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!

Just do it!

I really enjoyed Kathleen's post and the NYT article she points us to, but especially the discourse on fluency in "poetry language" having been pushed to the brink by the emergence of the novel (the apocalyptical language is mine:).  I couldn't help but think of my mother being loathe to read anything on the internet--I think she is as uncomfortable with what she finds there as any of my students are when I put poetry (modern or not) in front of them.  And I tell her, without meaning to be patronizing, just do it!  Just as I tell my students that they will learn to read poetry (and maybe to like it, although that isn't as essential to me as they think it is) by giving themselves permission to read poetry.

Imitation counterpoint

"Considering children as the users radiates a compelling excitement...children really can write programs that do serious things...the kids love it!  The interactive nature of the dialogue, the fact that they are in control, the feeling that they are doing real things rather than playing with toys or working out "assigned" problems, the pictorial and auditory nature of their results, all contribute to a tremendous sense of accomplishment to their experience." (394)

When do we do our best work?  Maybe when we are "in control" and "doing real things"?  Obviously.  For me this returns us to Nelson problem with what is missing from education (and our CAI motivation).  Standardized testing is the epitome of not being in control and doing unreal (even surreal) things, so--no sense of accomplishment--and this goes beyond the student to the teacher and the principal and the district too. For a teacher's personal lament, a blog post I read called I don't want to be a teacher anymore but I digress.

Back to Dynamic Media the filing system reminds me of Zotero which Ellen Filgo introduced to me and my students yesterday, choosing the format and personal ways to crossfile everything from the obvious article or book to youtube videos, webpages, and anything (I gather) that can be indicated by your computer pointer.   But for me the really interesting part of this article was the music aspect which seems so much more intuitive than when I was learning to write counterpoint (poorly) in my music theory and composing classes.  That was back in the 90s, so I am guessing that there are programs that are like the one described here although I can't point to them. My favorite aspect is that "capturing" of the score which is surely magical to behold, and the idea that you can stretch, shift, repeat, and alter it without a "do-over".

Did I say that the Christian Ethics journal wasn't available online, my mistake, the latest issue appeared sometime over this lovely weekend.  Link away!

less or more troubling

First, I just picked up my mail and Baylor's Center for Christian Ethics' Christian Reflection journal was there--topic for this issue--Virtual Lives. I haven't read it yet, but will bring it to pass around next week, it's not online (I checked).

Second: what do you think of this quote that I read today? "The distance to my fellow man is [for me] a very long one." Besides the ache in my heart when I read it, I wonder if it might be true for most/all/some of us. Speculation and I think some research supports the idea that our socially-networked, frenetic society might be compensating for our difficulty "meeting" each other face-to-face, while making it harder to (learn to) do so. Then in class, Jonathan mentioned the loss of the community and how the internet could be seen (in his example, in China) as  morally disruptive to community and development of human feelings/intellect--and the question of what and where should/shouldn't be part available as Sha wrote about cybersecurity today. Whether we are talking about the connections of knowledge or the aggregation of it, is seems that we must always return to the question of human relationships. What Kafka wrote in his fourth Octavo notebook at the beginning of the 20th Century (my quote above, of course) is estrangement, plain and simple, estrangement even from his fellow sufferers.  Will that be less or more pronounced in our age and the next?