After last week's discussion, the concept of the Holodeck was proffered as the ultimate expression of Immediacy, by which I mean the ability to be totally and completely immersed in a fictional or virtual reality where any technological apparatus is completely and utterly hidden from the participant's perception.
I occurred to me that Immediacy doesn't end there, however. 'Being There' has never been enough for humanity and almost every individual, consciously or unconsciously, places their own 'spin' or personality on the subject material no matter what the medium. When reading a book, we put faces on the characters and dress them in our mind's eye as we would like to see them (sometimes even in the face of a complete description given directly in the text), we interpret their motives as good or bad and we often try to imagine what we, ourselves might do differently in certain situations.
This desire remains even when watching a film, which may show us directly what a character looks like and even what their motives and outlook are by the exaggerated body language of the actor, but restricts exploration of the fictional world to those areas where the director decides to place his camera and often leaves us with a lack of closure at the end of the film as to the further lives and experiences of the characters. At times, the feeling of helplessness as you watch a specific character do something incredibly stupid can be intense as you place yourself in their shoes and think 'all of this could have been avoided if I were that character' and 'no way would I go down in a basement, by myself, with no lights with a serial killer on the loose.'
Computer games give in to this impulse, in a limited fashion, allowing you to do what you want within the restrictions of the programming. Table-top Role Playing Games give even more freedom, the story being almost entirely free-form and unrestricted by anything but the imagination and the need to 'step-out' of the story to consult rules or roll dice, but lack the immediacy of a 3D rendered environment and automated rules handling by the computer.
Our theoretical 'Holodeck' is the ultimate form of immediacy, of course. You are 'there' for all intents and purposes and your actions are only restricted by what the virtual reality environment around you restricts you to in much the same manner as 'real' reality. What's more important about it, however, is not the level of reality it can recreate, but the level of 'unreality' it allows the user to indulge in. Here is an environment in which all your personal feelings, frustrations and peccadilloes can be set free to roam about in a world entirely of your own creation. And you can live there.
This can be entertaining, to be sure, and when you watch Star Trek the Next Generation, you see a bunch of enlightened folks doing proper things like reliving a Sherlock Holmes mystery or indulging their musical interests and then politely unplugging themselves when reality needs attending to. All very nice and orderly, but considering the main uses film, games and internet are put to today, this idealized idea of what the Holodeck would be used for in the future seems fairly naive.
What about those base aspects of humanity that are only given free reign through some sort of virtual reality?
Think all minorities are inferior beings and want to indulge your whip-wielding domination fantasies on them? Want a world of women (or men, or animals or zombies, whatever) who are debased before you in every manner you can think of and are devoted only to your pleasure? Want a world where Christians are hung up on crosses with their heads lit on fire like human torches while you fiddle in your coliseum, lord over all you can lay waste too? Want to be God? Or the Devil?
You can do these things today through film, video games or the internet and one might argue it has coarsened the human condition considerably as is, even within these Hyper-mediated mediums where reality can tug at your sleeve to remind you that it's 'all a game.' Imagine the effects on the mind of a person who can completely immerse themselves in their base desires with no interruption from reality, living in a world of the Id, in which the thoughts and desires of other human beings are completely subservient to their own. Nietzche' greatest dream and fear come true in one fell swoop.
Imagine a world of such people. All the millenniums of cultural evolution, all the lessons of morality and need for social norms, all of that gone out the window as our brains are restructured not only by technology (as many of the books I've been reading suggest) but by the reality we choose to live in. What kind of people come out of the other end of that?
So, the question is an age old one of 'just because we can do a thing, should we do it?' We have seen so many instances in history, particularly the last 100 years, where mankind's ability to create technology far outpaces his ability to understand its ramifications and responsibly use it. This is even truer today, when technological innovation comes at an exponential pace but our society is even more fractured and divided than ever before. And given the ability of technology to shape our thoughts and behavior, shouldn't we stop and try to understand that process a little better and try to predict the ultimate results before jumping feet first into the 'latest thing' to come down the technological pike and just 'see where it takes us?'
Another age old question, this time on morality and values, is brought to mind as I think about this. There is a strong movement in western civilization towards perspectivism and moral equivalency, basically 'there are no useful morals, no justifiable judgments, no need for values, just a need to be free to do whatever feels good to the individual.' This is considered by the secular progressive movement to be the only way to world peace and human enlightenment. But in the face of such transformative technology, where one's own desires are God, isn't a strong set of values and morals to guide the user absolutely imperative before entering such a world?
How can one fight the Id if there is no Superego to balance it out? And how does a person without a basic set of societal values interact with the rest of the world of the real, when the world of the unreal reinforces their most base instincts? And will they want to live in that world at all or just lose themselves in 'The Id Universe, where [Fill in the Blank]s want him (in the most perverse ways) and [Fill in the Blank]s want to be him, except for those [Fill in the Blank]s who serve him and never revolt at his violent abuse because they know their place.'
Things to consider as we move into a new age where the lines between humanity and technology are rapidly blurring...
Showing posts with label EMAC6300. Show all posts
Showing posts with label EMAC6300. Show all posts
Sunday, February 13, 2011
Saturday, February 5, 2011
Analyzing the Playbook Concept using the lens of Remediation...
Continuing on from my previous post, in which I applied precepts from my class reading to a better understanding of the strength's and weaknesses of my Playbook concept, I will now analyze it through the lenses of Immediacy, Hyper-immediacy and Remediation (based upon the theories of Bolter and Gruslin in Remediation: Understanding New Media). If you're not in my EMAC class and have no idea what I'm talking about, here is a definition of those terms along with some of the ways in which they are applied and the occasional personal commentary on the implications from yours truly.
The goal of most painting, particularly the work of the Great Masters, for example, is to provide you with a window into another place or time. Films give you an active picture into that world and video games give an interactive experience that goes beyond film. Even these mediums, however, must provide extremely moving or immersive experiences in order to distract you from the tech behind them, and only a true VR device, like the Subquantum Interference Device (SquID) seen in the movie Strange Days, could even approach the true Holy Grail of Immediacy.
Personally, while I like the concept of 'being there,' the reality of a technology that can produce true immediacy has many social and psychological pitfalls that must be acknowledged before we plunge headlong into it as we have done with every other piece of technology that has come down the pike. A good example is the concept of the 'Nanobox' computer that has no video-screen. Instead of viewing the output of the computer from a small window, nanites in your body receive transmissions from the box and 'intercept' sensory signals going to your brain and 'edit' them to provide the appropriate feedback. True Immediacy is achieved as everything you see, hear, touch, taste or feel is indistinguishable from that which your normal senses provide you.
