Reflection for March 12 class - virtual reality

For this class, we covered a lot of ground and I opened up to some new possibilities, having seen Second World and World of Warcraft for the 1st time. I can imagine the excitement of NetGenners at these fantasy/reality worlds. I'm a fairly imaginative person and having been into SciFi for a long time I can attest to the attraction I have for some of these applications. Tron was a watershed moment for me, but kinda from a graphics level as well as a fantasy level.

I remain disturbed that war and conflict seem to be keystone trends in manjy of these virtual worlds and I'd like to know if anyone else here feels the same way. I'm not sure this a healthy outlet. March 11th saw a teenager in Germany kill 16 people including himself - "a classic case of a conflicted young man who wreaked havoc in real life after savoring imaginary violence in the digital world" [New York Times, March 13]. Of course, there is no way to regulate this information and the genie is out of the bottle already.

We also made a podcast file together, which was very enjoyable, based as it was on Dr. Ellen Wagner's excellent, professional and academic talk of the previous week. That had a feeling of cameradery which we do enjoy as a cohort group in this class.

I do firmly believe that now, more than ever, people need real connections with other people, and deep and personal connections, especially in learning situations . . . I think that technology should be viewed as only an enhancement and not the main subject; though it is, for us of course, a subject in itself worthy of study. I'm just not sure how much serious growth is possible, though, without real experience through human connection, unless we want to be part chip ! (I think some imagine they would enjoy that).

I'd rather not smell things through my monitor; real smells abound all around and that's e-nuff for me.