The Blog Project

See, English 110 exists outside of the classroom. We'll be sharpening our analytical minds in this heated arena: blog-dom.

The point of the blog is for you to practice making 1) observations and 2) analyses on the material you come across in your day-to-day virtual lives, and then to share your analytical experiments with your classmates. Take this opportunity to explore the course theme and broaden your understanding of your chosen sources. Social media, YouTube, and online articles are rife with opportunities for interesting analysis. So impress us with your brilliance, hipness, and pop-cultural savoir faire. This is all about practice (and nerd/cool points, of course) so really go for it.

Let's say to post (roughly) once every other week, which makes a minimum of 5 posts total. There's no limit to how much you can post. But I'll remind you: if you start honing your analytical skills here, your grade and your chances for success over the next few years will markedly improve. Try stuff out--this is graded simply on doing it. If you're truly exploring, you'll probably make some analytical trips that you look back on and are slightly embarrassed about--and that's a good thing.

Wednesday, September 28, 2011

Sci-Fi Airforce Commercials: Video Games and real life

My brother is at Westpoint training to be an officer in the US Army. He tells me that some of the video games on the market--Call of Duty--are said to be so good that they're used in more relaxed tactical strategies classes. He also mentions that everyone seems to play the same game, that they launch massive lan parties throughout their dorms, and that a person's skill at the game has a huge influence on their status within their Westpoint communities. He also says that the Iraq veterans he knows are blown away by how accurate the gameplay is. What do we do with this?

That seemed all fine and good to me. But then I saw an advertisement for the US Airforce: "This is not Science Fiction. This is what we do everyday." Check out the website: www.airforce.com. Their site looks like a PC game menu. And if you look at some of the videos on the site, there are some very interesting ones--ones that present the Airforce's day-to-day actions in videogame/or Sci-fi movie format. Check out this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W_2OgcbYAYY

Granted, this does seem to make sense: war has been infinitely more technological in the past fifty years. Robots fly planes and drop bombs without needing human input--you just press "Go" (and hopefully "Stop"). But what is the Airforce trying to get at with these ads? Who are they catering to? What types of young 18 year olds? Is this a fair depiction of war?
The airforce videos all seem to depict a rescue mission or some other non-violent action the airforce is involved in. Yet the videogames have none of that. What's going on here?
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