MONTHLY TOEFL ESSAY #2

Ubiquitous world in the 21st century

Elderly say that the world has changed a lot. All they have imagined about have become reality and life became easier and comfortable. The biggest change that is brought is that the world became ubiquitous. For instance, moving from place to destination meant just ‘shifting’ in the past. There was nothing people could do but reading books or staring at the landscapes. However, with the progress of modern techniques, working while moving became practical. As the meaning of ‘moving’ differed, lifestyle changed. The barrier between career and private life slowly vanished and different forms of job emerged. The ubiquitous lifestyle enabled telecommuting and long-distance (videoconferencing). Some problems or side effects also emerged with the new paradigm.

To begin with, technology development especially internet services and mobile phones caused a change in people’s occupation. An image of preceding typical career was an image of group of people inside an office, doing meetings with co-workers. The new technology broke the prejudice. Nowadays, people can concentrate on their career regardless of the place. Thus, telecommuting and videoconferencing became reality and made people’s life more comfortable. However, some side effects also appeared. Since work is available in any place or time, it intrudes private time. Even after regular laboring hours, people check things about their career in their daily spare times. For example, mobile phone is a very convenient device for modern people. People can check their work any time any day and can be ready for any emergency. However, even during vacation or holidays, workers have to check their e-mails or documents due to a burden of their career. The technology development is convenient but surely spoils one’s private time.

The other change due to the development of ubiquitous devices is that people’s lifestyle changed. People use their time more diversely in modern days. Owing to the technical enhancement, contacting with different people and finding information is available in any place, anytime. As a result, people could easily keep in touch with others regardless of place, country. Furthermore, the ubiquitous technology allowed people to use their spare time such as time for moving and commuting much efficient. For instance, airplane faced significant development with the development of ubiquitous devices. Commuting and interacting with the information of the plane became a basic function. Nowadays, downloading movies and chatting with friends by SNS is available even above thousands of feet of earth. The ubiquitous devices enabled a comfortable life.

The most significant changes in the 21^st century is actually bad. There is a gap between the rapid development of ubiquitous techniques and ethics. People are not that mature enough to deal with social problems such as intrusion of private life. Since ubiquitous techniques enhanced, most people gained more intimidate relationship with their friends. This is a good consequence of development. However, people’s personal information such as appearance, height, age, academic achievement is exposed to other people. Thus, others might know about a person regardless of his agreement. Intrusion of private life is extended farther to crimes related to personal information or stalking.

To sum up, 21^st century has faced a huge change by technological development. Especially, development of ubiquitous techniques such as internet or mobile phone, laptop computer has facilitated the change. The change includes diversity of job and working environment. Furthermore, it led to changes in daily lifestyle such as comforting the customers and allowing to use time efficiently. In contrast, the enhancement also produced some social issues such as intrusion of private life and expanded to other crimes. 

Letters to Juliet

     It's a romance movie about true love. Sophie who is an apprentice writer (or a fact, journeys a beautiful city of Italy with her fiance. However, her fiance is so enthusiastic or may say obsessed to his career that he lefts Sophie alone for his searching for good ingredients. Sophie visits the balcony of Juliet and finds a letter that is written fifteen years ago. She replies to the letter and the women of the story meets her. They find for the women's first true love and Sophie finds her own true love too.
     The story is very beautiful yet unrealistic. It is so romantic that I believe that no such thing would happen. Without many coincidence, this wouldn't happened. Also, the women's true love was alive and his wife is dead. Either the women's husband. They finish by having a remarriage. If the story happened in modern society, family and friends would fiercely oppose the marriage. It is because modern society evaluate money and fame more than true  love, unfortunately. However, the movie conveyed a message that happiness from finding true love is the most important thing. Otherwise, the love will change and shift every day. By finding true love, people can find their own identity as Sophie did by writing the love story and becoming a real writer. Hopefully, there still is some romance in this world and I find it a relief.

