“I can teach you how to bewitch the mind and ensnare the senses. I can tell you how to bottle fame, brew glory, and even put a stopper in death.”
J. K. Rowling isn’t Shakespeare, but she also loves her potion makers! This little doozie of a quote from Professor Snape at Harry Potter’s first Potions lesson is an evocative one. Whether it makes you think of illusion, hypnosis, psychology, technology, or just a really trippy song, it stimulates much more than just throwing some ingredients into an enormous pot.
I chose “ensnare the senses” for my blog URL (and tentatively for the blog title) because this is the topic I’d like to explore here. I want to discuss how immersed we become in digital experiences and the alternate realities we create because of them.
Sounds very broad at the moment but I like your take on this very realistic topic on technology and the Net through a fantasy novel like Harry Potter. Maybe this whole realm that we created in this digital “space” called the Internet is in a sense a sort of fantasy as well. You may then want to think about how the internet enables us to feel that way or maybe how the internet enhances our experiences to that of a fantasy world – at the very least people who lived over 100 years ago would say the world we live in now is a sci-fi fantasy! The closes to creating a fantasy universe is a book or our imaginations… but computers may one day have programs that can take us to a virtual reality.
The field of Virtual Reality is wide and fascinating. It reminds me of the Magic Tree House series if you ever read them before. I’m only making this reference Japan recently made a Magic Tree House movie (1 hour and 45 minutes long, spoken in Japanese with English subtitles) and I watched that. The way that Jack and Annie travel INTO the books and live its history as part of their reality made me think about how books will or might evolve in the future. One day we might have books with a Virtual Reality system that takes the readers into the book’s work and we as the readers will play the protagonist as we journey through the story (events will be triggered by our actions in game – at first there might be set actions the reader/player might perform to go to the next event of the story but if technology advances even further, A.I. characters might respond to us realistically like humans!).
These are just my thoughts on what digital experiences and especially “alternate realities” you might be intersting in writing about. But of course, there are a lot more interesting ideas out there to explore =]
the book’s world* (that’s what I meant, not the book’s work)
I think there are a few ways you can unpack this theory. First off, obviously, are you going to push the argument that technology ensnares us, or will you fight against it? You’ve got the basis of your paper here, but I think it needs more development to really understand what you’re trying to say about technology and us. I’m interested to see what you come up with though, because this sounds like a topic that a lot of people can relate to.
I love reading a post that can make men and women think. Also, thanks for allowing me to comment!