"This is the story, of seven strangers, picked to live in a house..."

This week’s readings seemed pretty dense when I was reading through them; I think a trouble spot for me was understanding Baudrillard’s applications to real world examples – I feel like he wouldn’t appreciate my use of “real world” there… The Disneyland reference was intriguing however; being from the Los Angeles area, I can sort of understand his stress on these bizarre fantasy theme parks on top of the absurd luxury of the stereotypical LA lifestyle. Everything can seem so artificial at times.

Aside from my confusion, I really enjoyed Snow Crash, particularly the ideas of contagion and viral outbreaks in a dual digital/somatic form. People always talk about computer viruses wrecking havoc on their computers, but it’s odd to think of a computer virus, one that effects data and hardware crossing the digital barrier and getting inside your head to do god knows what. Especially if someone were to think of a cyborg, being vulnerable to both a computer and human disease would be incredibly unfortunate. As fictional and sci-fi as Snow Crash is, it’s interesting to think about the possibility of disease jumping “species” from computer to human and spreading throughout the world, either through a human vector or your trusty Macbook. I feel like this is a movie..