Rather unsurprisingly, almost all of my blog posts reference or are centered around the social implications of our readings. Starting with the male gaze in The Exorcist and ending with issues of capitalism in how we consider dark tourism, I consistently turn to the humanities point of view when thinking about the death of technology. Some readings, however, got me out of my comfort zone and thinking about the more basic, moral implications of technology.

My second to last blog post focused not on any one injustice, but on my discomfort with a digital archive post-death, citing such “efforts as narcissism.” My post before that considered Zora Neale Hurston’s work in light of our discussion of anthropological sound. My post wasn’t overtly about sexism or racism, but I wrote it in response to the problem I had with Jonathan Sterne’s article, which I didn’t feel properly addressed either the implications of white anthropologists recording non-white subjects or the existence of non-white anthropologists, working with the same technology at the same time. By the time I got to my last blog post, I was able to directly speak on my own role in the phenomena we’ve read about. Though I believe we (as people, as Americans, as technology users) have been consistently implicated throughout the course, it took me until the last round to reference my own life and personal involvement in dark tourism.

My blog posts seem to mirror very well my comments in class as well as my interests beyond the class. The articles we’ve read have given me a lot of insight into issues surrounding technology, from reality TV zombies to repair culture, but I find them most useful when put into conversation with larger societal issues. What has been the point of these readings if not to apply them to our contemporary moment and the things we care about? That sentiment, I think, is what my blog posts are really trying to get at.

While looking over my posts from this semester, I realized that I usually wrote about things that intersected with my natural interests. These topics included literature, social media, and personal implications from the reading/viewing material. I think that overall my posts have gotten less introspective and I’ve become more comfortable speaking about the topics without relying on personal anecdotes. For example, one of my earliest posts was “How would I want my persona built after I die?” and my last post was “Can robots have ethical dilemmas?” (clearly, I also like asking questions in my titles).

A lot of my blog posts built on material from other classes I’m taking this semester. For example, in “Can robots have ethical dilemmas?” I discussed a reading from my class Time In Space In Creative Nonfiction with Professor Perry about the warping of time in life-or-death situations that applied to the ethical decisions that self-driving cars must make. In my haunted media project (not a blog post but still a post of mine on this site).

The most interesting thing I discovered when reading my posts was the connection from my first post to the last few days of class. I discussed how technology, or the lack thereof, can elicit horror. I wrote: “This desire to be less dependent on technology could play a role in horror movies. Soon, movies may soon be able to realistically rely on the setting of an isolated home that lacks technology. Viewers would understand why the characters would want to go there because they realize that it can be a relief to escape the technologically-saturated world.” I think that this relates well to Station 11 because that novel dealt with the horrors of life after technology collapses. This connection, and reflecting on my blog post in general, made me aware of just how pervasive the subject of death in the digital age really is.

Reading through all of my posts, I noticed that I tend to follow a certain pattern. I usually start with how an episode, chapter or article made me feel personally and then immediately connect it to one of the readings. I then give my own personal predictions and thoughts on the subject. I also usually have a witty title that uses alliteration or is a play on another title from something well-known like a movie. I do love alliteration and I’ve seen a lot of movies so I guess it makes sense that it influenced my title choices.

I also noticed that I’m really hard on humanity. A lot of my summaries highlight the shortcomings of human beings and my thouhgts on what will become of humanity is usually bleak or negative. Either the humans are the ones who caused their own misfortune, or they’re untrustworthy or they’re obssessed. I don’t think all humans are bad or anything, I just tend to focus on the negatives rather than the positives in this context I think because the core topic for all of these posts is death. Death doesn’t necessarily have to be negative but it is not usually a pleasant topic so I think that influenced my analysis.

I usually keep my posts relatively short and sweet unless it’s a topic I feel really strongly about. Like the characters on Dead Set, the exploitation of artists like XXXTentacion and the coldness of code. I had a personal connection to these topics. I really liked the Dead set series, I’m a rapper myself and don’t want to be exploited by a label and I took computer science and know firsthand how cold and cruel code can be. Overall, I think these were some good blog posts but I’m biased of course.

Throughout the course, we had discussed various ways that death is integrated into our daily lives. Some of those forms are through photography, video games, films, social media, and just purely digital media. In some of the mediums, death was an integral part in which it held high value in tradition or was the main idea. I’ve become more conscious in how digital media has had a closer connection to death than I expected, and how I have become more open to the idea of death in which I do not hold a pessimistic view towards it.