earthlings

Our lives are hugely dependent on animal species. Throughout the history of a mankind, it is evident that human were actively interacting with animal species. In prehistoric days, people foraged foods and hunted for meat. They drew animal paintings on the wall and sometimes worshipped some valiant animals. Human developed agriculture and used animal’s bones for tools and their strength for labor. In modern days, people start their day with a pork-fulled breakfast and ends by cleansing their face with cow gelatin filled facial cream. Thus, there’s no such thing a as a vegan because in any products people use, there’s still traces of animals. Human constantly interact with animal species and it may be fairly said that our species have developed by using (exploiting) other earthlings. Nowadays, this ‘usage’ on animal has progressed so violent and cruel that exploitation on animal emerged as a new social issue. The film “Earthlings” is the representative one that pinches on the immoral exploitation on animals and people’s ignorance of the truth. The director Shaun Monson critics human under five themes.

Shaun Monson

What is the truth? On the five themes, Shaun Monson illustrates about pets, food, clothing, entertainment, and science. The truth is that human shouldn’t have any guilt using animals as pets, food, clothing, entertainment and science. Well, using animals for entertainment is actually immoral. However, ‘using’ animals for human survival shouldn’t be blamed. It’s not the human’s first time killing animals for retaining their live. For history and with the presence of mankind, killing animals for survival continued and will continue. The only thing that should be blamed is how we treat animals. As shown in the film, people try to gain as much profit over limited amount of animals. Majority of the companies which use animals as commercial reason do not treat their animals as a living organism. The workers throw, hurt these animals without satisfying any minimum desires for survival. The animals are regarded as part of machine, that people try to use as efficient as they can. These vice companies are not only limited to food industries, but enlarged into cosmetic, cloth, furniture, even digital device companies. The bigger problem lies on the consumers. Most of the consumers know these facts. It is a lie that they didn’t know because there are so many videos, books, commercial about animal rights and many of the vice companies’ brutality is already revealed. However, they tend to search for the most economical choice and usually this concludes with choosing the company which exploited on animal. The fact that companies regard animals as their resource and consumer’s ignorance on the brutality should be the target of the film, not the five themes. All five themes concentrates on the cruelty of the process making a product, not on the themes.

The film ends with a sentence “make the connection”. The director shows that animals also have emotion and they have their way of comprehending the world. He redundantly cites that animals feel pain and every animal dies in pain, human do not have right to exploit on them only by our superiority. And most of the film is filled with some secretly shooted image of slaughterhouse or hunting scenes. However, director’s attention was ceased only to the violence and cruelty of killing animals for human use. If the only aim of the film was informing people with the violence of animal using industry, the director sure gained his goal. But, the film didn’t give any clue to the fundamental question. Mankind is highly dependent on animals and it is inevitable living without killing any animals. Then, how should people deal with this issue(excluding the entertainment theme)? Would larger cages and fulfilling the animal’s minimum desire make the animals less stressful and happy? Would killing the animals politely and less violent a better treatment? Would stopping scientific research on animals be the best alternative for all these problems? Is hunting of tigers on rabbits natural and hunting of a human on rabbit immoral and should be punished? Personally, the most urgent thing is change of mankind’s arrogance over other earthlings. Mistreating other species is originated from the cognition that human rules the earth and are top of the whole ecosystem. People learn that humans dominated the top of earth ecosystem and are the most powerful creatures inside the earth. This is a great error because all these information are defined and made up by human. It isn’t revealed that other species agree to this information. Thus, human should not take an arrogant act by this misbelief and dominate other species.

To conclude, the film was very violent. It showed the truth within producing animal product and how the processes are brutal. The film sure did quite well on frightening my meals and making reluctant to eat meat. However, the issue that should be criticized is not the human’s act on eating and clothing by the animals. The thing that be blamed is the arrogance that mankind can control over animal species. It is the mistreating that should be blamed. Overall, the film made lots of thinking on solution of the animal-exploiting issue. If the problem is inevitable, what is the best alternative?