IN HER SHORT STORY, “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas,” Ursula Le Guin describes a town called Omelas that stands shining by the sea. The gardens are covered with moss and the roads are lined with trees. Children play in the streets; ther…Le Guin’s story is a testament to the importance of intuition and taste, which prevents us from accepting utilitarianism as a wholesale solution to the problem of prioritization. Omelas is a dark version of
the utilitarian world in which h…
Ursula K. Le Guin
writer · 3 mentions across 2 readings
In this course
Le Guin's *Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction* reframes technological and narrative origins away from masculine violence (the spear) toward gathering and accumulation, a conceptual move the course uses to challenge deterministic narratives about progress and tool-making. Her short story "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas" functions as a philosophical thought experiment that troubles utilitarian ethics and algorithmic optimization—central concerns for thinking through how AI systems might maximize certain metrics while obscuring their human costs. Together, her work models how speculative fiction and feminist theory can interrogate the values embedded in systems we treat as natural or inevitable.
Mentioned in 2 readings
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