Final Exam

Reading (w/) the Digital Human is, I believe, primarily concerned with dispelling the myth of real versus virtual (a dichotomy pervasive in our culture) and that digital technology represents a ‘new’ (or even better or worse) form of human existence. By starting with the iPad and e-books, we as English majors confronted a topic close to home: The paper book versus the digital copy and whether one is more physical or “real” than the other. This was opened up to the wider field of the digital age including art, music, and social media. It seemed to me that the culmination of the class occurred in Brian Massumi’s Parables of the Virtual, which made clear that all experience is virtual to some degree because of our mind’s reliance on prostheses; using a computer is not that far removed from typing with your hands or viewing through eyes. Calvino’s If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler further drew attention to this mediation and sense of space. It was a physical book that drew attention to its own virtuality and our placement within that strata. Another theme we spent time exploring was what place means in regards to new media; For example, where are you when you are on the internet? You seem to inhabit both, say, a book store and the uncomfortable low backed chair you are sitting in. There are also servers that that data you are browsing seem to physically inhabit. We discussed what this may mean for our consciousness; unfortunately, it became quite clear that there are no easy answers.

I would choose to add what is pretty consistently considered one of the greatest narrative video games of all time, Deus Ex, to the class syllabus. This allows us to explore a different type of digital narrative and media, one that was only touched upon in class when we discussed the “choose your own adventure” stories. What are the differences between an e-book and game? Are the two blending? Further, the game’s story directly deals with themes of prosthesis and the evolution of technologies. It is also steeped in post-cyberpunk culture, thus making William Gibson’s Neuromancer the perfect lead in.

-Andrew Maxwell