<aside> 💡 Topic: Compare and contrast how technology overcomes the limits of language and how it creates new limits on language in the works you have chosen

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Who do not love magicians? They are always fascinating and unpredictable. Just using a

sleight of hand, they pull a rabbit out of a hat or disappear while locked in a cage. They make us

believe in impossibility. And we often focus optimistically on all things they do for us without

realizing how they exploit our minds’ weakness. Magicians’ tricks start by “looking for blind

spots, edges, vulnerabilities, and limits of people’s perception, so they can influence what people

do without them even realizing it” (Harris, 2016.) So do technology. For centuries, technology

has conquered many limitations and incredibility, especially in language presentation. Language

can be understood as voices, words of thinking and words of emotions. However, technology can

also play with our psychological vulnerabilities and hijacks our minds to manipulate our choices

and grab our attention (Harris, 2016). In both short story Harrison Bergeron and the movie Her,

they use the image of earphones to illustrate the contrast in the power of technology over

language: manipulating our words or giving us absolute control. Moreover, with each magician

parts, the earphones also create a different kind of emotional epidemic: indifferent feeling and

loneliness feeling.

Movie "Her" (2013)

Short story "Harrison Bergeron"

The earphone in the story Harrison Bergeron reflects how technology manipulates people’s thinking, therefore, control people’s language. In the world of Harrison Bergeron, everyone whose intelligence is above average has to wear “a little mental handicap radio.” This radio is connected to a government transmitter. And “every twenty seconds, the transmitter sends out some sharp noise to keep above normal people from taking unfair advantage of their brains.”