The Future Where Soda Cans Have Screens

February 24th, 2010

My ability to grasp what many people consider to be “normal” is slipping away, a little bit each day.

I wonder if this is how my dad felt when, over a decade ago, I explained to him that I didn’t always need to go to the office in order to do my work. My dad never used computers and was usually content to shake his head in awe when people tried to explain what they were doing with technology. But this remote control stuff seemed to seriously get to my dad. The fact that I was working from home, “Almost like I was sitting in front of my workstation at the office,” was too much for him. It wasn’t a look of awe and wonder. He was genuinely baffled and, I think, a bit frightened.

These weren’t his exact words, but it was something very close to:

“I watched those guys walk on the moon… At the time, I wondered, was it a movie set? Was the whole point of it just to f*&@ with the Russians? Whether or not it was real, it somehow made a bit of sense to me. I could at least grasp that it could have happened.

What you’re doing there… That’s totally beyond me.”

Flash forward to today. As I watched Jesse Schell’s presentation, it became my turn to feel baffled and frightened.

Xbox 360 GamesE3 2010Guitar Hero 5

FarmVille? What is that?

According to Wikipedia:

FarmVille is a real-time farm simulation game developed by Zynga, available as an application on the social networking website Facebook. The game allows members of Facebook to manage a virtual farm by planting, growing and harvesting virtual crops, trees, and raising livestock. Since its launch in June 2009, FarmVille has become the most popular game application on Facebook, with over 75.2 million active users and over 18.1 million fans in January 2010.

75.2 million people are on Facebook, pretending to grow vegetables and raise animals in their browser windows?

How palpably bat shit nuts is that?

Wikipedia goes on:

Like most Zynga games, FarmVille leverages the social networking aspects of Facebook. Along with their own farm, players can invite their friends to join and be neighbors. Acquiring neighbors has benefits in gameplay — not only can one earn money and experience (by visiting and helping on neighboring farms), but with eight or more neighbors, a player can expand their farm and own more acreage. Gifts (such as trees, animals, and decorations) can be sent to both confirmed neighbors and any other Facebook friends even if they do not use the application. The Gifts received from neighbors usually have relatively expensive buy prices in the market; so getting gifts from friends is one of the best ways to get relatively expensive items. Many of the items available to gift to friends are not available in the FarmVille market. This includes many themed decorations.

A variety of “Ribbons” are also available to players, representing the player’s achievement of a series of set tasks. The player first obtains a yellow ribbon for completing a simple version of the task, then progresses through white, red, and blue ribbons by completing progressively more difficult versions of the same task. For example, the “Fenced In” Yellow ribbon requires that the player purchase and display on his farm 5 sections of fence. The white ribbon for the same task requires 50 sections of fence be set up, and the red and blue ribbons get progressively harder and more expensive to complete. There are presently twenty-eight different tasks, for a total of 112 total ribbons available to be earned. In addition to bragging rights, a player earning a ribbon gets a tangible reward for his efforts, which may include a gold item, experience bonus, the award of a special item, or some other benefit.

Has it really come to this? Getting ribbons for bragging rights in Facebook games? I know. I know. Nothing new under the sun, Kevin. You’ll tell me how you spent your allowance getting high score on Defender in 1981. (Or something like that.)

It’s not the same.

I don’t know how old you were in 1981, but I was ten when I was spending my allowance getting high score on Defender. What’s the average age of the people who are playing FarmVille? I’m sure it’s much older than 10.

You might have been like me and never even heard of this FarmVille madness before today, but if we are to believe that 75.2 million people are spending any amount of time doing this…

Holy shit and sweet Jesus on a stick: What does that mean?

Has reality become such a mean and ugly bitch that tens of millions of people are searching for a functional society inside the screen? Why is a game about small scale agriculture the most popular game of all on Facebook? Do the people playing this game have access to safe, affordable, good tasting food?

If you think that FarmVille is nuts/strange/chilling, the corporate dystopia is now targeting the imaginations of very young children by using regular stuffed animals as a gateway to the machine world. Let’s look at Webkinz.

