Buffy, the Internet and CMC

This episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, predicted a lot about our future with computers and the Internet. They predicted some of the major advantages and disadvanges that computers have on our society today.


The actors in the show were possessed by the computers, which foreshadowed how most children and teenagers become obsessed by computers now days. When this show was created computers were not used as much as they our today. So when the actors were using the computers a great amount of time it was alarming. This warned us that computer usage would soon take over our lives. Some children do not develop person skills from this. The computer they sit in front of all day does not provide them with the face-to-face communication skills they need.


Today, online dating is a huge part of our society. In the show they displayed some negative effects of this. The actress was never able to see the man she was dating since all communication happened via email or instant messenger. Therefore, she never was able to see that she was actually talking with a demon. If this was face-to-face communication she would have never would have started dating him. Also, this should have warned us about the Internet predators that caused harm in our lives. By not being able to see a person during online communication, you do not know who they really are. A person could be lying about every aspect of their lives. From this episode we should have seen that harm could be caused from communicating with someone online with out knowing how they really are.


In this episode it showed how computers and the Internet would take over other forms of technology. Researching on the Internet is much faster than going to the library to read a book for research. However, new technology should not completely eliminate the old. The show warned how this could damage our society if it happened. The librarian in the show was very against this new technology and for good reason. The computers were taking over how his library was run. Also, by scanning the demon into the computer he reached more people faster than he could have any other way.