My initial post for the class was about the “A Head Full of Ghost” and how the supernatural take action when nobody is witnessing. Specifically, I stated that “it is not until the TV crew comes where we witness a change in character” when discussing Marjorie and how she is possessed. I had commented on how the supernatural tend to stray away from surveillance cameras based on my background on supernatural films and documentaries. However, reflecting on this perception of the supernatural, I have found that the demonic entities that embody humans can be present in disguise. We can see this in other forms of entertainment in films like The Conjuring in where the wife was possessed but showed her demonic side even when the ghost hunters came to her home. Therefore, Marjorie’s actions in front of digital mediums seem more reasonable because it had allowed the demonic entity to further manifest itself in Marjorie.

However, for other posts, I found that I was also being a bit critical in how death was glorified. In the post, “Why Dead Photography” I criticized how Victorians that took photographs of dead family members was irrational. I had viewed the act of taking a photograph of a human body that had no soul similar to taking a photograph of nothing. I did understand the concept of taking photographs of dead people as a form of mourning. However, becoming more familiarized with the mourning processes that are seen on social media, I discovered that mourning can take various forms that seem odd to the typical ones seen at funerals. Plus, I had to reflect on my own culture’s form of mourning in which people celebrate dead family members once every year with gifts. Dead suddenly becomes a topic that we unconsciously accept despite not having more conversations about it.

Since my critical post, I had found that my blog post began to shift towards a positive light about death. I found myself advocating why death in video games is essential and how dead celebrities should be celebrated. As I remained to stay on topics about dead individuals and demonic entities, I discussed how putting these characters in games was crucial in allowing society to be comfortable about death. I advocated for video games that involved detailed deaths to allow people to find careers out of gameplay. Even after rereading my post, I reflected how these games could be an outlet for certain people who are not as comfortable with death for these games simulate those situations. If we are even to think more extreme about these games, they can function as preparation if an apocalypse might occur. Regardless, the games function as a form of conversation for people to become more comfortable with deadly situations.

Overall, I find that death has become more of a comfortable topic that I can discuss. Not only for the death of technological objects or mediums but also for individuals. Also, I am more conscious of how death is related to many of the mediums I use in my daily life. For instance, I was never aware of the memorial pages that exist on Facebook or the cultures of Victorians that photograph dead family members. Although I will most likely not participate in many of these traditions, I will be more understanding of the different ways people discuss the topic of death regardless of the method.

A couple of reoccurring themes stood out to me in my review of blog posts and a comment I did. The first is my interest in exploring gender and race. I explored both in my first blog post, “The Final Irrational Girl,” and then race again in “Tillich’s Symbol & Baldwin’s Letter.” In both, I discussed where blackness fits into a white dominated genre (horror). I am not too surprised by these areas because throughout my four years at Davidson, I often take on topics of gender and race. When writing about gender, I tend to take a feminist stance, as reflected by the line in “The Final Irrational Girl,” “While horror has treated its female characters misogynistically, it is also the genre that’s given us “the final girl” trope (basically what Pinedo was referring to as female heroes; means the last female alive to confront the monster). Do you think postmodern horror is perpetuating misogynistic images of women in Hollywood or changing them?” I am aware that often in my writing I try to ‘complicate’ my ideas and that quote is a good example of when I complicate my argument by placing it next to an idea that challenges my previous statements and takes my argument to the next level. I often think of my writing as building my paper (or blog post) brick by brick, and I can see that reflected in the way I have composed each sentence.

Another reoccurring topic in my posts is social media and how it produces a ‘lack of the real’. I discuss social media in both “Digital Zombie” and in my comment on Alivia’s “Instagram Memorials” post. In “Digital Zombie,” my post about the Black Mirror episode we watched, I wrote, “Social media cannot fully replicate Ash because it works on the assumption that people put their whole lives on social media, which is impossible. Even with the addition of Martha’s personal messages and videos, the artificial intelligence cannot account for Ash’s life before social media which founded who he is and moments not captured between Ash and Martha, represented by zombie Ash’s inability to react when Martha places his hand on her chest.” Social media cannot fully represent a person and lacks human qualities that Ash cannot recreate. In my comment on Alivia’s post, I mention how direct messaging a memorialized Instagram page makes the living user feel as if they can still communicate with the dead, but of course the account will not respond. I called this form of communication a “digital letter,” but still lacks the same as communicating with a person who is living. I am kind of surprised to see this connection between social media and ‘lack of the real’ because social media plays a big part of my life without much day-to-day thought.

From my first post to my last post, I think I shifted away from topics that I tend to discuss (race and gender) and discussed technology more and how it affects our culture, which was a crucial goal of the class. This is a general theme represented in my final paper discussing autonomous vehicles and marketing, and just by going through these posts I can definitely see what led up to me selecting this topic.