The dangers of such a technology are as plentiful as the benefits. The first and foremost is addiction to an unreal existence. Why leave the house, socialize, have children or act on any basic human impulse if everything you've every wanted, particularly sex, is available via 'the box,' with all the consequences and downsides edited out? We see this already with folks addicted to their internet connection and spending more time interfacing with their computers than real live human beings. Just imagine the world of inactive, anti-social lardbutts we could have with true VR.
And then there's the problem of hackers. Think of what they can do now and extrapolate that to actually hacking your senses. They could fool you into doing anything, like walking off a cliff, 'defending' yourself from an axe wielding maniac who is actually your wife asking you what you want for dinner, or trapping you in a VR world of Lovecraftian horrors.
Call me an old fuddy-duddy, but I think I'll stick to a medium that keeps one foot in reality.
The modern cable news is a perfect example of this, with the news anchor talking at you, video playing in a window over their shoulder and a ticker-tape of unrelated news running at the bottom of the screen, you can choose which bits of news you want to absorb without changing a channel. Computer desktops do the same, presenting you with multiple windows of information arranged in whatever fashion you feel is important.
Even the Rock Concert is an exercise in Hyper-immediacy, as the sights, sounds, smells and everything else that typically goes on there is actually part and parcel of the experience that goes beyond the music itself. If you've ever been to a Pink Floyd concert, you'll know exactly what I mean: listening to them and seeing them in concert are two entirely different experiences. the first is immediate and internal, the second is all about the external
Hyper-mediacy has the benefit of being more free-form, open to discontinuity and the mixing of data elements that can lead to 'aha!' moments. The problem with it, unfortunately, is that it is unfocused and can divide attention to a point where much is taken in but little is understood or internalized. In addition, in cases where all the elements are necessary to provide a certain experience, like a rock concert, missing one or two of those vital disparate elements can lead to a lack of fulfillment.
A personal example for me would include certain styles of eating establishments. When I go to El Chico to have a Tex-Mex dinner, one of the things I expect ( and the reason I've gone there for years) is an authentic 'eating experience.' I don't just want the food to be Mexican, I want the walls to look like stucco, the hangings and colors to be of the appropriate style and the music to be Tejano. There's been a push to modernize the palce in the last year, with shiny modern interiors, pop music, etc., that really makes the experience no different from On the Border, El Fenix or any other restaurant, now, so Angelina's ( a little independent place) has become my new El Chico. It may sound silly, but I don't want to hear Lady Gaga while I'm eating at a mexican restaurant. It makes me feel like I'm in a nightclub, not Mexico.
1. The Mediation of Mediation: Basically, the recreation of one medium (whether immediate or hyper-mediate) through another. Making a movie out of a comic book, for instance. It doesn't improve on the comic book, necessarily, it just moves it to another medium.
2. The Inseparability of Mediation and Reality: In other words, no matter how Immediate a Mediator/technology is, there is no existing technology that can completely free you from the knowledge that what you are experiencing is not reality.
3. Reform: Using a previous form of mediation to 'fix' or improve upon an earlier form of mediation. Photography should precise images that couldn't be recreated as accurately by hand, Film shows that reality in motion, computer games allow you to interact with that imagery, etc. or social sites like Facebook are better than email because they are real-time, more visually interesting and easier to manage large groups with.
In a nutshell, Remediation is the process of taking an existing medium and 'updating' or 're-purposing' it for a new technology or medium. And this is where The Playbook comes in...
THE PLAYBOOK AS REMEDIATION THROUGH REFORM
Computer RPGs are Table Top Role-Playing Games as filtered through the Remediation concept of Reform. Basically, they took the fantasy gaming aspect of D&D and other games of that medium and 'improved' upon them by giving them visuals and automating rules tasks to provide an improved sense of Immediacy.
The Playbook, by intent, is a Remediation by Reform of CRPGs and TTRPGs. It presumes the following weaknesses in both the parent and child formats:
1. TTRPGs are a Hyper-media experience that lacks intended Immediacy because external processes (like referencing rules) tend to take the players out of the story far too often. It also requires a great deal of external paraphenalia that one must be conscious of, like dice, miniatures, a playing surface, etc. that distract from the story and focus play on the Visual space and not the Acoustic.
2. CRPGs improve immediacy through rules automation but limit the Acoustic space of the TTRPG, which increases Hyper-Immediacy, by limiting player options to whatever the programmer managed to put into the program and focusing their attention on a new distraction in the form of status bars and info boxes.
3. Neither is truly at home in the others environment. You can play TTRPG's online through social media, but the Hyper-media experience is unfulfilling for many, lacking in various aesthetic considerations that are the appeal of TTRPG's, namely face to face social interaction (with all the banter and BSing that goes along with it), and the further reduction in Immediacy that the distraction of operating all the technology adds to the already present distraction of rules-books, minis and etc. CRPGs, on the other hand, limit player interaction with the environment and also suffer form the distractions of technology, including glitches, bugs and all the other that never affects the low-tech TTRPG.
The one thing the Playbook must do to address these points if to first realize that the TTRPG experience is, by nature a Hyper-media experience, no matter how badly the players try to create Immediacy during play. You must reference a character sheet, you must roll dice in some form, etc. in order to play the game. On the other hand, Immediacy is a big part of the 'experience' so anything that can reduce that Hyper-Immediacy to a minimum is a boon, and that mainly involves keeping players interacting face to face and making sure that their ability to shape the environment of the game, through the interaction of their characters with the game world in any way they choose and the game master permits, is un-compromised. Keeping that in mind, here is how we address the weaknesses mentioned above:
1. Automate as many game tasks as possible and make all information available in a single intuitive interface, so that attention can be as focused as much as possible on cooperative story-telling with the other players.
2. Remove the distraction of Visual Spacial elements and restrictions so that the players play in a more Acoustic Spacial zone. This will create a unique spacial experience for each player as opposed to the uniform experience provided by a pre-programmed game with pre-defined visuals.
3. By doing the above, you leverage the key aspects of both mediums into a unique functional hybrid that has all the advantages of the older medium, but is updated to take advantage of the new. Basically a complete game with infinite possibilities like the boxed RPGs of old, with the automation and UI improvements of digital technology.
That's the plan, at any rate. The question is this: can it attract enough new blood from the CRPG industry to renew the dying TTRPG industry and allow it to thrive as a form of entertainment and creative expression?
