technoculture314-09

Times of economic recession can be tough. My flatmate is 21 and unemployed; sick of spending her days watching TV and smoking cigarettes she decided it was time for a change and joined the nearest gym. I truly thought it was great for her, but couldn’t help but making fun it; she doesn’t mind and appreciates the funny aspects of a gym environment; we both laugh about it together. It wasn’t until I saw the ’goodie bag’ she got after joining it that the real joke started. She received two magazines called ‘Dash’. As a media student I was quick to analyse it. The content is about the obvious gym friendly stuff; diet, health, sport and adventure. The main feature of the July issue was the program ‘Dancing with the Stars’ and I couldn’t help but noticing how the main target of the magazine was 25 to 35 year old women. Articles about ‘The Big Day’, implying that a wedding is the most important day in a women’s life, and an advertisement with the head line ‘Beauty from the inside out’ reveal the nature of our sarcastic-cynical-early 20 year-olds’ jokes about the mag. But, surprisingly, I did find some interesting tips, such as ‘7 Steps to Avoid a Hangover’, and an interesting article named ‘Boys are Stinky’. But what really struck me and gave me an excellent reason to write on this blog was the article ‘Light Play for Long Distance Lovers’. Apparently there is this new technology that allows long distance couples to interact through light; rather than phone sex a couple would have a ‘light’ sex alternative. The BBC describes it as:

“While lying on their beds miles away from each other, the couples wear touch-activated rings visible to a camera mounted above them. A computer vision system tracks the movement of the rings as one of the device’s users passes it across their own body, or bed. At the same time these strokes are transmitted to and projected in beams of light on the body of their partner. The lines change colour if they cross.”

Ha! Crazy huh?