My final project is an essay exploring ideas about technology paranoia as we've seen in several of the works we studied. I wanted to allow myself some blank space to to just think out some ideas about why people are afraid of technology, especially virtual reality, and why it shows up in such strong media images as The Lawnmower Man's ridiculous psycho internet murderer plot, or the massive scary war in The Matrix. I read a blog entry by Henry Jenkins that is about Second Life, actually, that I found very relevant while I was writing this, so I ended up quoting some of the discussion from there. The entry was about how Second Life is sometimes heralded as the coming of the Virtual Age, when everything will be totally and completely immersive and virtual a la Snow Crash or Feed or something similar, and how that's a really wrongheaded conception of Second Life, because people pattern their internet behaviors after their real-life behaviors, so all virtual reality can really end up doing is reinforcing the real world with its secondary structures. It was all very interesting stuff - I hope it came across as that interesting in my essay - and in any case, I want to say that this class has been really, really fun. I'm keeping a bunch of my texts and and I have a lot of stuff bookmarked to check out on the internet from now on. Thanks Dr. Whalen!