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...

The role of media in Cayce's life

Cayce is full of contradictions, she works for advertising and marketing companies yet she dreads living in a world full of logos and brands. She is part of a world she doesn't want to belong to and she plainly shows that by eliminating all labels and brands from the simple unidentifiable clothes, or CPU's as she calls them, she wears. Similarly Cayce has a hard relationship with the media, "she's under a personally enforced video news ban in effect now for some time." (p. 123) It seems that she is always looking for a way to escape the world be it the footage, her virtual friends on the forum or Pilates. She is a troublesome character and hopefully will find some degree of peace as the novel develops.

The role technology plays in Cayce's life

Cayce Pollard lives in a limbo, not really belonging to the world still being part of it and having the ability to unveil forming patterns. She only has one true interest in her life, the footage and “anything other than the footage is Off Topic. The world, really. News. Off Topic.” (p. 48) Technology enables her to access her “second home” (p.67), the internet forum Fetish:Footage:Forum, that feels “like a friend’s living room.” (p. 67) Technology offers her refuge, protection from reality and everything else that is “Off Topic.”