"All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy" Really?

Conforming to Rules, following a path leading to a goal, that goal giving you a sense of accomplishment under our own authority. Is this not a game?

Jane McGonigal states that "all games share four defining traits: a goal, rules, a feedback system, and voluntary participation" (McGonigal 2011, p.21). This being said then is life not a game? Games are set out to have one of two paths, finite games and infinite games. Finite games with a beginning and ending with a chance of "winning" and Infinite games a never ending cycle of gaming. We crave satisfaction, a positivity through challenges. These satisfactions pull upon the four attributes of a game. 

We follow rules everyday why don't we believe its a game? Our need to follow rules and work hard at life crosses platforms with digital video games or gaming industry.McGonigal tells use to forget the old saying "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy" (Mcgonigal 2011, p.29). According to McGonigal the game industry use our need to work hard, our fear of failure allows us to test real world problem without any consequences expect our time. We think its fun to play GTA and kills people, steal cars, have loads of money. The satisfactory element is when the basic rules of reality spill over onto imaginary plains but the system allows you beat reality without reality affected.

Nothing can be classified as a game without those there to create the rules, the feedback systems and aesthetics, the goal. Henry Jenkins suggests that "media convergence, participatory culture, and collective intelligence" (Jenkins 2006 p.2) is new media, can that be said for all games? The feedback system, goal and rules designed by collective intelligence, the participatory culture falling between the category of voluntary participation and the media convergence of platforms and reality games.

Realities lines between games are blurred when you break them down into the four categories, it suggest that life is a game, and we are willing to play. 






Bibliography

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

Jenkins, Henry. Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide. New York: New York University Press, 2006,

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. 

Modernism and Post Modernism

Creeber defines old and new media, through two time periods, Modernism and Post Modernism. Post-modernism can partly be understood as "the inevitable by-product of a consumer society, where consumption and leisure now determine our experiences rather than work and production" (Creeber, 2009, p.15). The increase 'Participatory culture'  creating virtual communities allows participation from individuals and corporations "to become ‘producers’ as well as ‘receivers’ of the media" (Creeber, 2009, p.19).
Creebers ideas of participatory culture coincide with Henry Jenkins' three key terms of "convergence, collective intelligence and participation" (Jenkins, 2006, p.47).

The participatory culture are able to then take a image from another, using digital devices such as cameras and computers to create a image or other mediums with there own take of an image. Using virtual communities such as Facebook and Tumblr along with video and image platforms such as YouTube and 4chan to create these texts. Although, this did not just happen with the invention of digital media or just within New Media. Marcel Duchamp, an artist who took images like the Mona Lisa, adding a moustache to the piece of art and anchored with some text. This under Lev Manovich's classification of New media would be a variability and also wouldn't not be because nothing was digitized but would suggest that the idea of New Media began with the age of mass production. 

Like Manovich, who wants a new theory of authorship to help us to understand media, Creeber believes that there should be a "new theoretical framework which allows us to understand and appreciate both the positive and negative features of our current media age" (Creeber, 2009, p.21). With there being no set theoretical framework and no authorship to understand the concept of new media, there will be a growth in technology, to try and understand, more collective knowledge to try to comprehend what is and isn't new media and more shifts in cultural dynamics of media.


Bibliography

Creeber, G. (2009). DIGITAL THEORY: Theorizing New Media & Cubitt, D. (2009)  

Manovich, L. (2001). The Language of New Media. MIT Press.

Jenkins, H. (2006). Convergence Culture: where old and new media collide. revised version. NYU Press.