Again, from Wikipedia:

Webkinz are toy stuffed animals that were originally released by the Ganz company on April 29, 2005. The toys are similar to many other small plush toys, however, each Webkinz toy has an attached tag with a unique “Secret Code” printed on it that allows access to the “Webkinz World” website. On Webkinz World, the Secret Code allows the user to own a virtual version of the pet for online play for a limited time. To maintain long-term access to an account, the user must continue to purchase additional stuffed toys.

There are also smaller, less expensive versions of the toys called Lil’ Kinz as well as larger, slightly more expensive versions in the Signature collection launched in early 2009. In June 2008, Ganz opened the Webkinz eStore, where users can buy virtual items such as furniture, clothing, charms, and online-only pets. eStore items can only be used in conjunction with an active Webkinz or Webkinz, Jr. account.

Sales of plush Webkinz and Lil’kinz are limited to the United States and Canada, however virtual pets can be purchased from the eStore by international residents. Secret Codes issued in conjunction with virtual pets can be used the same way as Secret Codes attached to plush pets.

At this point, in Jesse Schell’s talk, I started raving like a lunatic, but I managed not to swear. (Owen, our two-year-old son, can repeat a lot of what we say at this point.) Becky asked what was the matter. I went out to tell her about Webkinz. Her face contorted in horror.

“It’s true,” I assured her. “People are handing over their money and their children’s imaginations to this company.”

Owen was sitting on his sheep skin pelt, next to the book shelf, quietly looking through The Tale of Mr. Tod. When he heard his mother and me talking about screens, he immediately and forcefully started interrupting us.

“Dell booper! Dell booper! More Dell booper!” Nodding his head, yes, yes.

My son’s reaction to electronic gadgets is like mashup between Invasion of the Body Snatchers and Ghost in the Shell.

Months ago, I noticed that he wouldn’t just sit on my knee and enjoy a few minutes of looking at pictures of family members, creatures and various machines on the screen. No way, man. He wanted to pull the whole thing apart. Turn it off and on fifty or a hundred times. Right clicking reliably brought up menus on the screen. The Windows button never got old either.

I thought, “Wow, he’s really into this, I suppose it’s ok.” But there was no off switch for this. When it was time to do something else, back arching, screaming and tears resulted. And when we were doing other things, he’d want the booper.

We’ve stopped all screen access with him. It has been several months since he has had any time at all with a screen, and even now, just mentioning it sets him off.

I went to the Webkinz site and pretty much recoiled in horror. That thing must be like a crackpipe x10,000 to a young child. I wonder if there is potential for harm by allowing young children to mess around with this hi-tech crack? If they aren’t having to use their imaginations to create the play, and, instead, rely on interactions with the machine, what are the long term implications of that?

Reality

Owen carries his stuffed animals around and pretends to feed them and give them water. He asks for us to read books to him and he’ll select a creature to cuddle and hold it so it can “see” the book too. (Slack Jack Bunny and Gruffalo are his favorites.) When he was about a year old and breast feeding, he held up Slack Jack Bunny to Becky’s breast and she held it there and pretended to feed it. Owen cackled. He thought that was absolutely hilarious. Anyway, on and on. I know it’s boring to read about other people’s kids, but the point is that he didn’t need any [expletive deleted] Webkinz service to come up with all of this.

I just picked two of several disturbing aspects of Jesse Schell’s talk, and I didn’t even get to the last several minutes of holy rolling, speaking in tongues, snake handling madness. The part about the soda cans with screens.

I’m not a Luddite. I started using computers when I was eight. I earned a living in corporate IT. I’m using a computer at this very moment. But the reality Schell is describing in the last part of his talk sounds unthinkably grim to me.

“Come on,” I mumbled to myself, as Schell unfurled toward the end, “Who is going to tolerate all of that nonsense?”

Oh, wait. How many FarmVille players are there again?

Shit.

16 Responses to “The Future Where Soda Cans Have Screens”

  1. Crates says:

    I had the same problem as little Owen with my Civ IV. Had to break the disc and throw it away.

