Ulmer's Ch. 5

In Ch. 5, Ulmer discusses the need to register an American national identity using the internet as a "prosthetic unconscious of a virtual America." Here the internet can function as a living, thinking, feeling monument. By the end of the chapter, he discusses that there are multiple instances of loss that could be commemorated but are not, and by recognizing them, we bear witness to the sacrifice. I thought about all of the multiple sacrifices that we "write-off," such as the amber alerts, which are so upsetting and impact everyone who sees them on the highway, but which often leave us hanging - was the child found? Or house fires where parents cannot save all of their children, or hurricanes, where residents are often told to leave their animals.

Electracy helps use revisit our connection to disaster. And it is interesting that some losses are recognized as sacrifices (those of war, for example) and others are not. All life should be valued to the extent that it is memorialized even outside of the family network - how much would we have to wake up if we realized that child abuse, which Ulmer acknowledges, is more heinous and incipent than we currently acknowledge. Could we then make changes?

Structure project: ?? Probably a game. Don't know any programs so need to research it.