IMMEDIACY
When you are experiencing a 'virtual reality,' whether a story in a book, a movie or a video game, most mediums attempt to give you a sense of 'immediacy,' or in other words, they try to make you feel as though 'you're there' in whatever ways are possible within the limitations of that medium. The main way of achieving this goal is to make the source of mediation, the technology being applied to bring you into this alternate reality, fade into the background and achieve transparency so that you don't notice it at all.The goal of most painting, particularly the work of the Great Masters, for example, is to provide you with a window into another place or time. Films give you an active picture into that world and video games give an interactive experience that goes beyond film. Even these mediums, however, must provide extremely moving or immersive experiences in order to distract you from the tech behind them, and only a true VR device, like the Subquantum Interference Device (SquID) seen in the movie Strange Days, could even approach the true Holy Grail of Immediacy.
Personally, while I like the concept of 'being there,' the reality of a technology that can produce true immediacy has many social and psychological pitfalls that must be acknowledged before we plunge headlong into it as we have done with every other piece of technology that has come down the pike. A good example is the concept of the 'Nanobox' computer that has no video-screen. Instead of viewing the output of the computer from a small window, nanites in your body receive transmissions from the box and 'intercept' sensory signals going to your brain and 'edit' them to provide the appropriate feedback. True Immediacy is achieved as everything you see, hear, touch, taste or feel is indistinguishable from that which your normal senses provide you.
The dangers of such a technology are as plentiful as the benefits. The first and foremost is addiction to an unreal existence. Why leave the house, socialize, have children or act on any basic human impulse if everything you've every wanted, particularly sex, is available via 'the box,' with all the consequences and downsides edited out? We see this already with folks addicted to their internet connection and spending more time interfacing with their computers than real live human beings. Just imagine the world of inactive, anti-social lardbutts we could have with true VR.
And then there's the problem of hackers. Think of what they can do now and extrapolate that to actually hacking your senses. They could fool you into doing anything, like walking off a cliff, 'defending' yourself from an axe wielding maniac who is actually your wife asking you what you want for dinner, or trapping you in a VR world of Lovecraftian horrors.
Call me an old fuddy-duddy, but I think I'll stick to a medium that keeps one foot in reality.
HYPER-MEDIACY
While the history of mediation is focused on fading into the background to convince you that you're actually 'there,' there are certain instances where a medium will actively work to keep you aware of everything that is going on around it and provide 'fulfillment' by satiating every sense you have with disparate data-streams. Rather than a structured experience, like watching a movie from beginning to end, Hyper-media seeks to provide a smorgasbord of possibilities for you to take in as you will.The modern cable news is a perfect example of this, with the news anchor talking at you, video playing in a window over their shoulder and a ticker-tape of unrelated news running at the bottom of the screen, you can choose which bits of news you want to absorb without changing a channel. Computer desktops do the same, presenting you with multiple windows of information arranged in whatever fashion you feel is important.
Even the Rock Concert is an exercise in Hyper-immediacy, as the sights, sounds, smells and everything else that typically goes on there is actually part and parcel of the experience that goes beyond the music itself. If you've ever been to a Pink Floyd concert, you'll know exactly what I mean: listening to them and seeing them in concert are two entirely different experiences. the first is immediate and internal, the second is all about the external
Hyper-mediacy has the benefit of being more free-form, open to discontinuity and the mixing of data elements that can lead to 'aha!' moments. The problem with it, unfortunately, is that it is unfocused and can divide attention to a point where much is taken in but little is understood or internalized. In addition, in cases where all the elements are necessary to provide a certain experience, like a rock concert, missing one or two of those vital disparate elements can lead to a lack of fulfillment.
A personal example for me would include certain styles of eating establishments. When I go to El Chico to have a Tex-Mex dinner, one of the things I expect ( and the reason I've gone there for years) is an authentic 'eating experience.' I don't just want the food to be Mexican, I want the walls to look like stucco, the hangings and colors to be of the appropriate style and the music to be Tejano. There's been a push to modernize the palce in the last year, with shiny modern interiors, pop music, etc., that really makes the experience no different from On the Border, El Fenix or any other restaurant, now, so Angelina's ( a little independent place) has become my new El Chico. It may sound silly, but I don't want to hear Lady Gaga while I'm eating at a mexican restaurant. It makes me feel like I'm in a nightclub, not Mexico.
REMEDIATION
By the definition of the authors of Remediation: Understanding New Media, Remediation is three things:1. The Mediation of Mediation: Basically, the recreation of one medium (whether immediate or hyper-mediate) through another. Making a movie out of a comic book, for instance. It doesn't improve on the comic book, necessarily, it just moves it to another medium.
2. The Inseparability of Mediation and Reality: In other words, no matter how Immediate a Mediator/technology is, there is no existing technology that can completely free you from the knowledge that what you are experiencing is not reality.
3. Reform: Using a previous form of mediation to 'fix' or improve upon an earlier form of mediation. Photography should precise images that couldn't be recreated as accurately by hand, Film shows that reality in motion, computer games allow you to interact with that imagery, etc. or social sites like Facebook are better than email because they are real-time, more visually interesting and easier to manage large groups with.
In a nutshell, Remediation is the process of taking an existing medium and 'updating' or 're-purposing' it for a new technology or medium. And this is where The Playbook comes in...
THE PLAYBOOK AS REMEDIATION THROUGH REFORM
Computer RPGs are Table Top Role-Playing Games as filtered through the Remediation concept of Reform. Basically, they took the fantasy gaming aspect of D&D and other games of that medium and 'improved' upon them by giving them visuals and automating rules tasks to provide an improved sense of Immediacy.
The Playbook, by intent, is a Remediation by Reform of CRPGs and TTRPGs. It presumes the following weaknesses in both the parent and child formats:
1. TTRPGs are a Hyper-media experience that lacks intended Immediacy because external processes (like referencing rules) tend to take the players out of the story far too often. It also requires a great deal of external paraphenalia that one must be conscious of, like dice, miniatures, a playing surface, etc. that distract from the story and focus play on the Visual space and not the Acoustic.
2. CRPGs improve immediacy through rules automation but limit the Acoustic space of the TTRPG, which increases Hyper-Immediacy, by limiting player options to whatever the programmer managed to put into the program and focusing their attention on a new distraction in the form of status bars and info boxes.
3. Neither is truly at home in the others environment. You can play TTRPG's online through social media, but the Hyper-media experience is unfulfilling for many, lacking in various aesthetic considerations that are the appeal of TTRPG's, namely face to face social interaction (with all the banter and BSing that goes along with it), and the further reduction in Immediacy that the distraction of operating all the technology adds to the already present distraction of rules-books, minis and etc. CRPGs, on the other hand, limit player interaction with the environment and also suffer form the distractions of technology, including glitches, bugs and all the other that never affects the low-tech TTRPG.