    Thank God I have absolutely no interest in “Farmville”.

  2. lagavulin says:

    I literally just learned about Farmville yesterday….when I ran across this story about an Australian guy who paid $26,500 for a virtual island in some game ( http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20100219/forbes_island_100220/20100220?hub=SciTech&s_name= ).

    I can’t help but wonder if this is somehow all part of the ‘order’ underlying this bat-shiat crazy era in human history we’re living through. Human culture keeps spewing out seductive evils like GMOs and Bluetooth technology and trendy vaccines and virtual lifestyles and online shopping-channels for children….and then at another pole stand voluntary homesteaders and local foodies and alternative schooling and, well a whole variety of ‘alternative’ choices — and then obviously there are the myriad subtle shades in-between….

    And the result is that people are being asked, like perhaps never before in history, to continually evaluate and discern and make conscious CHOICES about how we live in the world and which path(s) we choose to follow — and the stakes are seemingly getting ever more serious.

    I’ll avoid a “wheat from the chaff” conclusion because I don’t think the pattern of the universe is ever quite that orderly. But right at this moment I can offer that, while we have no TV, my children will use the computer for two things today: to watch “Avatar: The Last Airbender” ( http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0417299/ ), and to play Webkinz. The first I feel is perhaps the best children’s animation program ever made (barring “Totoro” perhaps), and the second I have misgivings about but my wife feels it’s harmless and helps to distract the kids from the cabin fever they’re getting in the late winter.

  3. anothernut says:

    I think chaos and delusion/escapism go hand in hand, or, more accurately, that the former very often induces the latter (and yes, I realize this insight is neither brilliant nor original). While I’m not a farmville player, I know I’ve used impractical activities (tv, net-surfing, etc.) to relieve the stress that all the craziness stirs up in me. It’s hard to face up to the idea that “this is it” — to really face up to it, at a gut level, not just an ephemeral intellectual level. But maybe I’m just another pussy, living in his head.

    Loved the “Reality” graphic, btw. Yeah, that’s me.

  4. ltcolonelnemo says:

    The video-game industry eclipsed the film industry several years ago.

    In order to rule, powers that be need to keep people occupied, following a predictable program. In the good old days, they had religion in lieu of virtual realities. Sure, you life may have sucked as a serf, performing back-breaking, unrewarded labor day in and day out for a pittance, but what did you care, then men in the fancy robes you were required to see on your day off kept insisting that you were going to Sugar Candy mountain after you died.

    Today, people can go to their own personal version of Sugar Candy mountain whenever they want. They can experience the thrill of having a harem through pornography, or go to Valhalla playing first-person shoot-em-up online. Or they can augment their own reality by forming online communities that occasionally get together in real-life. They can do any infinite variety of things, so long as they do not tinker with the largely unwritten rules that dominate our “way of life.”

    I knew screens were bad when I couldn’t stop watching TV as a five-year-old. I knew at the time that it was somehow evil, but I figured I would stop later. I still struggle with it. Video-games were a whole other beast to contend with since they offered the opportunity to participate and control what happened on the screen, an indescribably addictive process that everybody seemed oblivious to, and still do to this day. Nobody questions the omnipresence of TVs and speakers piping noxious music in what were once communal locations. If you walk into a bar, what do you see these days? People sitting around talking about how they’re getting f*cked, or people staring up at new, recently-installed LCD screens watching some lame sporting event.

    I have a friend who insists that the people who spend 12 hours of a Sunday watching football games and football highlights and football commentary, are normal. I, the person that protests such behavior, am abnormal.

    Right.

    People will more easily accept a lousy reality if their captors offer them a counterfeit virtual paradise that appeals to their lizard brains for them to escape to.

    How much worse can it get?

    I actually think that a certain point, this technology will give enough people cognitive problems that things could collapse based on people not being able to govern for lack of an attention span. How can you enslave the masses, if you constantly check your email, your black-berry, your cell-phone, the Internet? Your mind collapses under all the distractions. It could be like the Romans and the lead pipes all over again, only one would think that we should know better.

