Category Archives: Assignments

Dream Homes and Digital Futures

The thought of what house I would buy without any financial restrictions has always been a thought in my mind, especially as I continue to progress into adulthood and have to think about fully living on my own with a job and a stable income. I’ve always dreamed of living in a house on the West Coast in the San Diego area, and immediately went to browse around the area. I’m also not a huge fan of the more boxy shaped modern houses and am more drawn to clean and minimalistic houses with some rustic aspects to tie it together. After a bit of searching, I found this house that looks perfect, listing at 4.5 million with 5 beds and 3 baths, and a setup and all the space one could need.

A connection to our class theme of Tech Noir I thought of was how the market of houses would look under a vastly developed technological society. Smart homes would be commonplace, but could be used to exert control over their inhabitants. There’s also concerns of privacy as technologies that makes a home “smart” could be hijacked by powerful corporations or government entities to monitor and manipulate people. Would every house look the same and be “smart homes” or could there be diversity present and how would that ratio look? How would a boundary between security and privacy look in a market of houses full of surveillance and AI-driven systems? Furthermore, large tech corporations could dominate the housing market, buying up properties to embed technology in them, then price out working-class residents to raise property value and essentially cut off any sense of community. Overall, my vision of the housing market in tech noir is a space governed by technology that shapes the living experience for its residents.

Film Review

I chose to watch The Terminator because it is a Tech noir film that I grew up watching multiple times with my parents. The genre is characterized by its depiction of a dystopian or high-tech world, often exploring themes of artificial intelligence, human-machine relationships, and the consequences of technological advancement. All of which are heavily included in The Terminator and is what drove me to choose this film. The film portrays a future dominated by technology gone wrong, where machines control the fate of humankind. This skepticism has become common in the media and entertainment industries, but also in my other classes. Technophobia has been frequently brought up in my communication classes, as technology as a whole has become so central with how humans communicate with each other and how our society functions. Using this theme will be an interesting and fun test to expand that knowledge back into other classes and my general education as a whole. In terms of the movie, it was amazing as always and has become a staple futuristic dystopian film in many households.

Soundtrack of My Soul

When I was first looking through the assignment bank the Soundtrack assignment caught my eye immediately. I have always been around lots of music, and am a big fan of all types of genres. I thought this assignment would be perfect for me to express different eras that have been impactful to me and led me to who I am now. Music is an amazing way to tell a story about yourself and that’s how I interpreted completing this assignment to be true to me. I chose eras of songs that were released in the 2000s and 2010s to reflect my favorite songs to listen to growing up, embodying my childhood. Then switched to Grateful Dead and Phish because my parents were a heavy influence in getting me into all sorts of music, and they love listening to jam bands, originating with those two. Lastly, I chose vintage songs mostly by Frank Sinatra to represent my grandparents, who loved Sinatra and Ella Fitzgerald, as they were big role models in my life before they passed away and I love listening to all sorts of Jazz to reminisce on being in their car looking at Christmas lights.

Enjoy viewing a compressed version of the eras and influences of my life!

Collect the whole set!

an array of trading cards

I saw Bryan Mathers’ Trading Card Remix on Mastodon:

 

View on Mastodon

 

and I thought, “This could be a cool way to visualize course characters.” Is there a trading card assignment though? If there wasn’t before, thanks to the magic of the Assignment Bank, there is now! It’s an easy and fun way to

Dr. Oblivion’s Speech

You know, the old world was a total mess. Nothing worked the way it was supposed to. Everything was slow, chaotic, full of mistakes. But now? Now it’s different. Everything just… works.

The city feels alive, like it’s looking out for you. The machines take care of the hard stuff—things we used to stress about, they just handle it. No emotions, no second-guessing, no screw-ups. It’s efficient. It’s smooth.

People talk about freedom like it was some great thing, but honestly? It felt more like chaos. What we’ve got now? It’s better. Cleaner. Safer.

And the best part? I feel good. I feel happy. You do too, right?

Dr. Oblivion intro

A broken sign flashed blue neon, creating a rhythmic flicker over the alley’s slippery, damp asphalt. Potholes accumulated puddles that were too deep to be rainwater, reflecting the sky like obsidian shards. A instrument of brushed steel, its strange blue glow fading to a dying ember, lay beside a crumpled body. Rats, slender and plump, emerged from the darkness, scavengers in a concrete jungle where even rodents appeared to flourish. His story was buried in the endless urban night, and he was simply another fatality. The weight of the world, a tiny data chip promising salvation, shifted in the pocket of the man who had been his friend – or had he been? Trust was a currency long devalued in this city of shadows and circuits.