http://www.samplereality.com/gmu/fall2006/spectacle ENGL 705 / CULT 860 @ George Mason University (Fall 2006) Thu, 07 Dec 2006 06:28:42 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en So, here are the links I wanted to talk about during my presentation today, but didn’t really have the chance.  Please please please, at the very least, watch New York City: After The Fall, We Can’t Rewind.  It’s particularly interesting in the elements of spectacle used; you literally cannot rewind ... http://www.samplereality.com/gmu/fall2006/spectacle/12/07/information-and-links-that-you-can-look-up-at-your-leisure/ Please forgive my very late post.    Who could forget 9/11?  Isn’t it interesting that we have so many 9/11s – I mean each year we have one but yet there is truly only one ‘real’ 9/11, which took place in 2001. Most people no longer use the year to refer to ... http://www.samplereality.com/gmu/fall2006/spectacle/12/06/a-name-for-sure-but-what%e2%80%99s-in-a-partial-date/   I swear I didn't put off this post since it was the last of the semester. I really enjoyed this weeks writings and thought that we could have spent weeks on them alone as an example of spectacle in (at least our own) society.  But looking at the writings as a ... http://www.samplereality.com/gmu/fall2006/spectacle/12/06/what-to-do/ I was a seventeen year old high school senior in Arlington during the events of 9/11. I remember walking into a second period government class and seeing the first plane’s impact crater already smoking, embedded in the rubble of tower one. At the time, everyone thought this was some kind ... http://www.samplereality.com/gmu/fall2006/spectacle/12/06/911-spectacle/ I love the personified Earth image- Gaia is a comforting idea. Since the more I see and learn about politics and war, the more I become completely bitter about humans beings in general, it makes me happy to think the earth might just resist us all. There is one scientist ... http://www.samplereality.com/gmu/fall2006/spectacle/12/06/%e2%80%9cit-is-the-very-world-itself-that-resists-globalization%e2%80%9d/ What’s so interesting about a few of this week’s blog posts (the ones I’ve had a chance to read ) is that I wondered if a few people felt a little weary of talking about September 11th honestly; it may be completely imagined, but some people seemed to be a ... http://www.samplereality.com/gmu/fall2006/spectacle/12/06/spectacle-of-a-tragedy/ Somehow, I've managed to make it five years without ever really confronting the spectacle of 9/11. I watched two days of television--Tuesday, Sept. 11 and Wednesday, Sept. 12--with my college roommates, and that was it. No more. I never watched any of the specials, the movies, the ... http://www.samplereality.com/gmu/fall2006/spectacle/12/05/the-real-world-of-material-decay/ Is there a way to view 9/11 outside the realm of spectacle? Or, is there a way to discuss the event without the referent of television and images? Baudrillard asks, "What, then, is a real event if everywhere the image, fiction, virtuality perfuse this very reality?" (413). It's ... http://www.samplereality.com/gmu/fall2006/spectacle/12/05/a-tangled-mess-indeed/ "Where were you...?" Boy, does that phrase (as a country song) make me cringe, whether out of its hokiness or faint scent of sell-out, or from wanting to be intellectually (coolly) apart from mass cultural-emotional reactions to big events that I just know will lead to chain email prayers that ... http://www.samplereality.com/gmu/fall2006/spectacle/12/04/the-process-of-critical-interpretation-and-delillo/ On 9/11/01 I was in school at the U.S. Naval Academy. By noon meal, afternoon classes were canceled and the next time I passed through the gates of the yard I saw tank traps and M16s (up until then the guards were modestly armed and there was only a steel ... http://www.samplereality.com/gmu/fall2006/spectacle/12/03/classifying-and-the-american-flag/ For the most part I seem to have maintained a “Joe’s follower” status on this blog, only that he’d always say something I’d planned to say but in a much more stylistic manner. I’ll follow Joe’s “bad taste” by telling my story of the “planes and buildings thing,” however much a ... http://www.samplereality.com/gmu/fall2006/spectacle/12/03/death-the-un-equalizing-equalizer/ Let me start in bad taste--by recalling where I was when the planes and buildings thing happened. Five falls ago I was living in a dormitory suite with 9 other college sophomores. Most of them were athletes. I remember waking up one morning to an intermittent thunk. My ... http://www.samplereality.com/gmu/fall2006/spectacle/12/02/173/ I read a story about this (which gave me the youtube link) in the Library Journal Academic Newswire. I'm not exactly sure what it has to do with spectacle, but the incident, along with the ensuing conversations that have taken place because of it, are interesting. It reminded ... http://www.samplereality.com/gmu/fall2006/spectacle/11/30/of-interest/ This is the website I was trying to remember the name of in class. It was actually done by a company called stamen design for digg.com, which is a website made up of stories that people dig, to put it overly simply. It's a little different than wefeelfine.com and maybe ... http://www.samplereality.com/gmu/fall2006/spectacle/11/30/more-visual-representation-of-streaming-data/ Let me just start by echoing what others have said that I too found this week's readings particularly engaging. However, with that said, I feel the need to readdress the discuss of what is "real" and what is not. For me this theme continues to creep up week ... http://www.samplereality.com/gmu/fall2006/spectacle/11/29/pondering-the-real-as-i-turn-30/ For those of you who know Jamiraquai, you know that I am shamelessly stealing the title to one of their songs. However, it's a phrase that I have always found applicable to the internet (or Internet for those of you who love capitalizing things) because of how easy it is ... http://www.samplereality.com/gmu/fall2006/spectacle/11/29/virtual-insanity/ Trying to wrap my thoughts around some of Dibbell's questions, I've been thinking of the relationship between the "real" property and the virtual castle in his Unreal Estate article (and may you be warned, these thoughts haven't had the benefit of viewing all the material for this week yet). I ... http://www.samplereality.com/gmu/fall2006/spectacle/11/29/physicality-and-its-meaning-in-a-changing-society/ As a disclaimer, I’m not an online or offline game person, but now I want to be. I want to change my career or at least have a second job as a trader of virtual commodities; that way I may be able to make some ‘real’ money. Like ... http://www.samplereality.com/gmu/fall2006/spectacle/11/29/a-new-frontier-of-visual-culture/ The internet is a crazy place; I really can’t get my mind around virtual reality. It fascinates and amazes me, while simultaneously making me totally uncomfortable. There is discomfort in the knowledge that reality can be so openly manipulated; undoubtedly, all of the readings from this class force ... http://www.samplereality.com/gmu/fall2006/spectacle/11/29/theres-no-such-thing/ The previous postings have certainly made for interesting reading, I think you all are really onto something here. When I began the readings for this week, I was pleasantly surprised to discover that I couldn’t put them down. The question of what draws people into these virtual societies (as the ... http://www.samplereality.com/gmu/fall2006/spectacle/11/29/internet-heroin-gamming-comodities-and-the-development-of-the-virtual-economy/