The one thing the Playbook must do to address these points if to first realize that the TTRPG experience is, by nature a Hyper-media experience, no matter how badly the players try to create Immediacy during play. You must reference a character sheet, you must roll dice in some form, etc. in order to play the game. On the other hand, Immediacy is a big part of the 'experience' so anything that can reduce that Hyper-Immediacy to a minimum is a boon, and that mainly involves keeping players interacting face to face and making sure that their ability to shape the environment of the game, through the interaction of their characters with the game world in any way they choose and the game master permits, is un-compromised. Keeping that in mind, here is how we address the weaknesses mentioned above:
1. Automate as many game tasks as possible and make all information available in a single intuitive interface, so that attention can be as focused as much as possible on cooperative story-telling with the other players.
2. Remove the distraction of Visual Spacial elements and restrictions so that the players play in a more Acoustic Spacial zone. This will create a unique spacial experience for each player as opposed to the uniform experience provided by a pre-programmed game with pre-defined visuals.
3. By doing the above, you leverage the key aspects of both mediums into a unique functional hybrid that has all the advantages of the older medium, but is updated to take advantage of the new. Basically a complete game with infinite possibilities like the boxed RPGs of old, with the automation and UI improvements of digital technology.
That's the plan, at any rate. The question is this: can it attract enough new blood from the CRPG industry to renew the dying TTRPG industry and allow it to thrive as a form of entertainment and creative expression?
Sunday, January 30, 2011
The Practicalities of The New Science: The Practical Application...
THE PRACTICAL APPLICATION
Right, I've talked about politics enough, so let's get on to something I really find interesting: the practical application of what I've learned.
One of my thesis projects is to bring old pre-digital (pre-internet) forms of media, like radio and tabletop role-playing games, into the post-digital area. Some of you might immediately think 'Wait a mo, we have Sirius Digital Radio and MMOs. What are you on about?' but stay with me for a moment and you'll realize that these things are not equal.
Others might ask 'Why bother?' To that I can only give a simple answer at this point, and that is that I believe that these forms of media are interactive in ways that modern forms cannot be. As a matter of fact, I believe that in some ways they are superior and can actually help to keep us quintessentially human as exponential technological advance drags us further away from that humanity in a number of ways. As such, I believe that they should be modernized to bring them back into use and not vanish into the dustbin of media history.
With any old form, the first task is to ascertain (to quote Marcus Aurelius) 'This thing, what is it in itself, in its own constitution? What is its substance and material? And what its causal nature [or form]? And what is it doing in the world?' In other words,what is it that makes a particular medium unique? What are the basic qualities that can be distilled from it and moved into another form while still retaining its basic nature?
In the case of tabletop role-playing games, we have to look at them in comparison to their nearest competition (and offspring), the MMO. In my estimation TTRPGS offer a few things that the average video game cannot:
1. The ability to create truly personal stories in a truly Acoustic space with few Visual spacial restrictions.
2. The ability to change those stories and add new elements on the fly, as the story is being told.
3. The cooperative story-telling environment of an RPG is best as a truly face to face social interaction experience.
Our second task is to find the right modern technology to streamline and modernize said medium into a new form while still retaining the inherent nature and qualities of that medium. Laws and Media takes this task and gives it a useful systematic basis in the concept of the Tetrad, a set of four questions that can be asked by anyone about any media and then tested to provide a general verifiable statements about it. What does the medium:
1. Enhance or intensify?
2. Render obsolete or replace?
3. Retrieve that was previously obsolesced?
4. Produce or become when pressed to an extreme?
Let's take a look at applying the Tetrad to my modernized tabletop role-playing game concept: the Playbook.
1. Computerized interfaces enhance interactivity and automate functions which means the players spend less time 'out' of the game managing details and more time 'in' it, creating the story. It also enhances the need for high tech items like tablet devices, which makes it an experience limited to those who can afford such items.
2. By moving the TTRPG to a tablet or other form of digital medium, it replaces writing utensils, dice, miniatures, physical maps, counters and a mess of rulebooks with a slick interface. The downside, of course, is a hit to the print RPG industry, but that has been in decline for some time.
3. Modern computer games, though the technological offspring of the TTRPG, lack the three qualities given above. This format retrieves them.
4. When used to its fullest, with many of the Visual space distractions eliminated or reduced, the TTRPG becomes more immersive than any Visual game can be, and more socially constructive as well.
Answering these questions can also bring to mind other points like the feasibility of using said media on a desktop instead of a tablet or smartphone, the point of overload in functionality (how many features is too many for a TTRPG), what programming language is the most appropraite (in my case Java as it is extremely cross-platform), etc.
I think the Tetrad was very useful here in validating the Playbook concept and it could be just as easily applied to other forms of media as well, new or old (is Twitter all that useful, for instance), and can help to define not what is the best form of media, but what is the right media for the given activity. I'll talk more about the design itself in later posts...
Right, I've talked about politics enough, so let's get on to something I really find interesting: the practical application of what I've learned.
One of my thesis projects is to bring old pre-digital (pre-internet) forms of media, like radio and tabletop role-playing games, into the post-digital area. Some of you might immediately think 'Wait a mo, we have Sirius Digital Radio and MMOs. What are you on about?' but stay with me for a moment and you'll realize that these things are not equal.
Others might ask 'Why bother?' To that I can only give a simple answer at this point, and that is that I believe that these forms of media are interactive in ways that modern forms cannot be. As a matter of fact, I believe that in some ways they are superior and can actually help to keep us quintessentially human as exponential technological advance drags us further away from that humanity in a number of ways. As such, I believe that they should be modernized to bring them back into use and not vanish into the dustbin of media history.
With any old form, the first task is to ascertain (to quote Marcus Aurelius) 'This thing, what is it in itself, in its own constitution? What is its substance and material? And what its causal nature [or form]? And what is it doing in the world?' In other words,what is it that makes a particular medium unique? What are the basic qualities that can be distilled from it and moved into another form while still retaining its basic nature?
In the case of tabletop role-playing games, we have to look at them in comparison to their nearest competition (and offspring), the MMO. In my estimation TTRPGS offer a few things that the average video game cannot:
1. The ability to create truly personal stories in a truly Acoustic space with few Visual spacial restrictions.
2. The ability to change those stories and add new elements on the fly, as the story is being told.
3. The cooperative story-telling environment of an RPG is best as a truly face to face social interaction experience.
Our second task is to find the right modern technology to streamline and modernize said medium into a new form while still retaining the inherent nature and qualities of that medium. Laws and Media takes this task and gives it a useful systematic basis in the concept of the Tetrad, a set of four questions that can be asked by anyone about any media and then tested to provide a general verifiable statements about it. What does the medium:
1. Enhance or intensify?
2. Render obsolete or replace?
3. Retrieve that was previously obsolesced?
4. Produce or become when pressed to an extreme?
Let's take a look at applying the Tetrad to my modernized tabletop role-playing game concept: the Playbook.
