Day 7

Last night (technically this morning) we watched the midnight screening of Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince. We went to a theatre in Westwood and stood in line for two hours for the opportunity to see a highly anticipated movie first.

While the Harry Potter series is known for its use of magic and wizardry, in today’s world the things that happen in the movie might actually be possible with today’s technology.

For example, the invisibility cloak is a hugely prominent item in the story. Today we have the ability to create our own form of an invisibility cloak (though a lot more primative than the perfect one that appears in the book and movie). One has already been created in Japan! We may be able to create special material that reflects the image behind it to make a camaflouge, pseudo-invisibility cloak.

Another form of technology that appears in the movie are flying broomsticks, which charactes like Ron and Cormac ride during the Quidditch game. Although these do not exist in our world yet, we could create them using things such as miniature (nano-sized?) fans or other types of propelling technology. As an alternative, jets (and technology that power planes) can be attatched to brooms to levitate them and fly them.

Even love potions and memory vials may one day have their own real-world counterpart. By altering chemicals and capturing synapses and transmissions in our brains, we may one day be able to produce specified emotions or store old memories of ours in some form of technology such as a computer.

I thought the movie, though random, was actually pertinent to the program because for our project, a lot of our brainstorming of ideas came from the fantasy genre, very much like Harry Potter. What was once considered magic can now be real through the use of modern technology.

I also think I was the only person who didn’t fall asleep haha.