Elysium

   A couple of weeks ago I watched the movie Elysium.  It recently came out this year and starred Jodi Foster and Matt Damon.  The plot took place in a futuristic Earth, around 2150, and heavily focused on technology and how it shaped society.  Even in the first fifteen minutes I thought this movie applied so much to our class and how technology affects human civilization.
   To quickly summarize:  Elysium is this satellite-type place just outside of Earth.  Those who are wealthy enough to live on Elysium do so, and the rest of the seemingly corrupt society resides back on Earth.  They often show the poor gazing up at Elysium, just like we look at the moon, wishing they can go there.  Back on Earth, people are struggling to find work since robots and technology have taken over almost every aspect of life.  Money is scarce (the movie has a scene where little boys are fighting over a $5.00 coin).  The rulers of Elysium, however, are these pretentious looking people who have no regard for any of the poor people who try to hijack spaceships to get to Elysium -- they just shoot down the spaceships because they don't want their home to be full of people that have less than they do.
  I thought this concept brought up an interesting concept that we had not discussed too much in class.  How would technology affect the classes in our society?  Would they further the gap or somehow make it closer?  This movie portrays the scenario with the former.  In the movie, Elysium, the lower and upper class are as polarized as it gets.
  I think that when/if technology begins to take over more human jobs, the gap between classes will also increase.  There are certain people in the world that are born into insane amounts of wealth and keep it within the family.  They are prepared their entire life to take over the same career paths their parents have -- ones that bring in a lot of money.  As a senior looking for a job, I'm already seeing this in my town.  All of the people my age who have parents working on Wall Street are getting jobs on Wall Street, one of the most highly lucrative and competitive places to work.  If technology ever took over the human role in even more workplaces, the middle/working class would struggle since they always have had to work hard for their money, possibly even combine with the lower class, and the upper class would prevail.
  While this thought is certainly depressing, I'm hoping it's a worst-case scenario option.  I think before new technology becomes regulated in human life, there will be a lot of ethical discussions that need to happen.  Even as engineers, we theoretically have a code of ethics to follow -- I know as a Biomedical Engineer I take that very seriously considering I hope we do not all become robots. 
  Elysium wasn't one of the greatest movies I had ever seen, but in terms of science-fiction I think it was a really interesting concept to entertain in regards to the hardcore societal affects technology could have.