Podcast

Here is my podcast regarding the uses of virtual worlds nowadays.

Metropolis and the use of technology

Recently we watched Fritz Lang's Metropolis. This raised several questions related to the uses of technology and if technology itself is evil or indifferent. Reminded me of Joyce Carol Oates and her position and questions regarding nature or Nature. In Metropolis the ManRobot is show as an evil thing with one single goal, to seed dissent and confusion among the workers. The movie was made in a time where production processes where being changed with the introduction of assembly lines and people were afraid of becoming simple automatons that would simply spend their days in monotonous repetitive tasks and that could easily be replaced by technology. It was also the birth of unions and worker movements. But lets focus on the question. Is technology evil? I would have to say no! Is the gun shoots a deadly bullet evil? No! The hand that wields it is to blame. Technology is simply a tool, it is what you make of it. The ManRobot in Metropolis was not evil in itself but the twisted mind that created it was. Technology is not evil, people on the other hand can be.

Relationships and Cayce

Throughout the novel Cayce reveals an extreme difficulty to develop close relationships with other people. This difficulty is hinted at in several instances. Her unwillingness to open her mom's emails, her escape from the Tokyo hotel when she "started to project Win on those white walls [...], the image still ungrived." (p. 133) She seems to be surrounded by unresolved relationships, her mother, her dead(?) father, Damien. One of her closest friends is Parkaboy and she hasn't even ever met him in person. And now Boone comes into her life and yet she is unwilling to let her true feelings come forth as she shows when she finds out that he is staying at her ex's apartment in Tokyo, she "hadn't liked it, and doesn't like it that she doesn't like it." (p. 170) Troubled character, Cayce...