A Reflection

We've covered a lot of things in this Culture, Power, Cyberspace course and I have learned a ridiculous amount of interesting information from this class. From the history of the telegraph to the idea of cultural domains intersecting to the original virtual worlds like Hunt the Wumpus and Utopia to online acronyms and terminology to voiced and unvoiced consonants, the list can go on and on. It's been a great experience and I wish all my other classes could be as fun and memorable as this one. I think one thing that has stuck out in my mind after taking this course is that there is so much information written about online worlds and cyberspace. I thought it would be cool to do a research project on Facebook (and it totally was) because before this class I hadn't thought about such an idea, and as it turns out there is already a lot of research done on the subject.

It has just been fascinating to see that the games and technologies we have today aren't the first of their kind, which is what I tend to think when I see them. It was good to learn about the history and timelines of virtual worlds, games and technology to see how far we have progressed from our initial trials. It would be cool if we could get as advanced as the World Builder machinima we saw in class and actually create something like that in real life. That would be so rad if I could just move my fingertips around and make a building or something. I'd build myself a new house everyday. We need to get on this. I sometimes wonder if we're going to look back at the technology we have now and think it was so archaic. I feel it'll be like looking through an old yearbook and wondering why we would wear such weird clothes or have such odd hairstyles, but instead we'll look back at our technology and wonder how we ever got along without flying cars and time machines. I'm dreaming big here. It has just been fun to see the advances we have made through time and to think about where we're going to be in the future and I'm thankful that this class has allowed me to do such things and also get course credit for it too. -Renee