Category: baylor_nmfs_s11

reality is broken

Sha Towers on

This book by Jane McGonigal intrigues me –> Reality is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World. I haven’t read the book yet, but something about it piqued my interest (thanks @GardnerCampbell for mentioning the book!). It wasn’t the sensationalist title or the rather large claim expressed in the end of the subtitle. It was this idea of games making us “better.” “How so? (maybe you should read the book!” I hear you saying!) While I enjoy games more than many (and i’m sure less than others), I’m still suspicious of the idea that games make us better or are life-changing, the way some might suggest. I get the escapism and enjoyment provided by games (and many other activities like reading or hobbies). I get the “using your brain” to think through problem solving aspects of games (maybe the “using your brain” is enough to make us better?). But is there more to this?

Speaking of this book, I’d never seen before on amazon a video by the author talking about her/his book. nice touch! This creates a much more direct sense of connection and potentially more meaningful context (?) than reader reviews, etc.

In the video McGonigal says that “games are doing a better job of provoking some of the most important and powerful, positive emotions that we can feel….” She suggests that games are “helping us build up our social relationships with people that we care about in real life.” I’m sceptical of the latter claim, but maybe that’s why I should read the book? She goes on to say that there are four aspects of gaming that help us “tap into the best version of ourselves”:
1. ability to have satisfying work
2. opportunity to feel like we’re learning/improving
3. time spent with people we like
4. sense of community

I can see 1 and 2, but 3 and 4 seem like a reach to me. What kind of games are doing this? the video games that are attractive to me have never been because of any multiplayer capability. Is that why I don’t get 3 and 4? There have been times where I’ve discussed a particular game (Tomb Raider series and Deus Ex) with friends who have or were playing them, but it feels like a stretch that this really created community or was the lynchpin to spending time with people I like?

I guess I’ll have to break down and read this to see what all the fuss is. As I type this, i’m downloading the first chapter to my kindle!

and here’s an interesting thought from what i just downloaded:

that all of the various kinds of gaming and gamers (from involved online multiplayer types to Wii-ers and handheld gamers, AngryBirders and Sudokers — these gamers are
“nearly eliminating mental downtime from their lives.”

what are the consequences of that move? what in the long run does it mean to eliminate mental downtime from our lives? i think many gamers consider their gaming their “mental downtime.” what would you say?

random and rambling thoughts on gaming

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In Sherry Turkle‘s article “Video Games and Computer Holding Power,” she offers several reasons why (based on her social science research) people play games. Some of these seem rather common sense (though of course this is from the hindsight view almost 30 years after the article was written. There are some ideas though that seem better suited to today than when she wrote it. One idea I struggle with is that games allow us to “take on different roles that are important to [us] psychologically.” I’m torn between feeling like she’s creating more more meaning (for the sake of publication) than could really exist with such primitive games as pacman, asteroids, etc. — torn between that and feeling like her ideas are on target and more relevant today than when she wrote this article!

While this idea seems to be going in a new direction from earlier parts of the article, her remarks about the internet allowing us to “self-fashion” and “selfcreate” is remarkably relevant now in the endless stream of online personas (though not really game personas…or are they?) like the profiles of myspace, facebook, twitter, etc.

On the whole this article struck me as quaint and poorly written. The former i’m sure is due to too much mention of pinball experiences and detailed talk of the intricacies of pacman and the latter due to excessive repetition of thought and the ability to suck the life out of something I expected to be completely interesting! (If i never read another article that talks about pinball machines or pacman, i won’t be the least bit sad). [Ed. note: nice work complaining about poor writing with a wandering, fragmented string of thoughts all duct-taped together, huh?]

To be fair, some of what Turkle is discussing in more recent days (including her new book, Alone Together) hold much greater interest, but that’s a post for another day!

Some of the games Turkle discusses, were games I enjoyed playing at an earlier point in my life (Joust and Dungeons and Dragons). I was playing these games more than 30 years ago (am I really that old?!?!) and so I expected a sort of pleasant nostalgic feeling to wash over me as Turkle talked about them, but it didn’t have that effect at all. I had a very similar experience when the family of Star Wars movies. I went to see episodes 1 and 2 in the theater as an adult, having seen the first three to appear (episodes 4, 5, and 6) in the theater earlier in my life. I thought it would be like a reunion of sorts with my childhood and a sort of “finish what I’d started” kind of thing. Even though I remember loving the first three theater experiences, i HATED the next couple (and didn’t even end up sticking out for the remaining movies).

I wonder what my expectation for a happy nostalgia (both in the theater and in reading about games I had enjoyed) and my surprise not to find such a feeling is all about? Is it that I’m “grown up” now? I hope not. Is it that i’m much more refined now in my technological expectations? maybe. If so, what does that mean to be changed by technology in this way? I have my original Atari that I had as a kid. I know games are WAAAAY better now than they were then, but I’ve kept it because it’s a tangible connection to my childhood and earliest gaming experiences. Every few years (or five or ten?) I’ll pull it out and hook it up (which is getting harder and harder to do!) and “re-live” my Atari days. It’s never as interesting as I expect it to be and the “fun” is gone in minutes. I don’t have patience for the primitive graphics, the horrible music, etc. And that’s a little bit sad to me. Can we not appreciate the simplicity, the achievements of an earlier time? Is this why my kids (who are almost eight and almost three) are more inclined to be on the Wii/computer/iPhone (playing games or netflixing) than to play with toys you can hold in your hand and that require YOU to give them life and movement?

