Reflection on News Articles

Use this forum to discuss August 2018 book of the month "World, Incorporated" by Tom Gariffo.
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msk350
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Re: Reflection on News Articles

Post by msk350 »

I was also struck by the clean energy and the increased lifespan, but by the time this is mentioned, the press is owned by the new government, so it isn't clear how true it is. I was hoping for more clues later in the book as to how true this was, but they never showed up. The frequency of battles between rival companies in the middle of cities that civilians get caught up in certainly can't be great for longevity. It was also implied that a huge part of the increased lifespan was in third world countries (since I believe HIV was mentioned as the disease that had the biggest impact on lifespan), but how many innocent citizens of those countries were slaughtered by the companies' security firms in order for them to take over the countries and cure these diseases?

I personally really enjoyed the article section of the book, but I can see how those who preferred the action parts may have been bored by the sudden shift to the long news articles.
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Post by cpru68 »

What I found most disturbing was that the news by the end of the articles was owned by World, Inc. And, they always had the little blurb saying..for the most 'honest' report go to our pages. That part got me as we are right now under a siege of information from two sides on our media that constantly fight and scream. I cannot turn on any news right now as it never is anything positive, and it seems like everything has an agenda to it. So, that was the part that got me, and I was surprised how accurately the author reflected this in that part of the book. I did like how he was able to fill the reader in on what had transpired in the demise of America. I thought it was creative instead of just having the two main characters talk about it. It felt real.
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Post by lesler »

I liked the news articles. I thought it hit a little too close to home, but realistic and interesting on what our world could possibly become.
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Post by Bianka Walter »

cpru68 wrote: 08 Aug 2018, 14:16 What I found most disturbing was that the news by the end of the articles was owned by World, Inc. And, they always had the little blurb saying..for the most 'honest' report go to our pages. That part got me as we are right now under a siege of information from two sides on our media that constantly fight and scream. I cannot turn on any news right now as it never is anything positive, and it seems like everything has an agenda to it. So, that was the part that got me, and I was surprised how accurately the author reflected this in that part of the book. I did like how he was able to fill the reader in on what had transpired in the demise of America. I thought it was creative instead of just having the two main characters talk about it. It felt real.
I actually thought that it was a natural progression that the news would eventually be owned by World, Inc. (as was everything else), but you are so right - it does imitate today's news a little. I'm sure other corporations owned other news outlets (it never mentions it in the book, but it would make sense), and I'm sure that they would report on things to benefit themselves. The agenda then and now are too similar for comfort.
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Post by Beth KG »

by Beth KG

I agree with a couple of other comments here, but my thoughts about the news articles are kind of conflicting. I thought they were great and disturbingly believable. On the other hand, I also agree that these sections were too long and could have probably been condensed.
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Post by Dabuddhababe »

Bianka Walter wrote: 08 Aug 2018, 02:00
Dabuddhababe wrote: 07 Aug 2018, 18:57 The chapter with all the news reports could have been laid out differently. The background info they were giving was great, but did we have to trudge through each article? Franklin could have summed up a lot of the boring stuff. I felt like Kelly did, when she got done reading them, staring off in space.

The one thing I thought was interesting was that the government tried to keep it going in D.C., stubborn people.
I totally agree. I had to force myself to concentrate through a lot of them. They became a little tedious after a while. The break between them (I think Sliver goes off to kill someone else) was definitely necessary to keep my attention.
It started off kind of confusing. I'm not big into politics so some of it was too dry. After awhile they started to pick up a little. Not enough for me to enjoy it though. Everytime I seen a news report after that I was disappointed.
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Post by Poppy Drear »

This section strikes me as somewhat lazy worldbuilding. The most interesting thing about an environment should always be how characters interact with it, and characters can't get much more detached than simply reading about the world through newspaper articles.
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Post by mariacarolinea »

