Looking back through my blog posts from over the past fifteen weeks, I noticed that I tended to use the readings to talk about a larger relationship between humans and technology, using a smaller detail to talk about a trend or something else it reminded me of. For me, I enjoyed that our readings covered many different manifestations of our relationship with technology, but I used the blog post to speak to my personal experience or opinions on the weekly readings’ themes.
In my first blog post, I reflected on how technology fell short in both Head Full of Ghosts and The Exorcist, and in both cases the families tried to turn to religion to solve their problems instead. In my second blog post, I used René Magritte’s The Treachery of Images an an example of how post-modernism has left me questioning “truths” to this day. I disagreed with the readings most in my third and fifth blog posts, frustrated that Kocurek did not go further in her analysis of video games and I basically ripped on QR codes later.
Throughout a few of my posts and projects, I analyzed and thought more about various episodes of Black Mirror. Having watched a decent amount of episodes outside of class, I think the show does a great job of not only envisioning different forms of technology, but showing how much technology can shape the human experience (often in very scary or disturbing ways). While the show presents extremes, it does show in a believable way, and it pushed me to question how real forms of technology, primarily self-driving cars, have the opportunity to drastically change our society – a topic I touched on in my sixth blog post and explored more thoroughly in my final project.
Despite, the class focusing on many representations of death, I stayed away from that topic for the most part. All of the readings still provided lots to think about, and when the time comes, I’ll definitely be thinking a lot more about the digital life I’ll eventually leave behind.