This is another piece of work, while taking stock of the few weeks into the EDEC course.  I started out unsure what culture was, and then the plethora of images and sounds from edcMooc and edec colleagues on eLearning and Digital Cultures presented each day helped build the picture.  Reading the core materials over the weeks, I am being sensitised to many terminologies, concepts.  As part of the detox, I am looking at cultures from a different lense.

This is a result of a visit to the Autoworld Museum in Brussels. It certainly has helped me streamline my thoughts on eLearning and Digital cultures.  There is more to consider especially the impact on schooling and education but this will have to come later.  All picture copyright belongs to T.Meckenstock.

In the film,  genetically engineered organic robots called replicants are manufactured.  The replicants have a shorter life span so that they do not become masters but always subservient to the manufacturer. There have been designed to be like human to perform menial and dangerous tasks.

There are many parallels in real life in the context of immigration where new comers are sometimes regarded as second class citizens, and once their service is no longer required, they are not welcome any more.  In fact, there is much to learn from the new comers, apart from the diversity it brings, they also introduce different skills and talents and they are as human as anyone else.

A question was posed about being human, in this last series of the film festival, and it certainly gives us something to think about.  What is human in the virtual domain, and when is there a cross over between the virtual and the real? In the Blade Runner, it seems to me the values of humans, are lower than those possessed by the replicants.  The line, “tears in the rain” is apt to describe how we regard the feelings of the replicant  as non-relevant, like tears in the rain.