self-fashion, self-create, and...self-center?

Sherry Turkle's chapter opens with troubling tension.  Should we care about what the games are doing to us? to our children? she seems to ask.  "Reflection has given way to domination, ranking, testing, proving oneself" (500) and I think you'll agree, the joy, humanity, childhood, innocence and dare-I-say socialization is gone.  In this "Me-against-the-world" false/manipulated reality, I am stunned by how much is missing, regardless of the virtual reality, how real do we want it, discussion of last week.  It acts like an addiction, and causes people to forgo food and other social outlets, and risk getting in trouble (my son, when he plays too long or downloads an inappropriately violent game), and what about the pull to return to the game/computer/device that we see even in our relationships to our phones...but I digress.

I really enjoyed Turkle's differentiation between pinball and video games.  Funny how we never even think about the improbability of the ball that doesn't obey the law of gravity or the crazy movements we see the "characters" of Wii or other games do.  I also love the "dance" she describes although I can say from experience that it is also part of the video games--even though it can not make the slightest difference if you punch that button even harder, we do it, and we jump around, and swing the whole arm when the Wii asks only for wrist. And also the fact that video games could constantly up the ante, making you move from screen to screen always to another opponent, or an obstacle that looked (virtually:) impossible.  Do you really have any choice?  The computer is manipulating you to think that going up is the goal, that surpassing your last challenge isn't enough.  As someone who has never mastered a game and made it to anything approximating a final level, is it ever enough?

Has anyone else played The Dark Crystal--I did love that one (and the movie) and think it was actually better than this clip shows.

"If there is a danger here, it is not the danger of mindless play but of infatuation with the challenge of simulated worlds.  In the right circumstances, some people come to prefer them to the real." (508)  I would say, that especially the disaffected and dissatisfied person, might prefer the pseudo-freedom of games to the work of being social and engaged in the community, with family and friends.  (teenagers are having a hard time with this anyway, so the computer/game just gives them a world that doesn't seem to need interaction and social contact is a gimme). Coercive and destructive? They'll grow out of it? Relentless and aggressive?  Promise of perfection in a game?  While David (510, 512) thinks that his game-self on a good day is cleansing/recentering/you-against-only-you, I disagree; for me it is all manipulation that somehow compels me to value something of no value.  So if I win at a game, I can handle the world, right, on the assumption that my prowess at anything is useful for everything? 

Finally, if we go back to Kay/Goldberg and the Dynabook, we are at the point that Terkle says is in her next chapter, children who "are working with computer systems that turn the machines into a medium for self-expression...The excitement here is not in process of deciphering the program (i.e. following the rules set by others), but of making it (the program) in a highly personalized (and creative way." I hope so, but I don't think that.  Just as not all students are readers, not all gamers will understand how games could be different, or how their choices are affecting them.

I am at a conference this week, sadly, and will not be present for our Wednesday foray into thoughts of new media.  I'll be reading with interest!

Doing my homework

I like lists, organization, a stack of things that I can rip through--signing, sorting, filing, one more email to put this or that to bed, checking accounts, making next week's list... this homework feels wildly different, like I can't put it on the list, like rows of velcro hooklets are latching to my small and big tasks, daring me to think about them differently, will they hold?

J. Murray's introduction: three things:

• As a German literature person, new media is a continuation of the story of "die Moderne" or Modernism. Especially in the 20th Century, authors and artists write/create against the grain, making news with their experimental language, the multi-level meaning and their insistence that they have overturned if not overthrown and undone all that came before. For everything that is new, there is both resistance and the compulsion to declare it better/innovative.
• The encyclopedic capacity (6) is exponentially experiencing my love of the library. Each book opens up to reveal something that I want to read and know, each journal reveals three or more authors that I want to follow to see where their work is leading us. But I have never been in danger of spending my life in the library, the computer, "as a place, one which we enter and do not wish to leave" (6) doesn't attract me at all. Is it possible to lose too much there? My perceived difference of talking with someone about what I have read/learned is markedly different (and infinitely richer) then when I send a friend a link, and we may not ever talk about it, or if we do the conversation is just "thanks for sending it" but no more.
• Rhizome-not impressed somehow with this term/concept. It seems to me that it is the brain's way of connecting things; that linearity and hierarchy are initially there, but the more we think about things the more the connect in non-linear and non-hierarchical ways. How do we train our brains to create more pathways? By opening perspectives and not allowing ourselves to be persuaded with soundbites and simplicity. These thoughts continue as I read "As we may think", see below.
  

"As we may think"--this was fascinating to read, and as a non-scientist a new way to think about what relationships exist between science, science fiction, scientific prediction and reality. The trails of interest, and the ability to recall them (return to them) with detail is such a gift when I consider research. How many times have you found a fruitful avenue to explore when you couldn't take it because you were focused on a different end for that study? Worse, when has a comment you or someone else made in a presentation sparked a moment of understanding, that you can't quite reconstruct later.

"Presumably man's spirit should be elevated if he can better review is shady past and analyze more completely and objectively his present problems" (47) Case in point, the Financial Crisis Report as understood by NPR's Morning Edition today. How do we focus attention, however, on how to solve the present problems. It is so much easier to just look back, criticize and shake our collective heads. Bush ends with hope (I think) in "As We May Think" and mostly so do I.