Reality May Be Broken, But 'Other Reality' Is Coming To An End

Jane McGonigal opens the first chapter of her 'Reality is Broken' book with a quote from Bernard Suits about the definition of a game.

Playing a game is the voluntary attempt to overcome unnecessary obstacles

(Suits, B. 2005: 54-55)

In his book, entitled 'The Grasshopper: Games, Life and Utopia' Suits offers up the concept of the Lusory Attitude, which is a psychological mindset where the player will be willing to accept the rules of the game, in order the reach the goal.

"To play a game is to attempt to achieve a specific state of affairs, using only means permitted by rules, where the rules prohibit use of more efficient in favour of less efficient means, and where the rules are accepted just because they make possible such activity" (Suits, B. 2005: 54-55)

McGonigal sets out the four main aspects of a game; goal, rules, feedback and voluntary participation. The rules make the goal hard to reach, this is what challenges the player and ultimately sets out the game as a whole. Without rules, the goal would be a one move completion. Feedback is a way for a player to know how far they are through the game. 

However, feedback, in certain instances is not necessarily important, especially for the "infinite" games which James P. Carse talks about in 'Finite and Infinite Games' (1986). These games are ones which the player does not want to finish. A loose example of this is Rockstar's 'GTA V' The player wants the story to continue and want it to be very long, because once its over, their 'other reality' is gone.

Games are being seen to form the same structure, but what has been so successful about the industry is how differently this structure can be interpreted. 

Bibliography

McGonigal, J. (2011). Reality is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World. Penguin Press HC.

Suits, B. (2005, The Grasshopper: Games, Life and Utopia, Broadview Press.
Carse, J.P. (1986), Finite and Infinite Games. New York: Ballantine Books.

Are we too far to turn back?

Bolter, speaks of remediation in terms of technology and uses this to make examples. This is something which is not seen as much with theorists such as Jenkins or Manovich. So taking what Bolter is saying about technological mediation, I want to look at how this would transfer into the way our society and culture looks at remediation and how we accept that along side technological advances.

Bolter says remediation is "the representation of one medium in another" (Bolter, 2000: 45). So this is taking one media form, the example he uses is paintings and photography, and representing them in another, digital picture galleries.

When reading through Bolters work, I couldn't help but draw parallels between this and the Convergence Culture which Henry Jenkins writes about (Jenkins, 2008). Although Jenkins talk about the formation of multiple mediums into one.

"By convergence, I mean the flow of content across multiple media platforms" (Jenkins, 2008, p2)

Inline with Bolter's writing, these "multiple media platforms" would show representation of their Old Media forms in this New Media platform. How we can stand beside the Mona Lisa painting and either take a photo of it or download a photo of it will just never be the same. 

I came across a video shared on Facebook which outlines how mobile phones have taken over the human existence. Its portrayals different events where humans are on their phones or video recording a gig, when they would enjoy it much more if they didn't use their phone



Its shows the convergence and remediation of going to a concert (Old Media) and capturing it on video (New Media) even though you may never watch it again.

Remediation is really in the advancement of technology, but this advancement can often be for the worst. We can get so engaged in finding ways to interact with the media easier that we start to lose the sense of our own human beings. Soon they will be lost in cyberspace, forever

Bibliography
Jenkins, H., 2008. Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide Revised., NYU Press.
Bolter, J.D. (2000) Remediation: Understanding New Media (Cambridge, Mass.; London: MIT Press)
CharstarleneTV, (2013) I forgot my phone [Online Video] 22 August. Available from; <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OINa46HeWg8> [Accessed: 6 November 2013].

Techno Culture and Human Bodies

It has been suggested by Debra Shaw that humans have a correlation to machines, rather than two different entities. Using the of the body's circulatory system as an example Shaw compares it to working with medical tools to create our 'natural' understand of the human body. Shaw tells us about William Harvey building upon Galen's findings how the heart served its purpose. Shaw continues to say "produced by technology in the simple sense that Harvey had necessarily to use tools to examine the workings of the heart."(Shaw, 2008, p.82) This suggestion allows us to make correlations between machines and the human bodies being repaired and reassembled using tools. 

There is a fixation among individuals to create ideological embodiments of there perfect self using technologies which have only advanced because of our understand of the human body. The example used within Shaw's Technoculture is that of Bruce Springsteen and the modern geek. Bruce Springsteen used in the consumer society to relate towards those of the working class by doing so creating a body that was enhanced with technologies within a gym.

"He thus signifies the passage from the body of the industrial worker, marked by social class, to the body of the late capitalist consumer" (Shaw, 2008, p.85). 

 

Emphasizing Shaw's notion of Bruce Springsteen, the modern geek, as the machine driven body can be constructed to fit the ideological stance within their cyberspace. With the emergence of Web 2.0, the computer literate can create new identities, to enhance properties of themselves otherwise unknown outside of cyberspace. This allows a "construction of a wide variety of private worlds and, through them, for self-exploration". (Turkle, 1984, p.21). With the technology allowing us to use pseudonyms, and be annoymous within cyberspace, the reality creates convergence between collective intelligence and its participatory culture. Do we live as a machine or in a machine?

Bibliography

Shaw, D. (2008). Technoculture: The Key Concepts. Oxford: Oxford Berg Press.

Turkle, S. (1984) The Second Life: Computers & The Human Spirit 

Jenkins, H. (2006). Convergence Culture, where old and new media collide. New York: New York University Press. 

We are human, Aren't we?

"The concept of 'human' is unthinkable without technology but we act as if it is"
(Shaw, 2008: p.81)

Shaw opens the chapter with a paraphrase of the quote from Stiegler (1998) where he claims "The human [..] invents himself in the technical by inventing the tool - by becoming exteriorised techno-logically" (p.141)

Shaw is talking about the means which we find out for ourself that we are human. The technological advancements in departments such as health and sports, help us program, monitor and test out bodies to see if everything is running as it should be. The idea that there needs to be blood pumping around out bodies to be alive, only came about after Galem understanding of our veins and hearts. This was later proved to be incorrect, when William Harvey's findings, which were aided by technology, showed that blood came from and to the heart. 

We can also look at different objects which hold a similar principle. For example, gender, race, age, class. These are things which are highlighted in our society, more than what they should be. Of course, race and gender have their obvious technicalities, but society uses these to categorise humans into separate groups, as if to divide us. Shaw re-refences to the quote made ealier in the chapter, which said that "bodies are obsolete", (Shaw, 2008: 81) and pushes this even further, saying that the human body in society is "dependent on accepted differentiations" (Shaw, 2008:87)

Gender is the most prolific of this differentiation. As with the first 30 seconds of being born, a baby is judged on whether it is male or female. Its a baby, a human, but according to society, it has already been deemed as to which class it will be placed in.

I can never imagine a society without these classes. It will never happen.

Bibliography
Shaw, D. (2008), Technoculture: The Key Concepts, Oxford Press.
Stiegler, B. (Technics and Time, 1: The Fault of Epimetheus. Stanford: Stanford University Press.