First of all…I’m a little upset I spent like 15 bucks on one 1 megabyte of information on the Jackson cd-rom. Anyway… I thought Patchwork Girl was an interesting experience. I am not really sure how I should describe it outside of that. I actually found the ability to go off on tangents to be [...]
Blog Post #16: The Diamond Age is over…
Alright…I’m late!! I have to admit, I am a little upset we will not be reading anymore of Stephenson this semester. This was my favorite book that we read ths entire semester. Stephenson is an author after my own heart. I don’t know what it was exactly, but the combination of historical precedence and bleak [...]
Blog Post #15: Diamond Age Reloaded
There was a revolution after all. I think I feel a little fulfilled after all that reading. Honestly, this book was a dream come true. Science fiction intermixed with the history of modern China. I guess the whole message is that regardless of how society changes, human behavior remains the same perhaps. I mean we [...]
Update (Reloaded)
2 posts up for this week. 1 about the article and 1 about some of the concepts in relation to the novel. Hope we have a good discussion. NEW UPDATE: Figured I put up some examples of the virtual reality in entertainment. First is a trailer from the 1982 movie TRON (Classic, if you haven’t [...]
Blog Post # 14: The Diamond Age and Marie-Laure Ryan
So how can we connect the theories about virtual reality in Ryan’s work with the novel by Stephenson? Stephenson’s novel The Diamond Age is obviously a very science oriented novel. Every aspect of life is connected to technology in some sort of way. Most goods are synthetically produced, and hand-made goods have become a very [...]
Blog Post # 13: The Virtual: “Fake” or “Potential”?
Greetings everyone! This stuff was all about some theory and whatnot. I hope you enjoy. *Note- there are two related posts above this one. You might not see them if you’ve linked over from the class page. “The Two (and Thousand) Faces of the Virtual,” a chapter from Marie-Laure Ryan’s book Narrative as Virtual Reality: [...]
Blog Post #12: Galatea 2.2 Wrap-up
Despite the nature of the book, I really liked Galatea 2.2. Although the structure was pretty chaotic, I felt like Powers constantly wants the reader to feel uneasy. Uneasy about the subject matter, and also uneasy about the ideas concerning knowledge presented. So what is Power’s arguing? I’m not really sure with this book. Much [...]
Blog Post #11: Galatea 2.2
Sorry if this post is a bit late, I was having problems with the network. I very much enjoyed this piece by Richard Powers. Although the overtly technical nature of much of the novel could be a distraction, I thought Powers did a very nice job connected everything to his narrative thread. First Impressions: I [...]
Blog Post #10: Pessl, Fitzpatrick wrap-up
Hmmm….what can I say about these works that we didn’t already? I guess I want to talk about several issues. I think the whole Franzen-Oprah thing is absolutely ridiculous. I decided to do a quite bit of research on it, and wikipedia (god it’s great for thumbnail info!) quotes Franzen as saying “I see this [...]
Blog Post #9: Fitzpatrick and Pessl
What can I say about Pessl and Fitzpatrick after reading the two sections from The Anxiety of Obsolescence? That is a pretty good question. However, several things in the Fitzpatrick work caught my attention. Primarily, I was intrigued by a quote on the 17 page of the piece. The idea that most interested me is [...]
