Day 1: March 25, 2008
Dr. Thiel Stern walks in at 11:10am, prompt, as usual. Not that I'm keeping track. Also, a surprisingly large number of students, though I expect this to be a one-off thing. Let's see if all 135-ish students show up on Thursday. I'll eat my laptop. Not that I'm judgmental. Really.
11:15 am. Class starts.
Today, we're talking about cyberpunk. And Snow Crash. Learned something new! Apparently, a Minnesotan named Bruce Bethke coined the term "Cyberpunk." See, and there was me thinking that Minnesota invented snow, you betchas and ..um.. the Coen brothers, and there's a ball of twine somewhere, too. But no, Cyberpunk is there, too. Apparently A Clockwork Orange is considered cyberpunk, which is probably as debatable as the definition of "new media." Probably.
Oh boy, there's that expression again: Post-apocalyptic. You know, I always thought that meant something along the lines of life after the apocalypse, but it seems that in conversation, it means life-after-something-or-other-that-happened-at-some-point-sometime. Right. About as easy as defining "culture."
Is cyberpunk dead? Has technology caught up to it? Is cyberpunk just modern writings, now? Perhaps.
Nobody's said much of anything. Not really a discussion class. That's fine. Most of the students look like they crawled out of bed not too long ago. I feel their pain.
Class is getting out early, today. We're done. 11:46 am.
Crazy.