CMCstudent, 2/28

In class we talked about Eco’s article and that “the U.S. is filled with cities that imitate a city” (200). I thought it was funny when it was said that a gondolier from Venice, Italy moved to America to work as a gondolier at the Venetian hotel in Las Vegas. When asked why he moved to do the same job he was doing in Italy, he said that our Venice was better than the real Venice because it wasn’t as smelly and the weather here was better. It is pretty crazy when people leave their own country to come to ours because we have ripped off their unique qualities and “perfected” them for commodity. I think it is very true that people prefer fantasy over the real because when you are making something up you can make it as you like, rather than have any natural negative effects. For example, the Venetian is like Venice only better, it takes all of the good qualities and leaves behind all of the bad.

Dr. Rog talked about a trip he took to Yellowstone where he watched a family wait impatiently for the geyser to go off, and when it did not go off in time they angrily hurried off. This proves to us, as Eco said in the reading, “technology gives us more reality that nature can” (203). This is because technology will do the same thing every time on the hour compared to a natural occurrence that cannot insure the same display each time. This uninsurrance and rarity of a natural occurrence is what makes it so special from technology which can produce pretty much anything on the spot. It is the wait for the geyser, knowing that no one has control over it that makes it so spectacular. Technology can reproduce it but then it becomes less spectacular, or so one would think. Today, people do not seem to care whether things happen naturally or by technology as long as they happen when they are expected to.