There are many, many notes that i took at this weeks symposium. Yes, this is a good thing because usually my mind drifts off however, this time Adrain Miles fully engaged my attention.
He begun the lecture by saying ‘all computer lids must be closed, phones must be put away’, was this fair?
Did this make sense as we were attending a ‘Networked Media’ lecture?
When I think about my answer, i would agree with Adrian as without the distraction of a screen, we are more likely to communicate and the room feels smaller and closer together. Its funny to think that the room feels smaller because there are no computer lids open with access to the world wide web, an additional world of communication that separates the lecture theatre. Computers provide us with a form of communication for when we are alone, or with friends, or traveling the world.
So I agree with Adrian’s attempt to bring the room closer together.
He brought up the concept of a story or a book, and how rhyme subverts reason. A story has an end in sight, where nothing is accidental feeding the reader false expectations as we live in a real world, prone to accidents. Every time i read a particular book or watch a particular film, i get attached to a particular character and their life events, so when i finish, i find it hard to get over that they aren’t real and never will be. So, instead, I set up expectations of how people around me should behave and why every time i fight with my boyfriend i expect for him to come running over to me in the rain and sweep me off my feet with a bunch of flowers in his hand for me, due to many movie moments where a character has done this.
And so my point being, we do live a life where we expect happy endings for ourselves, some to end up in a loving and perfect family and others to travel the world and settle down with a beautiful, foreign partner, and i can’t help but think that books and movies are to blame for our expectations never fully being met.