Final

1. Book groups:
One thing that was really amazing about the book group is the ability for us to get able to make our own requirements and activities for how we were going to structure our work. I think that is was really the only aspect of class in which we actually got to know other people and had that physical-space interaction with people. On plurk especially we are, as a class, able to get together in an alternate space than that in the physical sense and have a continued discussion twenty four hours a day and seven days a week. But as I’ve mentioned in previous blog posts I think that plurk does take a level of personal touch out of the classroom and the book discussion groups definitely made up for that. It was strange not actually knowing anyone’s name in the group when we’d first started, even after over a month of class. I still currently have NO IDEA what the name is of one of the kids in our book group, but it’s strange that because of the way that this class was structured that that doesn’t really seem to matter. I almost feel like the aspects of the different parts of class (class discussion, plurk and blogs) almost stripped off the social need of calling people by their given name. Even though I do not know that kid’s name in our class we’ve still been able to go about our small group discussions about the book Dust.
With our group specifically it was nice to be able to meet outside of the classroom (especially when we’d meet at Avellino and were able to sit and drink some great coffee in a very comfortable atmosphere). Even meeting after class outside in the sun was great and definitely allowed a way to sit down and interact with each other and have in-depth talks about the book. I think that the book Dust that in itself gave us a very different feeling when reading it than the other texts we had in class. The fiction story (so not like Radical Alterity, Life Extreme and The Filth) was one story from start to finish (making it different from Ribofunk) and actually seemed to make sense to us (unlike The Ticket that Exploded and Postsingular) so the book was must more enjoyable to read. It was easy to get really caught up in the story, where I actually want to pick it up and continue reading it.
One thing that our discussion group allowed us to do was talk without the presence of a professor which I lets us to be more comfortable with ourselves and not have that feeling of being graded based on the quality of our thoughts over our head. That level of comfortability that you get from having a discussion with a group of college kids is much different than talking in a class, and I think that in many ways it allowed us to broaden our ideas and say things that maybe we normally wouldn’t say in class. (Or in my case, seeing as I’m completely uncomfortable talking in class at all, it gave me a part of class where I felt that I could talk). On a personal level I swear a lot when I talk and when I speak up in class I tend to end up cussing up a storm on accident (in this class it doesn’t matter but it still makes me weary of talking up in class) and working with a bunch of other students relieves that stress and allows me to use whatever vulgar words I want when I speak. On the other hand not being in a class with a professor running the discussion it is very easy to get off topic and start talking about things that in no way relate to the book.
The only aspect of the book group that wasn’t quite structured well is simply the fact that we are a bunch of college students who have busy as hell lives and it makes it really difficult for us to actually challenge each other. I think that we did well enough at getting a decent amount of work done out of this project but we definitely could have done a lot more. Because the book groups are set up in a way in which we are supposed to be creating, discussing, and evaluating each other, the stress that comes with being graded by a professor (the stress that usually is the driving force and motivation of getting us to do work) isn’t there and therefore making sure we are actually doing what we’re supposed to was kind of hard. There were a couple times where we kind of blanked that we were even in a book group and we had to kind of regroup and come together after class to update ourselves on what we’re supposed to be doing. Overall our group worked pretty satisfactory but there was definitely room for us to have challenged ourselves a little bit more.
2. Blogs:
For this part of my final I chose to read the blog entries done by Kathryn, or as I know her, kc mea. I think that the main thing that is different in our blogs is that she actually touches on the books in her posts, which I really do not. I am not a fan of analyzing books and I am also not very good at it, so I always go out of my way to find something else that would be better to talk about. I’m actually pretty sure that I never even once mentioned anything about the books in any of my blog posts. (Not that I’m saying that kc mea goes in depth analyzing any of the books, because she definitely doesn’t. But she does actually mention reading them, or struggling to read them.) One thing that I find really interesting is that some of her blogs are writing about topics that I don’t ever remember discussing in class or on plurk but she is obviously referencing something that at some point had been discussed some time in relation to the class. This just goes to show that with the various aspects of the class, people focus on different things and catch different topics of discussion. One main difference in these blog posts could be because I never once spoke up in class and kc mea did, so maybe she paid a lot more attention when it came to keeping up with the conversations being had. I found that in my blogs I tended to focus on things like how the formation of the class itself has affected me (like my various blogs: Class, Plurk, Like Many People… A Plurk about Fridays Class). The majority of my blogs were focused on Plurk because that was by far the most fascinating part of class to me and allowed me to try and relate technology to our class. It’s interesting to think that both me and kc mea probably got the same amount of impact from this class yet, if using the blog as evidence, found it in completely different ways based on the different parts of class.
One thing that I did find interesting is kc mea’s most recent post about sex was when she mentioned that she was one of the only people that raised her hand when Prichard asked if anyone had never seen porn before. I definitely think that because many of the texts were so sexualized that I wonder if we both got the same amount out of them that I did seeing as I love porn and am a lot more comfortable with it. After we had a class discussion about porn I went over to my friend’s apartment that happened to have just gotten a huge pile of free porno magazines from a moving neighbor. So me and James spent about six hours hanging out and looking at Penthouse and Playboy, and amusingly enough just spent the time comparing pictures and comics and talking about the lingerie the women were (and weren’t) wearing.
3. Doubles/Doppelganger:
My absolute favorite topic of discussion in class was doppelgangers because I have always thought that it is one of the most interesting ideas to think about. When I began reading the Invention of Morel I had no idea that the people on the island were all doubles but as the repetition continued I slowly began to notice the difference. These doubles do not actually react to the world around them, they are simply a three dimensional photographic image that continues to repeat the events that happened before. I don’t quite consider these to be actually doppelgangers because they aren’t actual living beings in the sense that they can make their own decisions. When I think of doppelgangers I think of two identical people who are separate entities but are technically the same. The idea of doppelgangers from the Invention of Morel is extremely different then the idea of doppelgangers from the Filth, in which the doppelgangers are actually genetically created to take the place of the original. Greg Feely’s double isn’t just identical to Greg, he is actually a huge asshole who doesn’t give a damn about anything that has to do with the real Greg. This is shown by the fact that the real Greg loves his cat Tony and Greg’s doppelganger goes out of his way to try and kill the cat.
Even the idea of identical twins is something that I’ve also loved, especially the common childhood hope of having an identical twin that was separated from you at birth (total Parent Trap style). On the other hand, there is also the idea of having a doppelganger through time travel, like having you older self travel back in time to talk to you, or impart wisdom to you. I think that one of the most amusing things was when someone plurked the comment wondering if having sex with your doppelganger is considered incest, masturbation, gay or any of the mix. (I’ve actually had long conversations about this with Jamie’s boyfriend, trying to figure out where exactly sex with a doppelganger fits).
All of these different aspects of the definition of doppelgangers are completely unique from each other but yet in a way are all very similar. I think that the more technology that is able to produce it then the more advanced the doppelganger is. Like in the Invention of Morel, the machine that created the doubles only took a ‘photograph’ of the people, causing a 3D video of the people. Whereas the doubles in the Filth are much more advanced and are actual biological created human doppelgangers. And then even on a more technological level the idea of time travel makes a doppelganger that is actually the same person. So the steps seem to go that from the steps of least technology to most technology the doppelganger advances from photograph, to biological double to actual identical double.