Imagine if this were walking in your neighborhood
Dery discusses movies like "The Stepford Wives" and how other writers and artists create robotic humans. Given what we talked about last week regarding nanotechnology, what you're reading about in Dery regarding neruo-linguistic programming (p 232) and the incredible advances in biorobotics to help the injured, how close are we coming to what Dery describes in Chapters 5 and 6?
Compare Dery's discussion of sex and love on the Internet with Wallace's. How is the Internet changing the ways in which some of us think about sex and love?
Lastly, how do you respond to Wallace's last question: What is so compelling about the Internet?
What will the next generation of Internet users (those who are in their pre-teens and teens now) do with cyberspace? And who will guide them in their decisions to use the Internet in more altruistic ways, if that is the way of future Internet use?
Compare Dery's discussion of sex and love on the Internet with Wallace's. How is the Internet changing the ways in which some of us think about sex and love?
Lastly, how do you respond to Wallace's last question: What is so compelling about the Internet?
What will the next generation of Internet users (those who are in their pre-teens and teens now) do with cyberspace? And who will guide them in their decisions to use the Internet in more altruistic ways, if that is the way of future Internet use?
posted by Diane Penrod at 2/12/2005
3 Comments:
Sex has always been the center of the human race. We use it to sell products, lure mates, entertain ourselves and as a basis forexperiments. With every new technology there becomes new ways to deviate that technology in order to use it for sex. The telephone, TV, Cars and the internet were not created for use with sex but that is what it has turned into. Any further technology that we are likely to create in the future there is someone waiting in the wings to see how they can use it for sex. The dawining of the internet really helped the sex explosion. Cybersex was an easy exciting way to try new things because no one knew who you were. You could sign on as a priest or as circus clown and someone would be interested in fulfilling a fantasy. Some of these cybersexual encounters can turn into something more but I don't think that is the intention. The experimentation is what it is about. There are also no chances of STD's on the internet so it is the ultimate in safe sex.
The internet is unlimited. Anything that you could desire can be found on the internet. I think that is why people find it so compelling. A few weeks ago a friend and I were talking about cartoons we used to watch when we were little. There was one that I remembered that I liked but I couldn't remember the name and I only knew on of the characters names and I was able to find it on the internet. Now that is power and really who doesn't like power?
Scott's question about science fiction being a self-fulfilling prophecy is a very good one to consider....
As he raised in class, so many things we see or read about in sf stories often come to pass. And maybe this is because the writers understand the plausibility of the technology they write about. Whether it's wrist watches that act as phones or cameras, cars that do all sorts of amazing things a la James Bond, or movies like "Blade Runner" or "Total Recall" or a thousand other ones we've seen, we're living in a time where we are again witnessing a huge rise in technological advances. Just think how your great-grandparents (my grandparents) felt when they moved from horse and buggy to Model Ts...then to more streamlined cars, indoor plumbing, refrigerators, radios, TVs, stereos, microwaves, and so on.
Now we're at the point where, as Scott says, we have this thing called the Internet -- which we are drawn to (and you'll read more about this for next week) but can't always figure out why. We're also highly connected to technology enhancing us (for better or worse, as we noted this evening)as well as tracking us.
As Jennifer said, we're closer to an era of total-reconstruction surgery than people think. Perhaps with cybersex, we're also closer to pleasure without bodies than people think.
Clearly, the Internet is not going away. Whether Scott sits underneath one of the trees outside of Hawthorn or Bozorth and reads his assignment or Debby sits in the Comp/Rhet office and does her email and tries to figure out how to blog doesn't matter. Wellman and Haythornthwaite are going to give us some ideas as to what this next stage of the Internet will be like.
I'll be interested in seeing how you all think our everyday lives will be (or are) affected.
Great discussion tonight, folks!
Kelly Batten said..
I feel that as technology advances the need for perfection increases. Beauty in today's eyes is set so high and unreachable. The women in today's fashion magazines portray beauty has something very different from what is was years ago. Now with the advancing technology that makes it possibly to change our physical appearance women try to reach the perfection that is portrayed as beauty. Dery talks about this and makes it evident how close we are really becoming to what the future will bring.
I agree with Dery when he talks about how cybersex will grow in the future. In our culture many people are very ashamed of their sexuality, and I feel the internet is a place for them to live out their fantasies. The "cyber world" is the perfect anonymous place to live out the sexual fantiasies people have while still living a "normal" life. I feel this increase of cybersex will only make people live a kind of double life. Sex will become something that isn't what it is...natural and beautiful. It will be demoralized because it will be hidden and not spoke of freely. Love and sex will no longer go hand in hand since many people will be hiding their sexual life's and keeping sex as something separate from love.
The internet is so compelling because whether we as a society are ready or not it will has and will continue to change out lives.
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