{"id":1851,"date":"2017-05-12T19:41:28","date_gmt":"2017-05-12T23:41:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/courses.digitaldavidson.net\/dig215\/?p=1851"},"modified":"2017-05-12T19:51:13","modified_gmt":"2017-05-12T23:51:13","slug":"im-more-of-a-pessimist-than-id-like-to-admit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/courses.digitaldavidson.net\/dig215\/2017\/05\/12\/im-more-of-a-pessimist-than-id-like-to-admit\/","title":{"rendered":"I’m More of a Pessimist than I’d Like to Admit"},"content":{"rendered":"

Looking back through my blog posts, one thing is\u00a0clear: 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\u00a0true (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\u00a0only 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.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
This is how I feel about technology…sometimes. Source: Cartoon Afraid of Technology. N.d. Keywordsuggests.com<\/a>. Web. 12 May 2017.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In my first post, \u201cAre you cheating? Designing Relationships in Black Mirror<\/em>,\u201d<\/a> my inner pessimist worried about the impact of technology on our human relationships. While Ash\u2019s physical death was framed as the plot-driving loss, another, metaphorical death seemed to have already taken place long before his funeral: technology\u2019s substantial daily role and involvement in both Ash and Martha’s\u00a0lives resulted in an absence, a void, and an unnoticed loss.<\/p>\n

Incidentally\u2014by magical coincidence alone\u2014I actually ended up returning to this exact notion in my very last blog post about Station Eleven<\/em> titled \u201cCan You Be Dead While Still Alive? Exploring the Limitations of Humanity in Station Eleven<\/em>.\u201d<\/a> In this final blog post, I readdressed the concept of metaphorical death and the loss of human relationships\u00a0from\u00a0technology. I argued that \u201c\u2026in a world increasingly dominated by social media, self-interest, competition, and materiality\u2026,\u201d performance<\/em> often takes the place of authenticity<\/em>, 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\u00a0interesting to see how preoccupied I continue to be by the threat of technology.<\/p>\n

Interestingly, both my blog about internet policing<\/a>\u00a0 and my post about death in a sharing economy<\/a>\u00a0also explored the\u00a0\u201chuman cost\u201d of technology. These\u00a0posts\u00a0focused on how online realities and commercial concerns come at the cost of human relationships.<\/p>\n

Yet another theme that surfaced both in my final blog post on Station Eleven<\/em> and in my post on A Head Full of Ghosts<\/em>\u00a0was the theme of truth\/reality within technological spaces. In my post \u201cHow Do You Remember it? The Construction of Truth in A Head Full of Ghosts,\u201d<\/a> I noted how Paul Tremblay\u2019s book \u201c\u2026destabilized 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.\u201d 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<\/em><\/a>, I explored the\u00a0the idea\u00a0that truth and the concept of the \u201ctrue self\u201d are\u00a0subjective and thus impossible to define or obtain in a technologically-driven society.<\/p>\n

Last but not least, mortality\/immortality was another theme that surfaced in multiple posts, particularly in my blog titled \u201cThe Modern-Day \u2018Spirit Phone\u2019: Forever a Failure?\u201d<\/a> in which I argued that the \u201c\u2026fear 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\u00a0theme, 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<\/a> explored the effect of technology on relationships\u2014a very important yet nonetheless rather obvious theme to take away from Black Mirror.<\/em> However, weeks later for my post on internet policing<\/a>\u00a0I discussed the difference between the use of first and third person by internet trolls. \u00a0This 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.<\/p>\n

Funnily enough, the article I cited most was actually the very first article we ever read for class by Walter Benjamin titled \u201cThe Storyteller.\u201d<\/a> For example, in my post on\u00a0A Head Full of Ghosts<\/em>, I drew on\u00a0Benjamin to explore\u00a0how technology alters our relationship to memory by shifting our emotional responses since technology \u201c\u2026can\u2019t capture feeling, only fact.\u201d I referenced Benjamin yet again in my post \u201cFantasy or Reality? The Gray Line Between the Truth and the Story\u201d<\/a> about dark and toxic tourism in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone. Here, however, I expanded upon Benjamin\u2019s description of the storyteller to situate this figure\u00a0within contemporary contexts.<\/p>\n

As I read back through all my blog posts, I noticed that I actually didn\u2019t do as much real-world application as I had intended: Yik Yak, the movie Her<\/em>, and Airbnb were the only tangible examples I cited throughout all my posts. I think this is due largely to the fact that I\u2019m generally more comfortable talking about theoretical questions and larger concepts rather than their practical application and real-life parallels (no thanks, I\u2019m 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\u00a0remain\u00a0critical of the very systems I depend upon in daily life.<\/p>\n

As someone interested in art and fashion\u2014industries in which the tension between truth and performance is always at play\u2014these three main concepts of truth, mortality\/immortality, and performativity remain highly applicable \u00a0and relevant to my thinking\u00a0even outside the classroom.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Looking back through my blog posts, one thing is\u00a0clear: 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\u00a0true (I have a deep appreciation for my iPhone and BuzzFeed), these weekly blog posts served as a space … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “I’m More of a Pessimist than I’d Like to Admit”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":108,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[216],"tags":[240,143,237,238,239,45],"class_list":["post-1851","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reflective-post","tag-authenticity","tag-death","tag-immortality","tag-mortality","tag-performance","tag-truth"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.digitaldavidson.net\/dig215\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1851","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.digitaldavidson.net\/dig215\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.digitaldavidson.net\/dig215\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.digitaldavidson.net\/dig215\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/108"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.digitaldavidson.net\/dig215\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1851"}],"version-history":[{"count":17,"href":"https:\/\/courses.digitaldavidson.net\/dig215\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1851\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1870,"href":"https:\/\/courses.digitaldavidson.net\/dig215\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1851\/revisions\/1870"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.digitaldavidson.net\/dig215\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1851"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.digitaldavidson.net\/dig215\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1851"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.digitaldavidson.net\/dig215\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1851"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}