LC109 Module Analysis

1. Having completed the LC109 module, which of the topics covered during the module have you personally found most interesting? Chose one of these topics and write approximately 500 words explaining why you found this topic interesting and what you have learned from it.
Over the course of the LC109 module I have found many of the topics covered really interesting, i.e. Gender roles, Transhumanism, Identity and Social Class. However, the one topic I found particularly interesting was Eugenics (Or Social Darwinism). I found this topic engaging as it reflects the history of particular countries and that these ideas where accepted and encouraged in the not so distant past. Eugenics is interesting as it is such an extreme idea, something which

Too think that in 1912 the First International Congress on Eugenics was held in London (Spectator,1997) and in 2014 same-sex marriage is legal in United Kingdom (excluding Northern Ireland) (BBC,2004). This rapid growth of acceptance and tolerance is extraordinary. I have also learned that trying to eliminate one race was not a new phenomenon in World War Two. This was particularly interesting because in our culture we are told that Hitler’s “Final Solution” was a unique idea and was unheard of in that time period, which is not the case. Also that concentration camps were also not a Nazi invention. The Shark Island Concentration Camp was from 1904 to 1908 killing 75,000 people (Akinyemi, 2014) was used as a way to remove the ‘unfit’ from continuing breeding. The horrific idea that one person or one body has the authority to dictate which people can and cannot have children is inconceivable to understand how it got such mass

Facebook being the first major networking site that allows us to express ourselves and to encourage us to give out personal information, it has vastly changed what is deemed personal and private in my generation. In the opening pages in Trottier (2014) book he discusses how the expansion of what is available to be accessed online effecting our identity. He discussed the event between Tyler Clementi and Dharun Ravi, an event which highlighted the negative effects of the internet and over exposure leading to suicide. Clementi and Ravi where roommates in Rutgers University in 2010. Clementi, who was coming to terms with his sexuality was outed by his roommate when Ravi streamed through a webcam, which saw Clementi be intimate with another male. The streaming was publicized by Ravi through Twitter. Trottier (2014) continues by describing that this event was down to the “Digital stigma” which is the need for sensitive personal information to be made public online for all to know usually resulting in a negative effect on the person’s reputation. This is an extreme case of social networking sites shaping our identity in a negative way but it does show how it is a desire for people to want to know everything that is going on in another’s life and how certain people can feel they have a right to expose information that is not theirs to