Davidson College Fall 2018
In the season 3 opener of Black Mirror, a new rating technology is introduced. This technology is placed in the characters’ eyes, and they are rated based off of their interactions with others. The main character, Lacie, has a rating of 4.2 out of 5 but she wants to increase it to 4.5 out of …
Continue reading “Ratings and Social Media Likes: How They Are Impacting Our World”
I’d like to talk about a comment that someone made in class on Friday following our discussion about consumer data collection. To be completely honest, I have no idea who made the comment; I just know that it was made towards the end of class and that I didn’t have time to respond. In the …
As I was preparing for a grocery store run last week, I asked my partner and my brother what they wanted me to write on the list to grab from the store. In response to my frustration at the lack of a fruitful list, I was met with a jovial response to the tune of …
Continue reading “Is Siri worth more than your neighbor’s ability to have health insurance?”
A newsflash from the Feed states, proudly, “We have entered a new age” (75)*. The statement recounts the history of communication, tracing human progression from an oral culture to a written one and, finally to print culture. The Feed promises to have brought in a new age, that of the dream culture, the oneiric culture. […]
At this point in Feed, it has become clear that this device is so inextricably tied to the characters’ physical bodies. When Titus and his friends wake up in the hospital to find that their feeds are unavailable, they feel as if they have lost a limb. And when their feeds are repaired, the joy […]
Reading Feed, I was particularly struck by the experience Violet and Titus had on pages 152-154 in which both of them have someone intrude on their feed, causing Titus to have horrific nightmares depicting end-of-the-world scenarios. When Titus wakes up, he and Violet immediately m-chat each other, and Violet also claims someone was intruding on her feed …
Throughout part three of Feed, the lesions on the characters come up a lot. I’m still not sure what exactly they represent, but when they were mentioned in the beginning of the book, I thought the lesions we due to radiation or some sort of malfunction from the feed. In part three of the book, the lesions… Read more about Ridiculous Trends!
Something I found super intriguing in Part 3 of MT Anderson’s Feed, is how the feed affects characters’ ability to communicate verbally, as well as their ability to empathize with someone in pain. I think this highlights something very important in our society as well. For instance, most of us are more comfortable with texting …
Continue reading “How Does The Feed Affect One’s Social and Communication Skills?”
An article titled “Where the Internet Lives: Data Centers as Cloud Infrastructure” begins with a description of Google’s headline for released images of their data centers. The pictures showcased “slick, artful images of buildings, wires, pipes, servers, and dedicated workers,” with the headline “Transparency” (71). The set-up sounds exactly like what it is- an advertisement,… Read more about Beware of the Half-Truth
With the rise of the technology companies to become some of the most powerful institutions on Earth, the call for transparency has become louder and louder. Transparency in labor practices seems to be a key component of activists’ demands for all companies. In order to appear more worker-friendly and environmentally-conscious, the technology companies have elected …
Continue reading “The Truth about Transparency and What to do Next”
