Gerry Santoro, a co-founder of the College and a retired IST faculty member, was the good friend of the late author Phil Klass (who wrote under the name William Tenn). Phil has been hailed as an Author Emeritus of Science Fiction and published many stories in the 1940s, 50’s and beyond. Phil once told Gerry that science fiction is not about science; rather, it is about people and how they deal with the outcomes of science. Because of this, science fiction can be a very important place to examine the possible utopian and dystopian outcomes of any particular technology. It allows readers to consider the dangers of a technology before society is dependent upon that technology. Your goal in this essay is to identify any piece of science fiction and discuss the people/technology issues that it encompasses. The piece may be a movie, book, short story, comic book, cartoon, anime or whatever. Be sure to select a piece that facilitates your essay. For example, in the George Lucas movie THX-1138, people live in an underground society controlled by computers. People are drugged to keep them as docile workers in the great 'system'. When one man escapes the drugged fog, the computers send robot police after him. This movie is a metaphor for how we are so consumed by technology that it becomes the master and we the slave. It also points to the need for people to maintain control through an understanding of technology. In the end... well, see the movie for yourself. Some Additional Comments to Help You Get Started First, it might help to understand that the purpose of references is three-fold: To identify the sources of information you've used so that people who might want to use your work as a building block for a project of their own can check what you've done to make sure everything is correct So that people who get interested in your work can go to the sources of information you've used and find out more about it, and To give proper credit to the people whose work yours is built upon. For example, if you're writing about a film, people will want to know what that film is, who created it, and how to find it to view it for themselves. Second, what you write about is pretty much up to you. The only constraints are that: It must discuss a work of science fiction (book, movie, short story, whatever – and of course one of your references should identify the work so that your readers can find it if they get interested), and  Your discussion should focus on how the work portrays the relationship between people and some form of technology. For example, the Terminator movies depict a very specific danger that might arise from the military deployment of AI technology (there are lots of SciFi works on specific dangers of various technologies). Don't get nervous because this assignment seems vague — believe it or not, most of IT is like that (you have five different ways to solve a problem, all of which have pros and cons, there is no clear winner, and you have to choose based on conflicting goals – in other words, high levels of ambiguity abound in IT). Hope you didn’t think it was just 1’s and 0’s. Your finished essay (without references) should occupy approximately two pages of double-spaced text.