1. Computerized interfaces enhance interactivity and automate functions which means the players spend less time 'out' of the game managing details and more time 'in' it, creating the story. It also enhances the need for high tech items like tablet devices, which makes it an experience limited to those who can afford such items.
2. By moving the TTRPG to a tablet or other form of digital medium, it replaces writing utensils, dice, miniatures, physical maps, counters and a mess of rulebooks with a slick interface. The downside, of course, is a hit to the print RPG industry, but that has been in decline for some time.
3. Modern computer games, though the technological offspring of the TTRPG, lack the three qualities given above. This format retrieves them.
4. When used to its fullest, with many of the Visual space distractions eliminated or reduced, the TTRPG becomes more immersive than any Visual game can be, and more socially constructive as well.
Answering these questions can also bring to mind other points like the feasibility of using said media on a desktop instead of a tablet or smartphone, the point of overload in functionality (how many features is too many for a TTRPG), what programming language is the most appropraite (in my case Java as it is extremely cross-platform), etc.
I think the Tetrad was very useful here in validating the Playbook concept and it could be just as easily applied to other forms of media as well, new or old (is Twitter all that useful, for instance), and can help to define not what is the best form of media, but what is the right media for the given activity. I'll talk more about the design itself in later posts...
The Practicalities of The New Science: The Political...
THE POLITICAL
The Laws of Media take on how we see the world through the two forms of mind space also gave me a new way to look at politics based upon my previous thoughts on the 'Philosophical (Acoustic) versus the Practical (Visual).'
As far as I can tell, and everything I say after this is generalization, but useful genrealization, the divide between liberal and conservative can be explained neatly by defining the time they spend in Acoustic and Visual space.
Liberals, in general, make decisions based upon emotion and abstract concepts of truth drawn from debate and a relativistic view of society and the universe in general. It doesn't matter what is, it is what should be that is the Truth of things, and like Socrates, they believe that Truth comes from within. A liberal will read a book and wonder at the motivations and underlying metaphors, even if there aren't any and they will follow a plan of action because it is based on the Truth, no matter how much evidence points to it also being totally unfeasible.
Conservatives, on the other hand, live in the world of the known quantity. They look at centuries of history and apply the precepts learned to every situation. What they feel is secondary to what is the most practical method of getting from point A to point B and that is determined by what the facts of the matter are, not the Truth of it. If they read a book, they take it at face value and 'see it' in visual terms: setting, character and will often miss abstract uses of wording or metaphor. They will follow a plan until it becomes unfeasible and then start over.
This, of course explains why so many liberals becomes academics or artists while so many conservatives are business people. Academia and art provide an opportunity to live in Acoustic space full-time while business provides a practical, tangible and Visual result that can be appreciated by those of a conservative mind-set.
While thinking about all of this and reading a quote from Max Planck, which can be summed up as 'New theories don't take hold by debate but by waiting for old theories to die,' it also verifies what I've suspected all along about technology, education and their combined role in the downfall of civilizations. Progressive elements (which typically consist of rabble-rousers, anarchists and those seeking to establish a new civilization in their own image), who cannot win in the marketplace of ideas through argument, often seek to usurp control of information dissemination in order to control the education of younger, more open minds in a society. In this way, they can introduce changes to society without confronting it directly by massaging the youth and waiting for the keepers of the old mores to die off one by one.
In this country in particular, teacher's unions and the mass media teach young people that morals are relative, there are no absolutes and parental modes of thought are out of date and incompatible with the Acoustic space that the Progressives wish to see overthrow conventional Visual thought. In previous centuries, this was harder to accomplish as the main source of information and influence came from family and local political structures, but with the advent of the 24 hour media cycle and easy access to any form of alternate thought, from philosophy to porn, it is far easier to get the message out.
As such, voting patterns change and politicians are elected on much more Acoustic principles, like 'Hope and Change' rather than practical experience or Visual accomplishments, and their policies are based more and more often on 'what should work' rather than 'what does work.'
Yep, they may not have meant to, but the authors of Laws of Media have really reinforced my perspectives on the world with their very interesting theories.
The Laws of Media take on how we see the world through the two forms of mind space also gave me a new way to look at politics based upon my previous thoughts on the 'Philosophical (Acoustic) versus the Practical (Visual).'
As far as I can tell, and everything I say after this is generalization, but useful genrealization, the divide between liberal and conservative can be explained neatly by defining the time they spend in Acoustic and Visual space.
Liberals, in general, make decisions based upon emotion and abstract concepts of truth drawn from debate and a relativistic view of society and the universe in general. It doesn't matter what is, it is what should be that is the Truth of things, and like Socrates, they believe that Truth comes from within. A liberal will read a book and wonder at the motivations and underlying metaphors, even if there aren't any and they will follow a plan of action because it is based on the Truth, no matter how much evidence points to it also being totally unfeasible.
Conservatives, on the other hand, live in the world of the known quantity. They look at centuries of history and apply the precepts learned to every situation. What they feel is secondary to what is the most practical method of getting from point A to point B and that is determined by what the facts of the matter are, not the Truth of it. If they read a book, they take it at face value and 'see it' in visual terms: setting, character and will often miss abstract uses of wording or metaphor. They will follow a plan until it becomes unfeasible and then start over.
This, of course explains why so many liberals becomes academics or artists while so many conservatives are business people. Academia and art provide an opportunity to live in Acoustic space full-time while business provides a practical, tangible and Visual result that can be appreciated by those of a conservative mind-set.
While thinking about all of this and reading a quote from Max Planck, which can be summed up as 'New theories don't take hold by debate but by waiting for old theories to die,' it also verifies what I've suspected all along about technology, education and their combined role in the downfall of civilizations. Progressive elements (which typically consist of rabble-rousers, anarchists and those seeking to establish a new civilization in their own image), who cannot win in the marketplace of ideas through argument, often seek to usurp control of information dissemination in order to control the education of younger, more open minds in a society. In this way, they can introduce changes to society without confronting it directly by massaging the youth and waiting for the keepers of the old mores to die off one by one.
