Jane Denson, 12/10

        Last class' discussion of Appadurai's global cultural flow of technoscapes got me thinking about the growing phenomenon of virtual reality, again going back to Poster, becoming more socially engaged in and universally accepted as part of the norm. This year alone has proved to portray Appadurai's theoretical insights in a new light, which alludes to the idea that we are in the midst of a technological explosion. So much has changed since the 1990s and 2000s regarding how quickly we send and receive information via devices (e.g. cellphones, computers, etc.) that it is safe to say that technology is fundamentally integrated into our daily lives. There really is no escaping it, we simply must recognize that it will likely hold a permanent place in society as a cultural necessity. Furthermore, our dialogue in class about this matter, as well as the notion that the flow of the global economy drives where the tech goes, helped me realize the disparity between different countries and their ability to access and/or observe the utilization of technology. For example, in my Spanish class, we learned about how indigenous people in the Amazon region were not exposed to technology like the United States was. It allowed me to understand divergent perspectives and the central idea that certain areas of the world are more digitally connected, while others are more in touch with their environmental surroundings. With the destruction of the Amazon Rainforest, you would think that countries like the United States would use their economic resources wisely and attempt to create a substantial change there, but it seems like the avarice of the U.S. continues to prevent any significantly positive changes from manifesting, since a great deal of money goes towards things of lesser importance. Perhaps now that we are experiencing a pandemic, countries like ours will rethink their social and economic paradigms for the better.