 A list of recommended reading and movies is attached to this email (also on Firefly).

 Pls pick any one of your choices and try and make links to the TOK concepts/identify knowledge
framework or just recognize the TOK element.
 You will be expected to present a brief 2-3 mins synopsis of the same on 12th & 13th Jan 2022

Inception

Today I will be speaking about the movie, Inception, which was directed by Christopher Nolan and was
released in 2010.

To provide a short summary. This movie can be interpreted as a form of science fiction, as it is built upon
a new technology in which multiple people can share “dreams” with one another, which can be carefully
constructed by an “architect” to extract information from someone’s subconscious. So, what this movie
does is follow the protagonist “Cobb” through a particularly challenging conquest, where he is given the
task to enter a man, Robert’s, dream, and instead of stealing secrets from his subconscious, plant a new
idea in his subconscious.

The very premise of the movie leaves us with multiple questions which we can explore through the lens
of TOK.

To start, the central theme of ethics is prevalent throughout. In the movie, the entire operation of
planting a thought into Robert mind is centered on manipulation, as the team of criminals must
gradually persuade the Robert, to trust them and enter further dreams where his mind is more
vulnerable. Finally, Robert is led to discover his father, who’s dying words in this dream plant the
intended thought in his head. Here, throughout the experience Robert is never aware that he is being
manipulated, about the nature of the situation he is in, and even at the end of the movie, becomes a
changed man with different thoughts, but not by his own free will.

This is clearly ethical malpractice; however,some may wonder if there is interplay to today’s world, and
the themes of Knowledge and Technology. In our class discussions, we saw how technology greatly
influences how we obtain knowledge, there are algorithms which determine what news articles we
read, what perspectives we hear, and as a final consequence, determines how we think. When looking
at the situation in that manner, we can see a disturbing parallel emerge between how we are
manipulated by technology to think in a certain way, and how Robert was manipulated in these dreams.
Here, we must analyze the role of technology as a hinderance to the authentic obtaining of knowledge.

When we analyze these ideas of ethics and technology through this movie, a key concept in TOK, power,
is also relevant. In reality, an example of the misuse of power obtained by technology is the Cambridge
Analytica scandal with Facebook where data was used in order to create tailored advertisements which
swayed voters towards voting for specific political candidates.

In fact, the movie itself makes an impactful statement about what can occur when power is used like
this to manipulate someone’s thoughts in an unethical manner.

In the movie, there is a flashback to when the protagonist, Cobb, and his wife are in a dream state,
however his wife is unwilling to leave the dream state as she is convinced that it is reality. A method
used by her at the time was the spinning top, if it keeps spinning forever, then she is in a dream,
however if it falls, then she is in reality. Cobb, in an attempt to convince his wife that she was, in fact, in
a dream, opens a private safe of hers and spins the spinning top, interfering with her thoughts and
planting the idea that she was not in reality, but in a dream. This results in disastrous consequences as
after she kills herself in the dream state, which is what she had to do to go back to reality, she continues
to believe that she is in a dream even when they do actually return to reality, and hence kills herself to
escape, resulting in tragedy.

Finally, this serves as a powerful reminder of the danger that is present when power is given to others to
determine what people think, especially through technology. In my opinion, I believe that this movie
intends to show that any tampering with a person’s personal knowledge, even when done with good
intentions, for example Cobb wanting to return to reality, is always unethical and should be avoided.