In this country in particular, teacher's unions and the mass media teach young people that morals are relative, there are no absolutes and parental modes of thought are out of date and incompatible with the Acoustic space that the Progressives wish to see overthrow conventional Visual thought. In previous centuries, this was harder to accomplish as the main source of information and influence came from family and local political structures, but with the advent of the 24 hour media cycle and easy access to any form of alternate thought, from philosophy to porn, it is far easier to get the message out.
As such, voting patterns change and politicians are elected on much more Acoustic principles, like 'Hope and Change' rather than practical experience or Visual accomplishments, and their policies are based more and more often on 'what should work' rather than 'what does work.'
Yep, they may not have meant to, but the authors of Laws of Media have really reinforced my perspectives on the world with their very interesting theories.
The Practicalities of The New Science: The Philisophical...
My class reading assignment for the week included a hefty chunk from Laws of Media: The New Science. As an academic treatise goes, it is fairly typical in its use of 10 pages to pontificate where one page is all that's really necessary to get the point across, but there are some thought provoking nuggets of information for those who can wade through the academic-speak to find them. Indeed, there were quite a few 'Aha!' moments for me (along with quite a few 'Huh?' moments as well) and these moments are what I wish to discuss today.
My little brain bursts were incredibly varied and drifted off of the main subject at times as the text made certain points and (being a practical man as well as good little grad student) I took those points and applied them to other areas to test their validity. I've grouped these thoughts in three posts by Philosophy, Politics and Practical Application. Let's start with the Philosophical...
THE PHILOSOPHICAL
The basic gist of the reading is that mankind has existed in two types of mental space for the majority of his time here:
The Acoustic: The home of the orator and the philosopher, acoustic space is the chaotic realm of non-linear thought. Here, the Figure (the area of attention) and the Ground (the area of inattention, i.e. the background noise of the universe) are equal and interactive.
The main method of learning in Acoustic space is Mimesis, which in practical terms means remembering something by feeling it and putting yourself in the place of it, in other words 'being' the knowledge. As an example, orators learned stories by placing themselves in the shoes of Achilles or Gilgamesh and trying to imagine their experiences as the stories were recited.
The interesting thing about Acoustic space is that its proponents believed that, due to the interactive nature between figure and ground, the universe is actually moved by oration and reason (Logos), to the extent that when you understand something as a concept and speak of it, you are in effect, creating it, which is how God basically created the universe (Let there be light was not a command, but an 'Aha!' moment).
The Visual: Linear and organized, Visual Space is the realm of the writer and the scientist. The Figure is isolated to find the truth about the Figure without interference from the Ground. It is precise and unbending. You observe the Figure, find out what makes it tick and then sum up that knowledge in an equation, definition, whatever, and shift focus to another figure.
The argument that is presented in Laws of Media is that the creation of writing, specifically phonetic writing where letters are symbolic representations of meaningless sounds, moved mankind from Acoustic Space to Visual space and laid the foundations for the scientific method and the world we live in today. This mode of thought had dominated mankind for millennia until the modern era.
The Modern era has seen a number of changes in science, politics and art that have moved mankind from the rigid discipline of Visual Space and back into Acoustic Space. These changes were brought about by technology and the new sciences of relativity (everything is relative to the Figures position in the Ground) and quantum physics (observing the Figure or the Ground changes its very nature).
While reading all of this, I was struck by the thought that what we're really talking about here is really about philosophy versus practicality. Acoustic space is the realm of academics, Visual space is the realm of the working man, the Dreamer and the Doer, if you will.
It is, in fact, the working man, the merchants and builders, who pushed Visual space upon the rest civilization because while it might be considered artistic to draw 500 cow heads on a piece of parchment to represent the number of cattle you owned, it was far from practical and discussing the nature of a house is not nearly so useful as a blueprint. Phonetic writing was a very useful way to speed things along and since the merchants provided the goods, and the builders built the goods, they were the ones who pushed the agenda. After all, people need food and shelter more than they need paintings and answers to philosophical twaddle like 'can God make a burrito so hot even he can't eat it.' Socrates and Plato be damned, I want my steak!
Technology today does so much for us today, however, it is little wonder that people in developed countries spend so much more time arguing about the why-fores that they lose sight of that which is basic and important. Either that or spending the free time given them by centuries of of social stability to overthrow society because it doesn't fit their vision of the world perfectly or to gain some fleeting moment of infamy at the expense of social stability.
This is where I have trouble with academics. Don't get me wrong, I truly believe that we need art, philosophy and Einsteinian physics, they are quintessentially human artifacts, but there is a point where you have to leave the brain-space and get your hands dirty in the real world. Is it so hard to make practical use of esoteric knowledge and is that knowledge really useful if it makes no meaningful contribution to humanity outside of making their heads hurt pondering 'what the meaning if is, is?' It's been 5000 years since the 'great' Greek philosophers and we've yet to see someone create a house out of Oratory or reason food into existence, so is arguing over who should have housing or food really a good use of time?
And what is the point of writing endless rants on how evil and corrupt business is while sipping a latte in a Starbucks and blogging away on a tablet device created by a company that employs millions of people who are actively engaged in feeding their families and creating something useful for society? Discontinuity can lead to innovation (Necessity is the mother of invention and War is the father of Necessity, is a popular variation on this), but upsetting the apple cart just to make a statement is selfish and detrimental to society.
Right, since I'm drifting that way, I'll move onto the Political in the next post...
My little brain bursts were incredibly varied and drifted off of the main subject at times as the text made certain points and (being a practical man as well as good little grad student) I took those points and applied them to other areas to test their validity. I've grouped these thoughts in three posts by Philosophy, Politics and Practical Application. Let's start with the Philosophical...
THE PHILOSOPHICAL
The basic gist of the reading is that mankind has existed in two types of mental space for the majority of his time here:
The Acoustic: The home of the orator and the philosopher, acoustic space is the chaotic realm of non-linear thought. Here, the Figure (the area of attention) and the Ground (the area of inattention, i.e. the background noise of the universe) are equal and interactive.
The main method of learning in Acoustic space is Mimesis, which in practical terms means remembering something by feeling it and putting yourself in the place of it, in other words 'being' the knowledge. As an example, orators learned stories by placing themselves in the shoes of Achilles or Gilgamesh and trying to imagine their experiences as the stories were recited.
The interesting thing about Acoustic space is that its proponents believed that, due to the interactive nature between figure and ground, the universe is actually moved by oration and reason (Logos), to the extent that when you understand something as a concept and speak of it, you are in effect, creating it, which is how God basically created the universe (Let there be light was not a command, but an 'Aha!' moment).
The Visual: Linear and organized, Visual Space is the realm of the writer and the scientist. The Figure is isolated to find the truth about the Figure without interference from the Ground. It is precise and unbending. You observe the Figure, find out what makes it tick and then sum up that knowledge in an equation, definition, whatever, and shift focus to another figure.
