Alison Post 5

Our discussion of the futuristic technologies of Murakami and Gibson's works brought to mind a video that was very popular when I was in high school. I'm from the middle of nowhere in the Finger Lakes region in upstate New York, but one thing that we do have is Corning. Corning does quite a bit of engineering work, but is perhaps most famous for CorningWare and its glass that is used for things like iPhones and spaceships. Corning released a video in 2011 when I was in 11th grade called "A Day Made of Glass." (The resolution may or may not be better if you click through to YouTube.)

In the video, there are all sorts of futuristic uses of glass, in ways that admittedly look really intriguing. The high tech worlds in the works we read would still be a long way off, but strides are being made in our society to integrate technology even more with our everyday lives. Is this a good thing? Maybe, or maybe not. There are all sorts of issues that come with technology - perhaps including detachable razor-thread thumbs, or literally turning off the voices of women - and technology is not always accessible to everyone. For every good that new technologies add to the world, how far behind does it leave those who can't afford it?

We also discussed online personas quite a deal, and I do believe that people have a number of personas, whether they realize it or not. Perhaps there are people out there who behave the same no matter what, but that would be the exception. Most people behave differently around different people, with whole sides of personalities becoming hidden or unearthed. I don't believe I have a strongly different online presence than I do in person, but there are slight differences. I play a lot of World of Warcraft, and my personality when I'm playing is far more confident than I am in real life. Perhaps I fear the shame of being incorrect less when someone does not actually know who I am, but I speak up more and willingly engage in conversations with strangers about the game or even controversial topics. When I am playing, I feel like an expert, and that is reflected in my online personality.

Finally, when we watched the video of Tom Gibson, his speech style reminded me a lot of my late stepfather, Will. Of course, I am not a psychiatric professional and can make no diagnoses, but his manner of speaking (pacing, intonation patterns, etc.) was strikingly similar to Will's, who very likely had Asperger's Syndrome (and had had multiple surgeries for brain cancer). It may be a stretch, but with Gibson's intense focus on science fiction, it would be interesting to think about his life and career under the framework of Asperger's and how that may have influenced his works and his life. It may also be very likely that Gibson suffers from no such social difference, but I couldn't stop thinking about it once I had made the connection.