This very short excerpt was really enjoyable. I like the use of the land and sea being an analogy for traditional and progressive societies. This clearly was based on the argument that a progressive society is better than that of a traditional, which we know by how the uncle is portrayed, which is stubborn and rude, and unwilling to bend for anyone. However even though this is the way that he is, he still has family on land, so when they do visit, even when he is rude to them, given enough time he come around and is more tolerable. Speaking of his land relatives, they represent a progressive society. Where things are always changing and they strive for the future and moving towards it.  The land is limited to expansion only though mechanisms, or survival of the fittest. Whereas living in water has a more infinite amount of space, and has no real need for expansion or modernization, but what worked before, works today.

This world in which is strongly based on scientific evolution that humans came from water, and the expansion of the idea that not everyone felt the need to evolve further on to land, is an interesting thought within itself, and this idea works well to help explain the how a difference in living or way of life, or even opinions isn’t necessarily wrong or right, and though both parties usually only see the wrong in each other, they can come to some sort of an understanding with one another.

1      I was interested in the read as well as disturbed, I liked that the stereotypical gender roles had primarily been swapped. A world of alien parasites co-existing with humans is unsettling, especially with the understanding of how the parasitic worms pro-create.

2      Some connections I made in the story were the gender roles, and how typically a woman is the one who bares the children in the womb, the men take on that roll with the aliens by providing themselves as a host for the parasitic worms. Also the fact that the women seemed to be way more protective of the men, which is typically reversed, where the woman would be delicate and the man would have to do all the protecting. I would also like to point out the fact that artificial choice take place in the story, for example letting our main character believe he has a choice on is really controlled heavily by T'Gatoi' meaning she didn’t really leave him with much option without directly ruining someone else life.

3   I think this would make for an interesting novel, in which I would further expand the relationship that T’Gatoi has with this particular family, and possibly have flashbacks of what it might have been like before the existence or presence of the alien worms. This would be so the reader can further compare and contrast human life before and after this parasitic alien took over. I think it would be interesting to see if their presence has anything positive to offer to the humans. I would also like to maybe see more flashback of the father, and how he met the mother and what exactly happened, that has changed the way the mother is.

Reading Johnny Mnemonic, I felt kind of bad for poor Johnny, who has all this information in his head, but isn’t able to access any of it. He stores everyone’s information except his own memories. In away I do sympathize with him.

The story is clearly some futuristic alternate reality in which cybernetic surgery is a thing. Jonny being the data trafficker he is, it is only assuming that most if not all the information he retrieves is very time sensitive and is risky information to posses.

This story told through an alternate reality raised the question of our own reality of invasion of personal lives and information of individuals by the government and corporations through the use of technology. The alternate reality here isn’t too far fetched from the reality we live in today, and along with the fact that this was written over twenty-five years ago, we can see that people then still had a fear of the government knowing to much, which honestly is a scary thought that privacy is becoming harder to find and that soon there won’t be anything that you can keep to yourself, including your own memories.

Ghost in the shell is another reality that again, doesn’t seem to far off from where are future is looking forward to the idea the government or some higher power could just re-wire someone to be basically a robot, and have little to know independent thought. Essentially taking way individualism. Without individualism the world would be pretty bland and I feel like progression would end or become stagnant. Because without creativity and individualism there is no room for multiple perspectives on different ways of solving a problem.