The argument that is presented in Laws of Media is that the creation of writing, specifically phonetic writing where letters are symbolic representations of meaningless sounds, moved mankind from Acoustic Space to Visual space and laid the foundations for the scientific method and the world we live in today. This mode of thought had dominated mankind for millennia until the modern era.
The Modern era has seen a number of changes in science, politics and art that have moved mankind from the rigid discipline of Visual Space and back into Acoustic Space. These changes were brought about by technology and the new sciences of relativity (everything is relative to the Figures position in the Ground) and quantum physics (observing the Figure or the Ground changes its very nature).
While reading all of this, I was struck by the thought that what we're really talking about here is really about philosophy versus practicality. Acoustic space is the realm of academics, Visual space is the realm of the working man, the Dreamer and the Doer, if you will.
It is, in fact, the working man, the merchants and builders, who pushed Visual space upon the rest civilization because while it might be considered artistic to draw 500 cow heads on a piece of parchment to represent the number of cattle you owned, it was far from practical and discussing the nature of a house is not nearly so useful as a blueprint. Phonetic writing was a very useful way to speed things along and since the merchants provided the goods, and the builders built the goods, they were the ones who pushed the agenda. After all, people need food and shelter more than they need paintings and answers to philosophical twaddle like 'can God make a burrito so hot even he can't eat it.' Socrates and Plato be damned, I want my steak!
Technology today does so much for us today, however, it is little wonder that people in developed countries spend so much more time arguing about the why-fores that they lose sight of that which is basic and important. Either that or spending the free time given them by centuries of of social stability to overthrow society because it doesn't fit their vision of the world perfectly or to gain some fleeting moment of infamy at the expense of social stability.
This is where I have trouble with academics. Don't get me wrong, I truly believe that we need art, philosophy and Einsteinian physics, they are quintessentially human artifacts, but there is a point where you have to leave the brain-space and get your hands dirty in the real world. Is it so hard to make practical use of esoteric knowledge and is that knowledge really useful if it makes no meaningful contribution to humanity outside of making their heads hurt pondering 'what the meaning if is, is?' It's been 5000 years since the 'great' Greek philosophers and we've yet to see someone create a house out of Oratory or reason food into existence, so is arguing over who should have housing or food really a good use of time?
And what is the point of writing endless rants on how evil and corrupt business is while sipping a latte in a Starbucks and blogging away on a tablet device created by a company that employs millions of people who are actively engaged in feeding their families and creating something useful for society? Discontinuity can lead to innovation (Necessity is the mother of invention and War is the father of Necessity, is a popular variation on this), but upsetting the apple cart just to make a statement is selfish and detrimental to society.
Right, since I'm drifting that way, I'll move onto the Political in the next post...
Monday, January 24, 2011
Human-Tech Integration Experiment 1: Wall Time...
Right, so I mentioned in my previous post that I had a few ideas for teaching folks how to step away from tech as an reflexive, trained response, in order to give the brain a bit of breathing room. Taking a hot bath is fine, but we can't all just hop in the shower whenever we want, so we need some mental tricks to be able to detach ourselves at a moment's notice no matter where we are.
This trick came to me while I was sitting in the foyer of the Arts & Technology building at UTD. Basically, all the art had been removed from the wall opposite me for some reason (I think they were going to knock it in, or something). As I sat and contemplated why the wall was bare, my brain went into overdrive, answering questions and solving problems I had been pondering for weeks. This led me to consider a white wall, blank board, or other totally featureless surface as a sort of 'mental canvas.' If there is nothing there, and you stare, your brain will put something there.
So, after pondering on this a bit, I thought that a good elementary level educational tool would be 'wall time.' Basically, start with children who are beginning to interact with technology and make them take 5-10 minutes away from everything they are doing and just stare at a blank surface of some sort. Take them away from the hurly-burly of taking in information and let their minds drift with it, internalize it and wander off onto other things that need conscious or subconscious sorting.
Obvious? Maybe. But that doesn't mean that it is done with regularity or as habit. I can't count the number of children I've known who are incapable of functioning without multiple streams of info coming in, entertaining them, but not actually leaving them with any real cognitive growth. Many of them become aggressive or sullen when they are 'bored,' which is almost any time they don't have a tv, a video game and some form of instant messaging going at once.
Adults could benefit from this type of training as well, although it will be harder to build it into their daily routine as a habit. Perhaps businesses would be better off mandating 'wall time?' Maybe just taking 5-10 minutes of every hour or so to let the mind collate information can relieve stress, reduce aggression and improve productivity more effectively than vision statements, ra-ra speeches, politically correct speech codes and 'crazy shirt day' could ever do.
We'll see how it works. I plan to study it further, along with a few other ideas, for one of my independent study courses for this degree. I'd love to hear other ideas on methods of teaching folks to integrate technology without becoming enslaved by it, so pipe up if you have one...
This trick came to me while I was sitting in the foyer of the Arts & Technology building at UTD. Basically, all the art had been removed from the wall opposite me for some reason (I think they were going to knock it in, or something). As I sat and contemplated why the wall was bare, my brain went into overdrive, answering questions and solving problems I had been pondering for weeks. This led me to consider a white wall, blank board, or other totally featureless surface as a sort of 'mental canvas.' If there is nothing there, and you stare, your brain will put something there.
So, after pondering on this a bit, I thought that a good elementary level educational tool would be 'wall time.' Basically, start with children who are beginning to interact with technology and make them take 5-10 minutes away from everything they are doing and just stare at a blank surface of some sort. Take them away from the hurly-burly of taking in information and let their minds drift with it, internalize it and wander off onto other things that need conscious or subconscious sorting.
Obvious? Maybe. But that doesn't mean that it is done with regularity or as habit. I can't count the number of children I've known who are incapable of functioning without multiple streams of info coming in, entertaining them, but not actually leaving them with any real cognitive growth. Many of them become aggressive or sullen when they are 'bored,' which is almost any time they don't have a tv, a video game and some form of instant messaging going at once.
Adults could benefit from this type of training as well, although it will be harder to build it into their daily routine as a habit. Perhaps businesses would be better off mandating 'wall time?' Maybe just taking 5-10 minutes of every hour or so to let the mind collate information can relieve stress, reduce aggression and improve productivity more effectively than vision statements, ra-ra speeches, politically correct speech codes and 'crazy shirt day' could ever do.
We'll see how it works. I plan to study it further, along with a few other ideas, for one of my independent study courses for this degree. I'd love to hear other ideas on methods of teaching folks to integrate technology without becoming enslaved by it, so pipe up if you have one...
