Time is sure flying by. Can’t believe that week 2 has already concluded. Our film festival was once again intriguing and thought provoking and brought out a vast array of comment and discussion. I took some time after the Togethertube meetup to watch the clips again and thought I would unpack and express my thought
We Attack Ourselves
A dark short film with a somber tone,which is clearly set in a dystopian existence where experiments with humans and machines are conducted. The cyborg is watching video which seems to be putting him under immense distress and pain. It is extremely difficult to figure if his rage is brought about by memories of resentment to the people who clearly created him or perhaps despair over a sense of longing for his partner.
Stop Dave, I’m afraid (from 2001: A Space Odyssey)
A Kubrickian classic! This movie really brought the idea of computer sentience into mainstream media. In the scene we see Dr.Dave Bowman in the process of destroying or reprogramming HAL 9000. Perhaps what we are really seeing is a human taking back control from a machine. This clip demonstrate that humans are able to think non-linearly and ‘think outside of the box’ for lack of a better term in order to meet a certain outcome. Computers on the other hand are only able to function linearly which means they take certain inputs and come up with certain number of outputs. Dr. Bowman’s ‘weapon’ of free thought might of been what enabled him to defeat HAL.
Gumdrop
A cute little movie about a robot who believes she is human. Her performance is so convincing, I almost believed she was human-like and could see past the exterior. Perhaps things like her voice, humor, emotions, lip movements and gestures are what actually make her almost human. If you take that away, all that left with is an outer shell. Humans are no different, take away our emotions and the ability to express ourselves and we too could be considered less than human.
I have to just add that vacuuming talent was kind of weird.
Looking forward to Week 3.
Cheers
Em
This is a really good summary of the film festival clips Emlyn. You picked up on some of the key points here, and you could look to make relations between these ideas and some of the broader themes from the core readings in block 1.
For future lifestream summaries, you will need to start reflecting on the specific feed items that you have coming into your lifetstream. Remember that these end of week summaries are supposed to be about your specific lifestream content, rather than about the week in general. We’re looking for some reflection on *why* you’ve included a particular tweet or video, and how this choice has been influenced by your reading of the core and secondary literature.
As we draw block 3 to a close, it would be great for you to try and sum up your explorations so far by coming back to the subject of education. Perhaps think about questions such as: How might have cybercultures have shaped our understandings of technology in education? How can we use the narratives we find in SciFi to form a critical understanding of digital education?
Thank you for the comment Jeremy. That is a very useful idea to try and bring together my ideas from the lifestream. I will make this my focus this week by looking more into an educational standpoint. Cheers Em