  5. uranian says:

    lagavulin, wisest words i’ve read today, your thoughts about being forced to make conscious decisions.

    farmville i see as something of a reaction to how divorced people are from nature. i don’t get it, but perhaps i’m lucky enough (or have just chosen) to have a real garden to dig in. quinoa seeds sprouting on the window sill as we speak 🙂

    ironic, this evening, a neighbour just lent our almost 4 year old a DS (over my protests, her ma isn’t so anti this kind of stuff). we binned the TV years ago, and have a rule in the house that she watches online TV for no more than an hour a day, but yes, these tech toys are highly addictive for kids. most likely the long term reaction will be to make kids less social. but rome is burning, not too long now until we see some major changes i think.

  6. jburke6000 says:

    My best friend and I took nine hours to make it to 1 million points each on Defender. It was hard physical work. We were completely wiped out after, and I was only 15. I would kill me today.
    Farmville, and most computer games, are really lame.I loved the physical component to a great game of pinball. And best of all, there were girls there. Real girls. They would even talk and hang out with us. Life was fun.
    As we all grew up, those same girls became girlfriends and I forgot all about games. There was something much better to do with them. There is no amount of power or money that would make me give up those memories. I can’t look at a woman today without the most awesome feeling of joy and admiration because of my experiences as a young man.Even after all the years and hard miles for both of us, my girl knows what she does to me. I become that 15 year old all over again. It makes me happy.
    Will this new generation of remote control, remote games, remote contact, and remote lives interrupt millions of years of evolution by exterminating the Birds and the Bees?
    The kids today will really miss out on the best parts of life and they will be alone.

  7. Eileen says:

    I couldn’t even look at what was on the can, because I more relate to Kevin’s Father alot more at this time in my life more than anyone else. Maybe I’m turning into a grumpy old woman, but I don’t give a damn if I am. Screw you stupid facebook wanna be farmers. Give me an effing break.
    Is there a function in the “game” re crop failure; what to do when your tomatoes – a staple for storage have stem rot? I’m busy worring about the reality of growing food and finding the right seeds to grow, and whether I need to grow my tomatoes under cover this year to keep them from the airborne blight!
    My god/dess, Have mercy on these people that think growing food is a GAME!!!! To me, it is a damn serious task, and my god/dess what will that game turn into when there isn’t any food on the grocery shelves?
    Holy smoke. What is in the food these people are eating that its become a popular, virtual game to play about growing food?
    Maybe its a beginning: that peoples are “playing a game about growing food.” Maybe it will eventually translate into these people learning something and eventually growing their own food. I certainly hope so, but this is one effing strange phenomenon.

  8. soothing hex says:

    I study statistics in Bretagne, France. I studied cinema for 5 years prior to that. This makes me spend most of my time with twenteens who almost unanimously have no clue about what they’re doing there. Hearing their conversations is mostly boring and frustrating.

    One day, as I entered one of those a-computer-for-two classrooms, I got shocked as I realized that every single screen displayed a facebook page. I already knew that it was their favorite website but that one moment was particulary disturbing. Now being a student in statistics and all, it would’ve been quite ironic that I’d have fallen to the generalization of this sample observation. 😉

    At about the same time I found out about that Farmville game. I’d say about two thirds of my 23 fellow comrades tried it for some time, and there may be one or two of them who seriously got the hook. I asked a few of the players if that game actually kinda made ’em want to grow a real small farm but it seemed that they were into it only because “it’s fun”. It was not that surprising as I myself tried a few months of online chicken fighting back in the days, and I never even came close to engaging in such activity IRL since then.

    Voila, no salient point here, I just wanted to say that it’s probably healthier to take the whole balunga with a multicolored laugh.

  9. Dennis says:

    What struck me was the potential for these ‘points’ to serve as currency in a cashless society. Not a happy thought.

