This blog over the course of the past semester has, in a way, served as a personal journal in which I’ve been able to detail my learning, how I began to make connections between relevant academic concepts, and how I integrated my learning into my real-world understanding of life around me. While I didn’t notice any trends in terms of how the nature of my blog posts changed throughout the semester, I did find a number of themes that ran throughout my writing.
One thing I touched on a few times was how we use technology to mediate our interactions with the world around us. “How else have we intentionally designed technology to mediate or fuel our fear?” I ask in my post regarding Merry’s use of her video camera to mitigate her fear in Head Full of Ghosts . This question was rather prescient, as it turns out I later address how we might use technology to fuel our fear of things in my post on virtual reality military technology in the Black Mirror episode: “Men Against Fire.”
My blog posts are peppered with my own personal reactions to various assignments, books, articles, and other media. I discussed how the Black Mirror episode “Be Right Back” “prompted me with a number of questions regarding how I myself might approach a situation in which I could interact with a reconstructed version of a dearly departed loved one.” I examined and questioned my personal reaction to the concept of the “Grief Police” when I asked “So why is grief something we (maybe just read: I) are (am) so judgmental about — especially when we have all experienced it?” In reflecting upon the reading and writing this response, I was able to critically examine my own judgements and biases that affect my non-academic life.
I also spend some time addressing the social ramifications of the technology with which we engage, referring to how things might go horribly wrong in the future if we aren’t careful about how we utilize technology. In “a world that in some ways is becoming more and more like a video game — things get scary.”
“As we continue to study the “death of technology,” I’m inclined to argue that technology never really dies, as it is simply a product of humankind.” I think it is absolutely key that we keep this in mind moving forward into unknown technological territory. Technology is only as dangerous or helpful as we, humans, make it, and it isn’t going away any time soon.
