Candace's E-learning and Digital Cultures site

Dr Strangelove doesn’t quite fit the bill in the sense that the technology that’s threatening the earth isn’t physically embedded in everyday life, but obviously its existence (i.e. the possibility of a ‘doomsday machine’, or a kill code transmitted to bombers) is accepted, and affects people’s view of their own safety on a grand scale. (Or this would be pure sci fi rather than satire.) The two alternatives posed to us–create a Nazi-esque underground ‘utopia’ or let the surface of the earth be exterminated–are highly dystopian, and direct results of handing control over to computers.

Strange Days is another one I wouldn’t really recommend, but has a couple interesting features. One would be its determination to date itself by being set merely four years in the future (as the trailer, for some reason, is really keen to highlight).

The other is the idea that you can experience someone else’s life. There are lots of sci fi movies where you can put yourself into a new situation, or play a character, or control an Avatar, but I can’t think of very many where you experience someone else’s life, including physical sensations and emotions. (Maybe Being John Malkovich…but this isn’t really tech-assisted…)

Strange Days also bypasses the ‘this new technology is great’ stage of similar movies and goes straight to the evil underbelly–i.e. it can’t be used to encourage empathy or compassion, but rather to breathe new life into the porn industry and give serial killers a unique way to taunt the police. Still, the idea of technology allowing people to understand better what it’s like to be someone else–along with the misgivings associated with letting people know too much–is certainly present in much discussion surrounding Web 2.0.

Wanted to keep this video that Anne tweeted. Among many other things, it’s a good reminder that dichotomies like pedagogy v. technology–or digital versus ‘analogue’!–are flawed at levels that we often don’t realise.

Anyone remember this one from nearly twenty years ago? The Net wasn’t exactly the mind control of Sight, but made good use of the term ‘identity theft’ to generally freak people out. In this case, it seemed to be a combination of the idea that the web is a cache of personal information for The Man with the more provocative notion that it opens up the risk of actually losing one’s real identity by participating in a virtual environment.

I was looking for the Nissan advert from yesterday’s Synchtube session when I came upon this one. While the people are ethnically neutral, they’re a hetrosexual (unless that’s a kilt…?) two-kid family made entirely of electricity… This is certainly suggesting that when you go digital (=electricity) and not analogue (=gas/petrol), you’re entering some other sort of world…the world of iPhones, remote start-up, and two-dimensional floating shapes…