Fourth Lab: A Coppertop's Life Artifacts (10/15)

 Like Plato's "Allegory of the Cave," the film The Matrix suggests that the world we live in is not real. Instead, the reality we experience every single day is just a simulation to enslave humanity (in the film, humans serve as "coppertop" batteries for the Machines).

So, for this assignment I would like you to find THREE artifacts (images, short videos, song lyrics, etc.) that represent for you the artificiality of modern life. For each artifact, write about 250 words describing how and why that artifact indicates that the world is, or may be, an illusion. In short:

   1. Locate an artifact that represents artificiality/simulation in contemporary culture.

   2. Post to your blog with a 250 word description of what it is, why you chose it, and its significance.

   3. Repeat x 2 (for 3 SEPARATE blog entries total).

For example, for my first blog post, I might choose a picture of my cellphone

From "Why Would I Sleep?" by KDF

and write a paragraph about how cell phones separate us from talking to real people since the voice we hear it is not even really a real voice but a digitized voice, and etc.

For my second blog post, I would embed or give a link to the following video from the PBS Frontline website Digital Nation



and write a paragraph about how teenagers these days seem to live a "wired" life, which is very similar to the hacker world of The Matrix, and perhaps as deceiving.

And for my third blog post,  I would give a link to the Wikipedia entry for an example of a music mashup: The Grey Album (a mix of Jay-Z's The Black Album and The Beatles' The White Album), and explain how mashups distort our sense of what is original and what is derivative, and therefore, our sense of what is "real."