prp – Third Quarter Feedback

1. What connections have you seen among all the imaginative representations of gender and technology that we’ve looked at?
There is always a choice as to how to use something i.e. either in a good way or a bad way (the interpretations of these ways are loose). However, in Metropolis, The Handmaid’s Tale and Watchmen, we see how the misuse of technology, a creation of mankind, can lead to dire problems in maintaining our current way of life. The misuse of technology is the reason why the workers wanted to revolt in Metropolis, why the Republic of Gilead was set up with its laws in The Handmaid’s Tale and why war was a turning into a probability in Watchmen. These dark futuristic or alternate versions of reality could be interpreted as a commentary on the way mankind might be headed. However, there appears to be a possibility of redeeming ourselves or creating a better life at the end of all three so there is the possibility of changing and learning from experiences.

2. How do these works contribute to your understandings of gender, technology or the relations between them?
I see that machines are predominantly used by men in Metropolis and Watchmen and that women, as other people have pointed out, can be considered a technology used by men in The Handmaid’s Tale. I’m not sure what the other relations or significant gender-technology themes are.

3. Any other feedback about how the class has been working the past three weeks, w/ all the small group work we’ve been doing? are there other things you’d like to be doing in class that we haven’t done yet, or that you’d like to do more of?
I’ve enjoyed working in the same small group for a particular topic as we can have deeper conversations on each meeting. I also like that we had groups mixed with each other – it helped the dynamic of the conversation by bringing in other viewpoints.

4. What concrete suggestions do you have in particular about wordpress functionality?
I was wondering if there was a way to view the number of comments we’ve made just like we’re able to see the number of posts we’ve done. Also, it would be helpful if there were more options to format our writing or maybe a link to look up HTML code so that we can format it ourselves.

5. what has your experience been with posting and receiving on-line commentary on your papers?
I’ve been able to post and view comments without trouble. I just need to become more regular about it 🙂