In reviewing my blog posts over the course of the semester, I found that one major theme developed linearly with each post: the inability of our society to face death for what it is, and how we have come to compensate for this inability. This theme appears in my first blog post in discussion of the source of fear in A Head Full of Ghosts. I discuss a particular scene which examples the general fear factor in the novel: the lack of knowledge and loss of control of the situation. The invent of technology and the resulting rapidity with which information can be shared has made our society impatient for knowledge. Thus, when we cannot decipher or exert a certain degree of control over the situation, we not only feel uncomfortable, but may also experience fear. The topic of death is one about which we as a public know very little, which may be why it is something we fear more than most anything else.

In my second post, I build on the idea of fearing death and the societal discomfort we have with the idea of our own mortality. In analyzing “Deadset,” we read a piece which demonstrates how the zombie gothic genre presents zombies in a way which targets our negative feelings about death, but at the same time, dehumanizes zombies enough to appease those anxieties. Another example of this strange fixation yet denial is seen in reflecting on death photography. We, as a society, enjoy watching violence and death of others, whether fictional or not, via TV and movie media. Both the zombie and TV/movie example highlight how humans are much more inclined, if not motivated, to confront death and mortality if at a distance, rather than concerning themselves.

A final way in which humans’ discomfort with death appears is in the commodification and profit derived from the death of others. For the last unit or so of class, we focused on the profit made off of the franchise of the dead, either via memorialization or legal action. What better way to mask our discomfort with something as common and inevitable as death, than by pursuing thing we value second to, if not on par with life? Making money off of death not only takes our own minds off of mortality, but also gives a defensive (and self-convincing?) air of nonchalance .

In sum, my blog posts seem to center around the general discomfort our society holds towards death, and the numerous ways in which we compensate for this discomfort either via technology or other material objects.

Throughout the course and my trends of blog posts, I notice that I concentrate typically on smart technology and relate these 21st century trends (i.e. smart cars, smart phones, smart fiction technology in Black Mirror) to their unnoticed danger. It’s interesting to notice that I find technology to be one of the coolest things in society today, however it’s one of the most dangerous things we encounter from day to day life.  When rereading my blog posts, I write about how there’s no positive thing about these smart devices, and say nothing of the benefits each have. I kept up with this trend throughout the entire semester, and it’s interesting to take note that there were no variations in my posts, and every single one was concentrated on the terrifying dangers technology has.

When relating this online trend to everyday reality, the only thing I physically talk about when regarding technology is how incredibly amazing our creators and inventors are today.  One would never think I only advocate against technology and the creations made online on these blog posts. There was one quote by my blog post regarding Black Mirror’s “Be Right Back” episode that overall summarizes my thoughts and ideas when regarding to online blog posts. To revisit the post, this episode allows a woman who lost her husband in a texting-and-driving car crash to bring him back to life with technology; “Technology was the reason the husband died and simultaneously the only reason he was able to live again.” This is very powerful, as my entire take on technology reflects within this quote that I made a couple months back.

Overall, my blog posts have followed trends behind one another, and have opened my eyes to the severe dangers that the public isn’t aware of until they diver deeper into the subjects.  Society and innovators tend to turn a blind eye to the crucial creations that could end up causing more harm to us than good.

After rereading all of my posts from this semester, I noticed a several themes as well as a few trends and themes that changed and developed as the semester progressed. First off, I noticed the broad theme or pattern in my posts where I attempted to write about things that I noticed from my life and how they relate to the day’s readings or assignments. While this was not prevalent in my first and second post, probably because I wanted to make sure I wrote enough about that day’s assignment, my third post included a reference to an event that I followed this past summer and how it related to the grief troll trend. My fourth post included a reference to two recent celebrity deaths that I was able to connect to our readings and class discussion that we had during the previous class. Lastly, my final post linked a trip that I took while abroad last year to a theme explored in that day’s assigned readings. Overall, I would say that they nature of my posts have changed in the past fifteen weeks by becoming more broad and far-reaching about the topics I cover and how much I have branched out from the days assigned readings/movies/shows. I think that this is a positive change as I have been able to make what we are studying in class more applicable to my real life observations.

Another theme that stood out to me and surprised me was how different my blog post writing is from other academic work that I have completed during my four years at Davidson. I believe that I fully embraced the blogging spirit and treated it as a blog rather than an analytical paper, presentation, or report that I complete for my other classes. I think this type of platform has still allowed me to analyze our class readings, however, we are given the freedom and flexibility to do it in a way that allows us to connect with the text that enables us to lean best.

Ultimately, I was surprised with my creativity in this class. I was not expecting to be so engaged and excited about the readings or to enjoy the material I was writing about for the four assignments. I really have appreciated this blogging platform and the structure of the class and the assignments as a whole, and think that they have pushed me both creatively and academically. I also appreciate how blogging was able to extend the 50 minutes of class, and give us time and space to explore what we are learning in our own individual ways. If I wasn’t graduating in three weeks, I would have loved to take a similar class to this one.