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Class 9


This week we were joined by guest lecturar Glenn Loughran who was a lecturer on Sherkin Island, to be honest I had never even heard of this place before and I had no clue whether it was an island off the coast of Ireland or somewhere else. I looked it up and it's aparently an island off Cork, I had however been to Cape Clear before when I was younger but I was unaware that it was close to Sherkin Island. I think that this class was a perfect example of how technology has changed our lives, to think that the lecturer was sitting somewhere on Sherkin Island whilst we were all scattered around Dublin, you can really see the opportunities for this kind of thing, could we have TED talks held in Second Life? Certainly it would be a lot cheaper than flying these people out to these events.
We discussed a reading "The ones who walk away from Omelas" I kind found this hard hard to understand as I was unsure of the context that I was reading it in, what was I supposed to take from this, was this some kind of fantasy story? When I read the piece I interpreted it as that the people who walked away did not want to take part in this perfect life if there was an unethical cost for the happiness,  however others interpretted it as they were running away from the problem instead of trying to do something about it. I guess maybe that is the deeper meaning, it gives us a glimpse of what each of us would do if we were in that same position. So does that mean that if I feel that something is unethical I would rather walk away and not be part of it, rather than trying to do something to fix the situation? I found that an unnerving thought, we would all like to think that we would do something to fix the situation but if it came down to it in the real world, would we? It also made me reflect on todays society and their attitude to sharing and online privacy, they are similar to those in Omelas, they will turn a blind eye to privacy in order to portray their perfect lives online.

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