’ pursuit of “latest” psychological needs. Although the raincoat made by Stutterheim is expensive, it is said to be a raincoat that can be worn for a lifetime. It is also one of the representatives of persistent fashion. To sum up, I think the relationship between fast fashion and slow fashion is like the relationship between people’s desires and needs. Neither of them should be gotten rid of. Instead we need to find a balance between them.

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Response to E.M. Forster – Mingyue Deng

As I read E.M. Forster’s The Machine Stops, I was shocked at the ignorance and conformity people looked for in the universe created by Forster. Since I have just read science fictions such as The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu and I have just watched the film The Wandering Earth, I have encountered many descriptions about the underground cities which people would be living in the future when supposedly the surface of the Earth is no longer livable for human beings. These descriptions of underground cities are very similar in characteristics, and there are two which I want to talk about. First of all, these cities all are limiting to people going up to the surface, especially in The Machine Stops when it is totally forbidden. People wear masks or respirators when they go up to the surface because people could not breathe the air, whether true in the case of The Wandering Earth and The Three Body Problem or told by the Book in The Machine Stops. The second similar characteristic in imagining the future underground cities is the artificial space and lighting and comfort created by either the people in the United Earth Government or the Machine. There seems to always be hope in the future even when human beings cannot live where they have always lived.

Then I saw the cruelness of all three pieces and especially The Machine Stops. In the other two pieces I read and watched on my own, people are hopeful and successful until the end. However, in The Machine Stops, I want to return to what I said at the beginning of this response, they were ignorant and self-interested. They are living in a huge bubble created by the Machine and they are never doubting the ways they are living because they are the generations born into this kind of space and living this kind of life. Just like what Kuno said in the work, human beings have lost their sense of sharp thinking and criticism to ignorance and conformity. Throughout the short story, the author repeats phrases like it was told to these people so they follow it. They were all looking for ideas but they never found one interesting idea which is original. I suppose that the Machine was built by some intelligent people who have original ideas, but when I read that they have already died and passed down the books to later generations, I thought the world must be ending fast because people would want to take control of the Machine so they could be more powerful. And this process would then remind me of 1984. However, when I read that the people only learned by parts the entire control system to the Machine, I realized that these people are less intelligent than I think. The reason why I thought that is because when these people are also living in a world where there is only comfort and convenience and they think every other method are stupid when they are not inventing or thinking or believing, they are going to fail at the smallest tasks. In the end, the people who made the Machine and the Book and the underground cities were the thinkers and the inventors, and the next generations after who would only copy and paste the Founding Fathers without new innovations would only be duller and duller in their ways of life.

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Week 1: Response to “The Machine Stops” by E.M.Forster- Laura Huang

    The fiction story “The Machine Stops” presents a future society where people live under the control of the machine and can only communicate through the machine. The machine almost become a religious leader in the virtual world that it creates and people lost themselves in the machine’s time. When the machine breaks down, human society collapses easily because every individual is isolated and alienated. Only at this time did people realize that the worship of the machine will finally destroy themselves.

    Although the story seems extreme and horrible, it has some realistic significance which shows the potential outcomes of the machine-oriented society. In modern society, we can hardly live without machines or electronic devices. Our computers that connected with the internet becomes our “eyes” to see the views, our “ears” to hear the sounds or even our “brain” to think and operate. All the electronic devices deprive human of our senses and autonomous thoughts. The communication and connection between people are so dependent on these devices that we become addicted to them and neglect the foundation as a human being, for example, the way we communicate face to face or the right to control our will and consciousness. Just like Vashti thought in the story “the Machine did not transmit nuances of expression. It only gave a general idea of people — an idea that was good enough for all practical purposes”. When people believe whatever the machine shows to them, they will lose the ability to feel the real and subtle emotion or experience the natural world. The inner spirit of an individual and people’s fundamental rights are eliminated. The internet and the big data in modern society try to isolate us from the natural world or our inner selves by presenting limited information and affecting our decision. If we are not alert to the disadvantages when using and developing the machine and technology, they may ultimately destroy us.

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Response to E.M. Forster – Ta-Ruedee Pholpipattanaphong (Ploy)

“The Machine Stops” by E.M. Forster discusses the relationship between humans and machines. Throughout the price, he portrays a society in which machines took over humanity. Ultimately, it reaches the point where human depends on machines to live, and without machines human will die. It is quite ironic in ways that humans seek to become independent but however, they are the one who allows themselves to depend on non-living objects, machines. It is even more ironic when we consider that those non-living objects were created by them. The sentence, “Cannot you see, cannot all you lecturers see, that it is we that are dying, and that down here the only thing that really lives is the Machine? We created the Machine, to do our will, but we cannot make it do our will” (15) written by E.M Forster really struck me to see that it is our own behaviours that harm our societies, and it is only to mankind that should be blamed. It’s totally ironic that whilst humans struggle to live, machines – created by mankind – live smoothly.

It is all because humans placed machines to a degree that exceeds necessity, resulting in how they “worship the Machine” (11). In the piece, Vashti knows that her son is in danger or even is facing death because of his choice to get rid of and be independent of the machines. She loves her son and cares for her son. But still, she chose to go back to her machines as if the machines are more important to her.

After reading this piece, it came to my realization that if we continue the process of technological dependence, we would soon reach the point where human beings are replaced by machines. And thus, instead of celebrating the significances of mankind, it will give rise to the society composing of the boss – machines and their slaves – humans.

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Week 1: Response to “The Machine Stops” by E. M. Forster – Susie (Yi Shan)

       The Machine Stops is a science fiction about the future world. It is an extreme industrialized world that people rely too much on the machine in their whole life. Vashti always stays at her home, and she is afraid of reaching the ground and communicate with other people face to face. In this world, there is a huge amount people like Vashti. Most people adore the machine and trust everything on the book of the machine. In other words, they are controlled by the machine. However, one day the machine suddenly stops. The countries collapse and people are going to die.

       Although the novel is written in 1909, it still have ironic meanings in nowadays society. I have to admit that the smartphone is an indispensable thing in my daily life. And social software is also very important for me to communicate with others. I can use them to communicate with my parents, friends and even strangers without going out of my room. The smartphone and the internet are like the machine in the novel.  We can talk to other on video like how Vashti talks to her son Kuno in the novel.

      In the novel, Vashti communicates with her son only by the machine. Only when Kuno says that he will not talk to Vashti unless Vashti comes does Vashti go out of her home. In our society, we also have a similar phenomenon that we may now rely too much on the internet and ignore the people around us. So that let me think about a lot of questions. What if one day the internet crashed such as the stopped machine? Do we have other methods to communicate with each other instead of the internet?