Looking back through my blog posts, one thing is clear: it appears that I am not a fan of technology and that I tend to assume the worst in things. While obviously in reality this is not entirely true (I have a deep appreciation for my iPhone and BuzzFeed), these weekly blog posts served as a space in which I could air my fears and concerns while only slightly sounding like my mother. I noticed that this ever-present pessimism toward technology was a pattern that showed up in all my themes and arguments.
In my first post, “Are you cheating? Designing Relationships in Black Mirror,” my inner pessimist worried about the impact of technology on our human relationships. While Ash’s physical death was framed as the plot-driving loss, another, metaphorical death seemed to have already taken place long before his funeral: technology’s substantial daily role and involvement in both Ash and Martha’s lives resulted in an absence, a void, and an unnoticed loss.
Incidentally—by magical coincidence alone—I actually ended up returning to this exact notion in my very last blog post about Station Eleven titled “Can You Be Dead While Still Alive? Exploring the Limitations of Humanity in Station Eleven.” In this final blog post, I readdressed the concept of metaphorical death and the loss of human relationships from technology. I argued that “…in a world increasingly dominated by social media, self-interest, competition, and materiality…,” performance often takes the place of authenticity, resulting in a symbolic death of both the self and humanity. It was satisfying to come full circle in this final blog post and also really interesting to see how preoccupied I continue to be by the threat of technology.
Interestingly, both my blog about internet policing and my post about death in a sharing economy also explored the “human cost” of technology. These posts focused on how online realities and commercial concerns come at the cost of human relationships.
Yet another theme that surfaced both in my final blog post on Station Eleven and in my post on A Head Full of Ghosts was the theme of truth/reality within technological spaces. In my post “How Do You Remember it? The Construction of Truth in A Head Full of Ghosts,” I noted how Paul Tremblay’s book “…destabilized the belief that there exists one version of reality, providing instead various conflicting accounts and retellings of one event to highlight the subjective and constructed nature of truth.” This conversation was particularly relevant for a book centered around a reality TV show. Similarly, in my discussion of performance and authenticity in Station Eleven, I explored the the idea that truth and the concept of the “true self” are subjective and thus impossible to define or obtain in a technologically-driven society.
Last but not least, mortality/immortality was another theme that surfaced in multiple posts, particularly in my blog titled “The Modern-Day ‘Spirit Phone’: Forever a Failure?” in which I argued that the “…fear of an absolute end without continuation is arguably the greatest tragedy of mankind for we must reconcile our finite existence and the feeling of insignificance this awareness engenders.”
These three central themes remained fairly consistent in my posting over the course of the semester and yet, as I compare my earlier posts with more recent submissions, I do notice a clear shift in how I approached these main themes. While many of my earlier blogs focused on more obvious quotes or main ideas in our readings that articulated a central theme, in my later writings I looked instead for smaller nuances and interesting details that spoke to these themes, but more indirectly. For example, my first blog post explored the effect of technology on relationships—a very important yet nonetheless rather obvious theme to take away from Black Mirror. However, weeks later for my post on internet policing I discussed the difference between the use of first and third person by internet trolls. This focus on a small detail from the reading helped me to consider the ways in which the theme of performativity is inscribed into language and the subtle ways in which we enact this distancing in human relationships.
Funnily enough, the article I cited most was actually the very first article we ever read for class by Walter Benjamin titled “The Storyteller.” For example, in my post on A Head Full of Ghosts, I drew on Benjamin to explore how technology alters our relationship to memory by shifting our emotional responses since technology “…can’t capture feeling, only fact.” I referenced Benjamin yet again in my post “Fantasy or Reality? The Gray Line Between the Truth and the Story” about dark and toxic tourism in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone. Here, however, I expanded upon Benjamin’s description of the storyteller to situate this figure within contemporary contexts.
As I read back through all my blog posts, I noticed that I actually didn’t do as much real-world application as I had intended: Yik Yak, the movie Her, and Airbnb were the only tangible examples I cited throughout all my posts. I think this is due largely to the fact that I’m generally more comfortable talking about theoretical questions and larger concepts rather than their practical application and real-life parallels (no thanks, I’m sure, to my French major which focuses almost entirely on literary analysis and theory). This hole in my analyses is a reminder to myself that sometimes I get so involved with the theory that I forget to ground myself in reality to remain critical of the very systems I depend upon in daily life.
As someone interested in art and fashion—industries in which the tension between truth and performance is always at play—these three main concepts of truth, mortality/immortality, and performativity remain highly applicable and relevant to my thinking even outside the classroom.