Then again, there is something to be said for truth-in-advertising. This really isn't a gossip column I guess, after all. But things jumped off very nicely in Section 01 today in terms of the conversation.
The seemingly consensus choice seemed to be to talk about the parallel universes concept. Interestingly, the desire seemed to be to talk about the concept, not the movie -- very heartening, this. I was then further heartened to see the conversation sizzle and pop first of all with lots of examples related to the parallel universes idea, which I will try to list below:
- Movie: What the Bleep Do We Know (Veoh preview)
- Movie: Sliding Doors (IMDB site)
- Three movies by Alejandro Gonzales Inarritu
-- Amores Perros (IMBD site)
-- 21 Grams (IMDB site)
-- Babel (IMDB site) - Movie: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (IMDB site)
- Book Series: Choose Your Own Adventure (Wikipedia site)
- Interactive story/games series: Nancy Drew (Mysterynet site)
- Zen author: Thich Nhat Hahn (Wikipedia site)
- Movie: Slaughterhouse Five (Wikipedia site)
- TV series: Connections (Wikipedia site)
- TV series: Futurama (Wikipedia site)
- Movie: A Sound of Thunder (IMDB site)
- Movie: Primer (IMDB site)
1) the parallel universes idea, which implies a sort of radical compartmentalization -- any decision creates a split that creates two universes. There was some discussion about what would constitute a 'decision' in this regard, the possibility of infinite universes, intersecting universes, being able to peer or peek into one universe from another, relationship of this to multiple personas and other possible everyday forms of parallelism.
2) the everything is interrelated or interbeing idea, which implies a radical connectedness of all things. I found it very interesting that the conversation generated this strand.
3) the observer involvement idea, which holds that when we look 'out there' at the universe(s) we ourselves are inevitably 'in the picture.'
But more importantly, DID YOU SEE what so and so wore to class today?!!
On Wednesday section 01 will start with the question of what ethics and morality might look like if the parallel universes idea turned out to be true. The last 25 minutes of the Parallel Worlds, Parallel Lives movie will also be shown in class.
All of this work has potential bearing on the conception and production of digital stories later in the term. We had some discussion about what autobiography, or a play, etc. would look like if it were informed by the idea of parallel universes.
A quick note also that today's conversation illustrated a point raised on the first day of class; namely, students come to college now with information already in hand, and the skills to find additional information on their own. Most of the information today in class was delivered by students, in this case in the form of ideas and thoughts related to parallel universes, and also in the form of related works.
The last bit for now: I think the first video-attendance-movie-experiment worked out well. I normally am not able to learn everyone's name until around mid-term (abysmal, I know, but there it is) and so having the video will help me for sure with that, and I hope it will help others as well, in knowing who's who in class.
Okay the very last bit: so the conversation today turns to quantum mechanics. Let's imagine how this might play out in the olden days. If this came up in a class discussion, someone with a whole lot of initiative and extra time (meaning no one :) might go to the library and look this topic up, check out a book, or maybe even think of taking a course someday on the topic (and then probably decide not to unless they were a Physics major because the class would likely be very technical). But today, if a topic like quantum mechanics sticks with us, all we have to do is turn around, log in, and get a fairly good variety of information and perspectives, some of which might be technical, some of it generally accessible to non-scientists.
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