Buffy the Vampire Slayer

This week in class, we watched "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" and the first thing I noticed was Giles calling the computer an "idiot box." Following that statement a guy said, "If you're not jacked, you're not alive." I think that these two statements show the mentality of a lot of Americans as computers were becoming popular. Some people didn't accept computers...and that is possibly because they either didn't know how to work them, or they knew that they could cause problems some day.

I think that the writers of this show took the ladder statement. I believe that it was a warning about what computers can do to people. Yes, it was very overdone and the idea of a demon from a book entering the internet is completely ridiculous, but it is the larger picture that needs to be taken into consideration. A larger picture that as a society, we can not rely on computers for everything. Computers can contract viruses and delete everything..and for the people that rely on computers for everything...well, we know what happens.

During the Buffy episode, Giles talks about his love and passion for books. He speaks of their smell and I personally agree with him. We need to keep our information in writing. I think that I would like to thank Dee Natale for that point of view. She always told us in Journalism to read the newspaper and she expressed her concerns about the internet and computers taking over our lives.

Back to Buffy...I can't believe that the episode was made in 1997 and computers were already so big. It was also interesting to see the old technology that people used then. Social networking wasn't popular yet, but email was booming. And to think that the producers were possibly already warning us about the dangers of the computer before the idea of sexual predators on the internet.

And now, it's back to the VMAs...