Sanity Police! Put down the tech and move away slowly...
That's what your brain and body are telling you, according to Linda Stone, a former VP of Microsoft and current executive at Apple. In a rather interesting case of 'uncommon' sense, her 21 minute lecture at the SIME 2009 conference informs us that a shortage of truly original ideas and an overabundance of stress and cognitive dysfunction can be laid squarely at the feet of an over reliance on information distribution technology like Twitter, email, RSS feeds and the like. Granted, that's my subjective paraphrasing on the content of the lecture, and she does have a bit more detail to add to that picture, but in the end, it's what neo-luddites like myself have been saying for ages.
You can see the lecture given by Ms. Stone here, but to sum it up, she believes that most of the people in the modern world suffer from Continuous Partial Attention, a term she coined to describe the addlepated state most folks in modern society walk around in all day due to trying to concentrate on too many things at once. It goes beyond a simple inability to focus attention, however, and it turns out that folks suffering from CPA (which includes almost everyone in the fast paced world we live in, in my opinion) live in a state of constant crisis in which their 'Fight or Flight' response is constantly switched to 11 (those who do not know what '11' references probably don't have this problem). This of course goes a long way to explaining the incredibly aggressive behavior certain individuals (myself included) tend to involuntarily display on an almost daily basis.
It get's worse. This state of enhanced excitement, in which we hunch over, holding our breath for the next text or response to our constant information exchange can actually cause what she refers to as 'Email Apnea.' You breathe improperly, and as oxygen is essential for good brain function, your attention span suffers even more, along with your ability to process and remember information. Addiction to information exchange is actually as bad for you as snoring.
I'm screwed. I've got sleep apnea AND I just caught myself holding my breath as I typed that. My poor brain is sitting in the equivalent of a plastic bag with the top tied shut and that explains a lot. Especially the last few weeks (or decades if you ask some of my snarkier friends).
She goes on to discussing the evolution of our relationship with technology, and there is a lot of interesting stuff in there that would actually make for three or more good posts, but what really concerns me at this point is the physical response to information technology. One of the subjects I'm interested in exploring for my Master's Thesis is how to have our humanity keep pace with our technology, but is that really possible if we have such a poor relationship with it? It's almost like an abusive spouse who wails on us, berating us for being out of the loop, driving us like a slave-master when we try to keep up and then leaves us empty, exhausted and unsatisfied with our lot, wishing for better but unable to see any other life outside of the one we are trapped in. Keep up, or drop out seem to be the only choices (and I dreamed up several scenarios for the later before entering grad school to do the former).
Ms. Stone seems to think that the method of dealing with this lies in Yoga and other 'breathable' moments. She speculates that the reason so many folks get their best ideas in the bath is the very fact that taking information tech into the bath is not good for the technology (or you if were talking your desktop), so we tend to leave it out and our brain gets a breather. I think she is partially right here, and I, myself, find that hobbies like painting models tends to do the same for me. The problem is that she doesn't see the long-term solution. Sure, as an adult, we can take abath and feel somewhat refreshed, but as soon as we're out, the technology takes over and 'BAM' you're right back into an agitated and aggressive (or downtrodden) state.
What's needed, I think, is a more long-term educational solution that focuses on handling our relationship with our tech. Something that can be taught from childhood, side by side with technical training, something that puts us in the habit of detaching almost instinctively, as a reflex, when we need to focus on a problem or relax form our heightened state of CPA. I have some ideas on some training methods that could be developed for this very purpose, a few of which that came to me, not in the bath, but as I was being affected by the methods themselves in real-time. But, that, I think, is fodder for a separate post...
You can see the lecture given by Ms. Stone here, but to sum it up, she believes that most of the people in the modern world suffer from Continuous Partial Attention, a term she coined to describe the addlepated state most folks in modern society walk around in all day due to trying to concentrate on too many things at once. It goes beyond a simple inability to focus attention, however, and it turns out that folks suffering from CPA (which includes almost everyone in the fast paced world we live in, in my opinion) live in a state of constant crisis in which their 'Fight or Flight' response is constantly switched to 11 (those who do not know what '11' references probably don't have this problem). This of course goes a long way to explaining the incredibly aggressive behavior certain individuals (myself included) tend to involuntarily display on an almost daily basis.
It get's worse. This state of enhanced excitement, in which we hunch over, holding our breath for the next text or response to our constant information exchange can actually cause what she refers to as 'Email Apnea.' You breathe improperly, and as oxygen is essential for good brain function, your attention span suffers even more, along with your ability to process and remember information. Addiction to information exchange is actually as bad for you as snoring.
I'm screwed. I've got sleep apnea AND I just caught myself holding my breath as I typed that. My poor brain is sitting in the equivalent of a plastic bag with the top tied shut and that explains a lot. Especially the last few weeks (or decades if you ask some of my snarkier friends).
She goes on to discussing the evolution of our relationship with technology, and there is a lot of interesting stuff in there that would actually make for three or more good posts, but what really concerns me at this point is the physical response to information technology. One of the subjects I'm interested in exploring for my Master's Thesis is how to have our humanity keep pace with our technology, but is that really possible if we have such a poor relationship with it? It's almost like an abusive spouse who wails on us, berating us for being out of the loop, driving us like a slave-master when we try to keep up and then leaves us empty, exhausted and unsatisfied with our lot, wishing for better but unable to see any other life outside of the one we are trapped in. Keep up, or drop out seem to be the only choices (and I dreamed up several scenarios for the later before entering grad school to do the former).
Ms. Stone seems to think that the method of dealing with this lies in Yoga and other 'breathable' moments. She speculates that the reason so many folks get their best ideas in the bath is the very fact that taking information tech into the bath is not good for the technology (or you if were talking your desktop), so we tend to leave it out and our brain gets a breather. I think she is partially right here, and I, myself, find that hobbies like painting models tends to do the same for me. The problem is that she doesn't see the long-term solution. Sure, as an adult, we can take abath and feel somewhat refreshed, but as soon as we're out, the technology takes over and 'BAM' you're right back into an agitated and aggressive (or downtrodden) state.
What's needed, I think, is a more long-term educational solution that focuses on handling our relationship with our tech. Something that can be taught from childhood, side by side with technical training, something that puts us in the habit of detaching almost instinctively, as a reflex, when we need to focus on a problem or relax form our heightened state of CPA. I have some ideas on some training methods that could be developed for this very purpose, a few of which that came to me, not in the bath, but as I was being affected by the methods themselves in real-time. But, that, I think, is fodder for a separate post...
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