self technology

Sha Towers on

I really enjoyed this week’s reading (Bill Viola “Will There Be Condominiums in Data Space?”) particularly how it floated out at a higher altitude. I could appreciate the discussion of technological details such as nondestructive editing systems (which we now have in apps like finalcut pro and imovie) and Aspen Street project (which sounds an awful lot like google maps street view!), but what i really liked here were the threads of philosophical/spiritual issues:

memory giving meaning to life
how we see only the “narrow slit of now” — a beautifully crafted phrase for present moment
the significance that editing brings to bear
the issues of context in shaping meaning
the responsibility of meaning lying within us, not the tools
the importance of turning back toward ourselves
the development of inward (self) over the development of the outward (non self)

and yeah, everything IS better with a porcupine story thrown in! 😉

ok, i SAID it!

Sha Towers on


sort of in response to yesterday’s new media faculty seminar discussion about blogging and our reluctancy to “publicize” our half-baked thoughts and vulnerability, here’s a “baring my secret inside self post”:

while i certainly enjoy the fruits of engelbart’s labor, so far, reading his writing is NOT resonating…and truth be told, i think i’d rather stick myself in the eye with a fork. 🙁

american hypocrisy or can the U.S. have its cybersecurity cake and eat it too?

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This morning on NPR, Clay Shirky highlighted an interesting doublespeak concerning the united states’ stance on freedom v. security. Obama pressures Egyptian president Mubarak on the importance of affording information access to Egyptians, but U.S wasn’t so keen on this same standard in the wake of wikileaks. Shirky raises interesting question applying the U.S. standard of cybersecurity trumping freedom of access from noting that from Mubarak’s point of view: “Might not Egypt’s Mubarak have argued that his government faced a “cyber-emergency” — a political one, perhaps, but still a cyber-emergency?”

http://diigo.com/0f2au

acorns and new media

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on my walk into work this morning, i noticed that the ground was littered with acorns. my initial thoughts were “what a mess” and this oldpersonthink: “someone should really clean this up before someone slips and breaks a hip!” but fortunately out of that quickly emerged a bigger, happier and more meaningful thought: “whoa….this isn’t a mess or a disaster waiting to happen, this is life!” i don’t mean like, “stuff happens”, i mean like acorns are figuratively and literally life. little kernels of possibility, of future, of expectancy. life all around me. quiet, going about its business, whether i stop and take note or not. i wonder how often that happens to me? …not noticing life all around me. how often does it happen to you?

then because of the new media faculty seminar that i’m in right now, i thought…you know, these acorns remind me of the various bits and pieces of technologies and tools (and the ideas/frameworks/philosophies they subtly reflect or encourage), twitter, facebook, blogs, wikis, instant messaging, tagging, etc. each one of these is like one of those acorns. it’s it’s own thing, but like the acorns, they’re all in this together, they’re all related. each acorn lays there on the ground by itself, seemingly out of context or out of reach of the next acorn or the tree they came from. and we can think of web2.0 or any of the bits and pieces of technological tools like that. but the reality is a greater, invisible inconnectivity. how we choose to think about these things (or i guess about anything in life at all really) makes all the diference in the world. is that just a dumb acorn waiting to trip me? is that just another hyped up computer/digitallife/socialnetworking fad created to suck me into some clever advertising mechanism? is that acorn a quiet but powerful symbol of something larger, something alive, with rippling effects into the future that can’t even be fathomed at present? does this or that new media rage/idea/needful thing changing the way we view ourselves, others, how we live?

the importance of thinking about what a technology can/should/cant/shouldnt do

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i really like this article that a 1.0/2.0 (i.e., real life and twitter life) friend of mine, @mountcomp, tweeted this morning.* what i like about it:

1. it talks about 2 cloudy tech tools that i love

2. it talks about how one isn’t the other and how we shouldn’t try to make one into the other’s image

3. that it uses a 3rd awesome tool (instapaper) to talk about the first two awesome tools, dropbox and evernote.

what #2 really points at (IMO) is the importance of investigating strengths/weaknesses of new tools so that we can more effectively use them and understand what they can do for us. to use old school technologies as an example,  i COULD call everyone on the phone that i want to share the same message with, or i could use a copy machine to “post” a msg i want to push out to the world. i guess i COULD just start dialing successive phone number to broadcast my “copy machine” msg, but that would be dumb (and irritating). it’s all about choosing the right tool. golfers don’t use a putter to drive the ball hundreds of yards from the tee box to the hole, but that doesn’t make the putter dumb or useless. it’s the golfer that makes a wise or a dumb choice. a choice that is perfect in one setting, epic fail in another. i love the quote in NMR that ellen shared in the seminar yesterday. it’s so appropriate for NM, and it’s so appropriate in most all aspects of  life (1.0r 2.0!):

“Prometheus is a hero to some and a transgressor to others, and both are right. Fire warms and fire burns.”(p.8)

and cool- here’s someone else who’s talked about this in a previous NMseminar!

*the serendipity of stuff shared in social technology circles always makes me happy. the article that dropped in my lap this morning thanks to twitter led to what looks like a lot of other interesting stuff. yay, interwebs!