I agree with you! 120 life span is a great advance. I think it's quite possible in 50 years to achieve that, especially if we keep investing on modern medicine and researches.
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Post by Fozia-Bajwa »

Yes of course Kelly astonished me while I was reading the book by his articles and news services.
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Post by tarafarah7 »

JHuschle519 wrote: 04 Aug 2018, 18:48
jay_2 wrote: 04 Aug 2018, 17:38 That’s a good point, for sure. ^ I didn’t think too much about that but you’ve got my mind moving now haha. It is quite the thought exercise. I do believe it could happen though.
Oh, I agree that it could happen ... I guess I just kind of hope it never does. I have a feeling it would be complete chaos. I hate paying taxes, but I would hate to see the state of the country if everyone suddenly stopped paying them.
I fully agree with you. The amount of complaining people do about paying taxes, wouldn't even compare to the shock they would be in if we no longer paid them. Unfortunately, many people are more concerned with immediate gratification than the impact this would have on our lives long-term if we didnt.
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Post by Bianka Walter »

tarafarah7 wrote: 10 Aug 2018, 16:35
JHuschle519 wrote: 04 Aug 2018, 18:48
jay_2 wrote: 04 Aug 2018, 17:38 That’s a good point, for sure. ^ I didn’t think too much about that but you’ve got my mind moving now haha. It is quite the thought exercise. I do believe it could happen though.
Oh, I agree that it could happen ... I guess I just kind of hope it never does. I have a feeling it would be complete chaos. I hate paying taxes, but I would hate to see the state of the country if everyone suddenly stopped paying them.
I fully agree with you. The amount of complaining people do about paying taxes, wouldn't even compare to the shock they would be in if we no longer paid them. Unfortunately, many people are more concerned with immediate gratification than the impact this would have on our lives long-term if we didnt.
So, something happened in our country which was an example of everyone sticking together. A few years ago (about 2011 I think), the road agency put something called E-tolls up on our roads. They are toll gates on the highways that drivers get tagged in and charged. Drivers then get mails telling them how much they owe. Because no one ever agreed to this - the majority of people refused to pay. I think 30% of all people paid the tolls and the rest didn't. To this day, I still get post (yes, from the actual postal service) telling me that I owe E-tolls. But they have mostly scrapped it.
Can you imagine we were all to decide not to pay taxes, and they just decided to scrap it? Would Amazon be running the country by now?
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Post by Bianka Walter »

ViziVoir wrote: 08 Aug 2018, 19:14 This section strikes me as somewhat lazy worldbuilding. The most interesting thing about an environment should always be how characters interact with it, and characters can't get much more detached than simply reading about the world through newspaper articles.
This book had so much potential for a really cool world. I feel like we were never really shown enough of it. And you're so right - there was the perfect opportunity to do so without the use of news articles. It seems like a bit of a cop-out.
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Post by Dael Reader »

I was also most interested in the idea of what might happen if people simply stopped paying taxes. You'd like to think that such a large-scale catastrophe could not happen. But there are plenty of people who complain about giving their "hard earned money" to the government, without realizing that many of the service they take for granted today come as a result of taxes.

In general though, wasn't thrilled about the author's choice to give us the background this way. It made for a couple rather boring chapters. I had to force myself to read through them.
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Post by Katherine Smith »

I liked that in the book it talked about the average lifespan of human beings as 120 years old. It made me think about all of the studies in the last five to ten years that said that 120 years was the maximum lifespan. Now, they have proven that people can live past 120 years. I also liked the articles about people not paying taxes or hiding money from the IRS.
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Post by Farmgurl1 »

I found it interesting that once the people started figuring out the government really had no power left, they began to ignore the laws. It was as if citizens realized once the government had no power or resources to enforce laws, especially tax laws, they could easily ignore them. It sort of brings up the argument that people only follow rules because they fear consequences, not because they are natural rule followers. Although, I must say I didn't really like the idea of giving the reader the background of what happened through the news articles. It made for a boring read those few chapters.
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