    On a lighter and somewhat related note…ChatRoulette:

    http://cosmos.bcst.yahoo.com/up/player/popup/?rn=248154&cl=18318344&ch=13698&lang=

  10. jak says:

    Reminds me of this article:
    Runaway consumerism explains the Fermi Paradox
    http://www.edge.org/q2006/q06_9.html#miller

    Some quotes (the phrase “super parent” first cam e to mind):

    I suggest a different, even darker solution to Fermi’s Paradox. Basically, I think the aliens don’t blow themselves up; they just get addicted to computer games. They forget to send radio signals or colonize space because they’re too busy with runaway consumerism and virtual-reality narcissism. They don’t need Sentinels to enslave them in a Matrix; they do it to themselves, just as we are doing today.
    ….
    Most bright alien species probably go extinct gradually, allocating more time and resources to their pleasures, and less to their children.

    Heritable variation in personality might allow some lineages to resist the Great Temptation and last longer. Those who persist will evolve more self-control, conscientiousness, and pragmatism. They will evolve a horror of virtual entertainment, psychoactive drugs, and contraception. They will stress the values of hard work, delayed gratification, child-rearing, and environmental stewardship.
    ….
    They insulate themselves from our Creative-Class dream-worlds and our EverQuest economics. They wait patiently for our fitness-faking narcissism to go extinct. Those practical-minded breeders will inherit the earth, as like-minded aliens may have inherited a few other planets. When they finally achieve Contact, it will not be a meeting of novel-readers and game-players. It will be a meeting of dead-serious super-parents who congratulate each other on surviving not just the Bomb, but the Xbox. They will toast each other not in a soft-porn Holodeck, but in a sacred nursery.

  11. apethought says:

    OK, so I work with video games and education, teaching game design skills to teens and using games to explore serious issues and I have to disagree with a lot of the damning statements I’m seeing about video games here. I mean, screw Farmville, I’m not here to defend it at all, I find it completely asinine, and boring, but there are other games that are really interesting and can be used to teach systems thinking and subversion.

    Portal is an amazing games where you have to break the rules and defy authority to win. Every Day the Same Dream, a simple Flash game is a brilliant commentary on the banality of modern corporate living. September 12 is a scathing critique of American militarism.

    When books were first invented some people thought they were tools of the devil, pulling people into private worlds. Same with radio, comic books, etc. Every new medium is deemed to be a threat, but life goes on. Games have not shown to be addictive nor induce violent behavior, at least not more than any other influence or activity. Games are a medium, just like any other, so of course they’re used in positive and negative ways, and major corporations are more likely to produce games that support the status quo but we don’t need to damn all games because of this.

    Schell’s talk was troublesome, dystopian even, but it was also the grandious ranting of a zealot. The man works in games all day every day so of course he thinks games are the equivalent of the wheel and fire in human social development. I think the future will look more like Snow Crash, and yes, there will be some level of ubiquitous gaming and sensor-embedded everything, but we’ll still have free will. There will always be people who use technology judiciously and think about it critically. And we will socialize, albeit in new ways.

    It’s a myth that virtual interaction is some subsitute for physical interaction and todays kids are growing up asocial. Read some of danah boyd’s work. Does the ability to talk on the phone with distant friends make you not want to see them in person? Of course not. These technologies augment our social realities they don’t canibalize them.

    I’m no techno-utopian here. There are plenty of problematic aspects of digital technology (race and gender issues abound, rational discourse is scarce) but we need to think more about how the world is changing as opposed to seeing everything as evidence of human de-evolution.

  12. dermot says:

    Great post.

    Disclaimer: I use Facebook – having made a cost/benefit analysis. Having friends on 3 continents, over a dozen states, it’s the easiest way to stay in touch – in REAL LIFE, organising meetups, etc.

    The Farmville app is one of 3 hugely popular games – the others are based on running a cafe, and the third is:

    Mafia Wars.

    Make of that what you will. To me, these games are screwing up the signal to noise ratio in fb posts – very annoying.

    I know that FB is harvesting personal data; in my case, it’s waaaay too late to worry about privacy – I’ve got more to gain than lose in using it as a networking tool. TPTB can harvest our emails, after all.

    Back in 2001-3, I was a game junkie. I ended up, like another poster, having to snap my CDs in two to avoid the temptation of further playing. In my case, having no job or control (or perceived control) over my life was the cause of my dependency on a virtual one. I awoke from the consensus trance in 2004, never to return.

    A friend is a lead animator on one of the major MMORPG games (a child’s version of “World of Warcraft” – for pure evil, look no further). He’s Peak Oil aware, and has been preparing for years. He’s also working on this deranged project, which involves children running around a 3D world for hours. In the industry, they have a term for the process of keeping players (adults as well) playing for as long as possible:

    Tread-milling….aka “Grinding”:

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grinding_(video_gaming)

    “Grinding is a term used in video gaming to describe the process of engaging in repetitive and/or non-entertaining gameplay in order to gain access to other features within the game. The most common usage is in the context of MMORPGs, such as Final Fantasy XI and World of Warcraft, in which it is often necessary for a character to repeatedly kill AI-controlled monsters, using basically the same strategy over and over again, in order to advance their character level to be able to access newer content. Grinding can also appear in other games in which features can be unlocked.

    Synonyms for grinding include the figurative terms treadmilling[citation needed] (a comparison with exercise treadmills) and ***PUSHING THE BAR (A REFERENCE TO SKINNER BOXES IN WHICH ANIMALS, HAVING LEARNED THAT PUSHING A BAR WILL SOMETIMES PRODUCE A TREAT, WILL DEVOTE TIME TO PUSHING THE BAR OVER AND OVER AGAIN).*** Related terms include farming (in which the repetition is undertaken in order to obtain items, relating the activity to tending a farm field), and catassing, which refers to extended or obsessive play sessions. Used as a noun, a grind (or treadmill) is a designed in-game aspect which requires the player to engage in grinding.”

    Encouraging OCD behaviour, for fun & profit.

    I was lucky, coming of age right at the beginning of the computer revolution, and before the hellspawn of toy/tv merchandising tie ins. I grew up on UK tv of the 1970s – a much more benign creature than what followed in the 80s, or the ultimate freak show that exists today.

    If I had a kid, there’s no way I’d allow a TV in the house – a DVD player, perhaps, but no feed to the pipe. Play old kids’ shows from the 70s like “Bagpuss” – made by an artisan in a garage, instead of some Hollywood shmuck-peddlar with an MBA.

    BTW, on a counter-note, did anyone see this recent article about Gobecki Tepe, the oldest site in human history to show signs of high social organisation?

    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1157784/Do-mysterious-stones-mark-site-Garden-Eden.html

    I’ve read about it before, but this is the first time I’ve seen photos. Funny to think that the long march to screens on soda cans appears to have started there.

  13. Mike Lorenz says:

    Ah, Farmville. That fucking game is the supreme, cruel irony in my life. My family is from the country. My parents are living as much of an ecologically minded, farmstead life as they can with their jobs. I find Kevin and Becky’s lifestyle very inspiring. I’m struggling to do the urban-homesteader, self-sufficiency in the suburbs thing while commuting much further than I’d like, and never seeming to have enough time or resources to devote to my ‘burbstead. My wife (who is from the city) has an attitude about my efforts that ranges from annoyed indifference to exasperated disapproval. She has given me shit about trying to change our lifestyle to reduce our expenses, to grow more of our own food, to reduce our dependence on the industrial food system…and she’s absolutely addicted to Farmville.

    She spends an incredible about of time playing it, considering that she gets nothing tangible in return. She has literally spent time going around “feeding her “neighbor’s chickens” (something that earns you extra points), and immediately thereafter given me a hard time about our real chickens! She has ZERO interest in our garden or my parents’ farm, and yet she will invest tons of mental energy taking care of an imaginary, computer “farm”. It makes me fucking nuts.

    When I’ve brought up the irony of the situation to her, she replies that the game could really be about anything, that there’s no agriculturally specific knowledge or interest required to play it. I suppose the main purpose it serves is to distract her from how much she hates a large chunk of her day to day life. I have to imagine that it’s probably the same for most people playing.

