HW 15: ABCDEF 3 - Treasure Hunting

Vincent,

I particularly enjoy reading your blog because your ideas are so unconventional. Your detached attitude towards the status of the world even as you acknowledge it as a tragedy is interesting.

Some of the points I thought was worth recognizing in your posts included the way you thought Feed was more like an exaggerated version of our society rather than an exact reflection. Although I also believe that some of his ideas are a bit exaggerated, I think his ultimate purpose was to illustrate the effects and get readers to understand that the consequences are as every bit important in the book as it is in real life. I also got the idea from one of your posts that you blamed the parents of Feed's society more than you did the children. It's obvious that by conforming to the digitalization of their era the teenagers are massively contributing to its expansion. "The feed isn't have is making us dumber it is the adults who make the stuff and control our lives from birth to death. We as humans never had a choice to choose." Why don't you feel that we don't have a choice?

I also liked how you referred to video games as curves more than straight paths which are represented in T.V. shows. I agree that video games allow you to create more of a narrative rather than following a mapped out path that is shown through books and T.V. shows. I also found it interesting how you connected the rules of the games to the way we are controlled by rules in real life. Are you implying that these games are teaching us to be obedient members of society? It makes me think about the conversation we had about being offered only a limited amount of options and being able to only choose from those choices. In this case of the video game, the rules act as our limits and even though we think the key is to use these rules to its full advantage to gain success, we also need to keep in mind that we're still making decisions within these boundaries, just the way the creators of the game want you to. That's their way of convincing you that you have narrative freedom in the game when in fact you don't because you're stuck with a bunch of rules you need to abide to.

In some cases, you seem to acknowledge and understand an opposing perspective but still manage to keep your own. In others you seem to completely rule out certain arguments and deem yours correct. It might be helpful next time if you take a look at an idea in a different perspective and try to understand where its coming from and why its being said before you argue against it.

The voice and mood you project through your posts is different from many other blogs and it's nice to hear about digitalization in a way that clashes its conventional theories. Looking forward to reading more of your work. (:

Jenise,

I like how personal your posts are and how you are able to connect a lot of the ideas you take from class and from the book to your own life. For example, you gave an example of how you took the old fashioned route of looking up schools in the book store rather than on the internet.

I liked the topic you chose for your informal research, where you compared analog recordings to digital recordings of music. "Digital Recording methods have lowered peoples expectations of themselves in the studio." Basically anyone can become a singer now that technology is advanced enough to distort your voice and certain sounds in order to make it sound good. It takes away from the authenticity of music. But most producers and artists choose that over analog because it is more efficient and apparently makes the song sound "better."

I realized how your DRD experiment is exactly the opposite of Feed. In your experiment you try to live without DRDs for a day, where you realized that you don't actually need to use this stuff and you figured out how to spend your time more "wisely." In Feed however, like you said, teens "lose the essence of being a Human" because they've turned into society's puppets. Do you think present day teens will ever realize like you did that DRDs aren't necessary and that by having it attached to their hips all the time that they're turning themselves into brainless objects?

It might be helpful to probe your ideas a little more. Dig a little deeper and try to find out more aspects in the book that you think reflects the way our generation is today.

Your experiment makes me want to try it out for myself. I've thought about doing it and I've probably done it before but I've never really looked closely at the way I was feeling without it. I have a couple of predicted outcomes but I want to actually see if they're true or if I would feel the same way you did after your experiment.

Interesting posts and topics you picked for your informal research and experiment. Hope to read more. (: