One of the interesting things about this week’s classes, specifically Thursday’s was the ideas of privacy, survivorship and self. The graph used to describe the path of our lives and how it oscillates as we reach our desired selves was very interesting. It makes sense that our path to what we desire is not straight, and I do believe that removing things like privacy takes away from what makes us, us. By removing privacy and inputting our information into a common network like GI in “Stars in my Pocket Like Grains of Sand” makes us like a unit that can be computed or slotted. Dating sites are an example of this; we input all the information we are willing into a website and let an algorithm compute compatibility for the best possible mate, which also occurs in “Stars” with Rat Korga and Marq Dyeth. We don’t learn anything by being perfectly matched with anyone, we learn through failures with other partners, and through those failures we grow, we become who we really are. By inputting all of one’s information into a database, the line to what we truly desire becomes straight, and almost meaningless if we can predict everything about ourselves.
The different types of categories for the questions we would ask survivors was also very interesting. We discussed ethnographic, ontological and philosophical questions. One of the questions I would have asked a survivor was “do you believe there is a reason that you survived?”, which I believe would have yielded a very interesting answer, especially if the survivor believed preservation of him and what made him was very significant. Everyone on Velm was fascinated by Rat Korga’s survival and it would have been very interesting to see what his answer may have been had he been asked this question.