Author Archives: Luke Chapman

Hard-Boiled Wonderland as a Metaphor for Life

I immediately saw this book as a metaphor for the way we live. While we exist consciously in our reality, we subconsciously exist in a world inside our heads, represented by the parallel of the even (End of the world) … Continue reading

Posted in VF for Hard-boiled Wonderland and the End of the World | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Humans Controlling Rats with Thoughts

http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/162678-harvard-creates-brain-to-brain-interface-allows-humans-to-control-other-animals-with-thoughts-alone The subject of the article above is a study that was conducted at Harvard University in an attempt to allow the human brain to control an animal with thought. Researchers at Harvard used brain-to-brain Interface to connect to a rat. The … Continue reading

Posted in Contextualization Exercise | Tagged | Leave a comment

Skeptical about Singularity

After watching Ray Kurzweil’s video on singularity, I had no doubt that at some point our intelligence will be so high that we will be able to take objects such as a rock and make them useful technologically, but I … Continue reading

Posted in Contextualization Exercise | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Ghost in the Shell: From human to Robot

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YZX58fDhebc The scene above was by far my favorite scene. It is when the half robot on the table is inhabited by the Puppet Master and he basically begins to reveal what life is in his mind. He states his … Continue reading

Posted in VF for Ghost in the Shell | Tagged , , | 2 Comments

Second Life

While exploring Second Life, I appreciated that we were able to see sites that you can only see from certain parts of the world, as shown in my screenshot. It was virtual reality but I also saw it as an … Continue reading

Posted in Contextualization Exercise, Virtual Forums | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Hyperreal in my life: Video Games

Immersive video gaming is starting to become a part of the lives of video gamers to date but has not become so big that it has consumed us. There is a company called Oculus VR which produces goggles that immerse … Continue reading

Posted in Contextualization Exercise | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Drugs and Technology: Limitations and expansion

One of the major themes of the novel Neuromancer was the use of drugs and how these drugs would make it so Case would be able to function. Here, drugs are seen as an enabler of Case. One of the … Continue reading

Posted in VF for Neuromancer | Tagged | Leave a comment

“Buddhist Robot” and Lydia Liu

At first mention of the Buddhist robot and the fact that the goal of Buddhism is to reach an enlightened state, I immediately thought back to Isaac Asimov’s “Robot Dreams” in which the robot seems to reach another level of … Continue reading

Posted in Contextualization Exercise | Leave a comment

When is the taking of a life beneficial to the lives of others?

While reading Frankenstein after each death, I wonder at what point would it be completely acceptable to kill the monster. When the Monster finds Frankenstein and admits that he killed his brother William, why did Victor not just kill the … Continue reading

Posted in VF for Frankenstein | Tagged , | Comments Off on When is the taking of a life beneficial to the lives of others?