    As for my thoughts on what my wife’s family’s wholesale endorsement of Webkinz, DS’s, DVD’s, and the like are doing to my precious children……I’d better not get started.
    – Mike Lorenz

  14. bloodnok says:

    There is no shady power conspiracy behind these things, it’s a simple matter of making money out of people through psychological dependence.

    The differences now compared to gaming previously:
    – Many games are relatively simple and easy to pick up. This opens up the massive “casual gaming” market, of which Facebook presents a tasty slice.
    – Many of these casual games are web-based, which lowers the barriers to access (nothing to install) and makes it easier for the developer to charge for some or all of the game.
    – By opening up a huge market, you can make insane amounts of money by selling $1 virtual trinkets. People will happily do this hundreds of times, but they wont go and drop $100 on a retail game off the shelf.
    – By integrating with existing social networks (eg: Farmville – facebook), you can turn actions in the game into social obligations. eg: “Blah has fertilized your field, why not pay them back by plowing their back paddock?”

    While I dont play World of Warcraft, Farmville or any of those games, I know many people who do and I personally played quite a bit of DiabloII back in the day. I stopped when I realised that it was effectively the same as a pokie machine without the coins. I was trading mouse clicks for shiny virtual items which enabled me to click more effectively, to get better items and so on ad infinitum.

    The real cost of these games is lack of sleep, reduced social interaction and wasted time.

  15. zeke says:

    Virtual worlds’ success hinges upon our ability to treat a simulated reality as a substitute for the real thing. It’s just temporary suspension of disbelief. You could arge that since, according to psychologists, what we term ‘reality’ is just a model constructed inside our heads from external stimuli, such behavior is not surprising. I see it as just a potentially dangerous exploitation of our ability to enjoy make-believe, which lets us read books, watch movies, make up stories, play games with each other….

    I expect most people have had the experience of reading a book or seeing a movie and then imaging themselves in the world described. The grand leap forward in this is the capacity of computers to ‘flesh out’ this imagined world and to provide feedback, to make it dynamic and not solely dependent on an individual’s imagination. Usually you’d get bored after awhile imagining yourself in Middle Earth, or Dune, or Doyle’s Victorian England, or whatever takes your fancy. But the computer continues to provide stimuli and respond and change in accordance with your actions. Mix a few other people into the fray, and suddenly it’s a whole new reality.

    These new realities are simpler than the existing one. They have fewer rules. They have easier reward mechanisms. It’s always possible to start over… In a real world in which we are constrained by physical limits and by psychological barriers, it’s seductive to be able to get your satisfaction at ‘winning’ or ‘progressing’ in a virtual world that rewards you primarily for persistence, something of which we are all capable, that requires nothing more than willingness to sit at a computer and keep clicking. It’s a ‘reality’ over which you, essentially complete enough control to satisfy your need for success and reward. Don’t like the one you’re playing with? Dont’ worry, there are dozens of others and more popping up all the time.

    The simpler virtual worlds are proxies for the real one. It should no more surprise us that people get hooked on them than that people get worked up (and identify with) teams playing football. It’s just that the virtual worlds are ‘deep’ enough to be really addictive. They’ve crossed a threshold we didn’t realize existed.

    zeke

  16. shoe2one says:

    Many people I know are on facebook, twitter, and myspace all the time. I feel the need to start drinking heavily after visiting to any of them. I guess I’m too anti-social to be popular.

    Yes I did try facebook for about a week but found there is no real communication occurring there. More like dueling monologues. I threw in the towel when someone I’ve known for 20 years and who lives 10 miles and I saw at least once a week for years, hasn’t come over and called in over a year because they’ll see me on facebook. I go over to her house and she’s gained about 30 pounds and watches the computer screen while she talks to you.

    Another friend is completely engulfed in 2nd Life. Has bought land and makes stuff ?? for it and sends me crap about how great it is all the time. I lasted less than 3 hours there.

    I got some 3D glasses after watching Avatar. I took them home and put them on and saw the world in 3D!

    The internet took my mojo.

    I thought I saw this here:

    Couple starves their own baby while nurturing virtual kid
    http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/sfmoms/detail?entry_id=58670

Leave a Reply

You must be logged in to post a comment.