Postmodern Culture

The videos I have selected to try to identify postmodern features are "War Games" and "Educational Uses of Second Life". 

In the first video chosen there is a computer simulation of nuclear war which threatens to start a real nuclear war. The computer user, who is a young man very much acquainted with computer games, can hardly distinguish whether he is playing a video game or it is real life. Such difficulty to differentiate virtual from real life is distinctive feature of the postmodern culture. 

Regarding the second video selected, "Educational Uses of Second Life",it  presents a new way of learning through virtual reality in which learners are highly involved in their own learning process and in which an instance of functional knowledge is presented. Students not only learn to know, but they also learn to use that knowledge, which turns it into memorable as well as relevant knowledge.

I have chosen these two videos because they have in common the collapse between image and reality characteristic of postmodernism. both videos refer to Baudrillard's idea of simulacrum since while in the former the young man finds it difficult to differentiate reality from game-playing, in the latter the learners are immersed in a virtual real world.