Space Pilot 3000

Futurama’s first episode, Space Pilot 3000, featured a boy named Fry. His girlfriend ended their relationship and he was sick of being a delivery boy so he became depressed, repeatedly saying “I hate my life.” He accidentally entered a machine in a cryonic lab and was taken to a time many years later, on December 31, 2999. When Fry was ecstatic that he won’t see his parents, co-workers and girlfriend again, this showed that he thought of his time-travelling as an escape from the old life that he didn’t like. In the year 3000, so many things have changed. Only the ruins of New York are left. 

Futurama showed that developments in science and technology will always have two sides. They will either be used to make society better or worse. In the future, more types of air transportation were developed. People travelled through long tubes, where a person only needs to state his desired destination. This particular development helped society since it made transportation easier. 

Futurama also showed other technologies, which didn’t exactly promote the betterment of society, like the Fate Assignment Program and the Suicide Booth. The use of these two illustrated the people’s dependence on technology to accomplish things. With the Fate Assignment Program, people let technology dictate their destiny. Once their chips are implanted, they are already stuck with the career forever, whether they like it or not. This violates the people’s freedom of choice. It’s as if they do not have the capacity to choose the career that they want to pursue.  They are not allowed to have jobs that do not match their career chips. 

People use the Suicide Booth to end their lives, with two possible modes of death: quick or slow. It presented a scenario where there are machines that are specifically created to help people commit suicide. This is terrifying since this technology can actually encourage suicide and this shows the obvious misuse of scientific and technological advances. When people choose to die, they know that there is a machine, always available and convenient for them to use, which could help them. The convenience of this machine is negative since it helps people to achieve something bad. 

Jay Anne Bacayo

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