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High-Context Discourse / Re: I am going to GDC
« on: February 23, 2008, 05:09:10 PM »
There's nothing wrong with having a conversation on the phone.
But what if someone told you they were more comfortable having phone conversations than face-to-face conversations. What if that same person would go as far as avoiding any and all face-to-face conversations in favour of phone conversations?
Would that seem a bit odd?
I think that ultimately, supra-MMOs, value-added internets, parallel digital worlds, infinite sandboxes, better-than-life, or whatever-the-hell-you-want-to-call-it is simply media. Possibly educational, possibly entertaining, and possibly as revolutionary as the printed word, sure. But it's still just a new medium for the transmission of information - and maybe a way to have a little fun.
It isn't is a panacea to solve our problems nor is it some kind of replacement - partial or otherwise - for conventional human interaction. As long as we remain these fleshy biological units, we will be always be constrained by these forms to at least some degree (no matter how much we love to try and deny this).
People don't have a clear picture of how this new medium will change society. But man, do they love making guesses. Wild claims are always made with regards to new earth-shattering technological innovations, it's simply that in this case, the vast amorphous form of this new coalescing network makes it harder to refute such pronouncements and harder to see that the 'internets plus' is simply another techonological innovation: neutral when considered on it's own, only gaining one value or another through use by humans. No more or less than a clay tablet, printing press, telegraph, camera, or computer. And at least some of us are old enough to recall the grandiose claims made regarding that last one (Dibbell and Barlow, you poor bastards).
When we look at what the medium itself has to say*, what I've seen so far has been a mixed bag. We have increased access to information and valuable information redundancy, but also isolation disguised as social contact, the loss of existing social skills, and information corruption. Like any advancements in our past, theres been a tradeoff. I worry that while the quantity of information is increeasing expotentially, our ability to use it, and use it effectively. is remaining static, or is even decreasing. Witness the recent subprime meltdown. It's not Facebook Final Fantasy, I know, but bear with me. Those of you familiar with current financial services may know something of modern-day risk management. Modern risk managers had an unprecendented wealth of historical data, formulae, closed testing environments, intercompany communications networks, daily spot tests, and other safeguards to help minimise their risk and provide an accurate picture of what was going on. And then reality rolled into town (well, really, it never left. In fact, it IS the town) and a lot of folks lost their shirts (and houses).
The perfect example of my griping would be the current smouldering fire in the background over control over IANA and ICANN. It's all well and good to talk about interconnectedness, but there's a small-but-real chance that real-life meat-and-iron power struggles will shatter the internet's inviolate state. In the worst case scenario, the resulting balkanization will all make us wish for the glory days of uh... 4chan.
I'm not forecasting the end times here, I just wish that people would stop assuming success is assured and that technology will fix all of our damn problems. You want to talk about evolution, well you'd like to think that that we could at least learn that one damn lesson. We've only had 40 000 years to try.
P.S. Other than the beginning, this post isn't really a direct response to you Sharkey, more just meclarifying my earlier trolling yelling pointlessly for the kids to get off my lawn 
*As a Canadian, I'm honour-bound to invoke McLuhan ;)
But what if someone told you they were more comfortable having phone conversations than face-to-face conversations. What if that same person would go as far as avoiding any and all face-to-face conversations in favour of phone conversations?
Would that seem a bit odd?
I think that ultimately, supra-MMOs, value-added internets, parallel digital worlds, infinite sandboxes, better-than-life, or whatever-the-hell-you-want-to-call-it is simply media. Possibly educational, possibly entertaining, and possibly as revolutionary as the printed word, sure. But it's still just a new medium for the transmission of information - and maybe a way to have a little fun.
It isn't is a panacea to solve our problems nor is it some kind of replacement - partial or otherwise - for conventional human interaction. As long as we remain these fleshy biological units, we will be always be constrained by these forms to at least some degree (no matter how much we love to try and deny this).
People don't have a clear picture of how this new medium will change society. But man, do they love making guesses. Wild claims are always made with regards to new earth-shattering technological innovations, it's simply that in this case, the vast amorphous form of this new coalescing network makes it harder to refute such pronouncements and harder to see that the 'internets plus' is simply another techonological innovation: neutral when considered on it's own, only gaining one value or another through use by humans. No more or less than a clay tablet, printing press, telegraph, camera, or computer. And at least some of us are old enough to recall the grandiose claims made regarding that last one (Dibbell and Barlow, you poor bastards).
When we look at what the medium itself has to say*, what I've seen so far has been a mixed bag. We have increased access to information and valuable information redundancy, but also isolation disguised as social contact, the loss of existing social skills, and information corruption. Like any advancements in our past, theres been a tradeoff. I worry that while the quantity of information is increeasing expotentially, our ability to use it, and use it effectively. is remaining static, or is even decreasing. Witness the recent subprime meltdown. It's not Facebook Final Fantasy, I know, but bear with me. Those of you familiar with current financial services may know something of modern-day risk management. Modern risk managers had an unprecendented wealth of historical data, formulae, closed testing environments, intercompany communications networks, daily spot tests, and other safeguards to help minimise their risk and provide an accurate picture of what was going on. And then reality rolled into town (well, really, it never left. In fact, it IS the town) and a lot of folks lost their shirts (and houses).
The perfect example of my griping would be the current smouldering fire in the background over control over IANA and ICANN. It's all well and good to talk about interconnectedness, but there's a small-but-real chance that real-life meat-and-iron power struggles will shatter the internet's inviolate state. In the worst case scenario, the resulting balkanization will all make us wish for the glory days of uh... 4chan.
I'm not forecasting the end times here, I just wish that people would stop assuming success is assured and that technology will fix all of our damn problems. You want to talk about evolution, well you'd like to think that that we could at least learn that one damn lesson. We've only had 40 000 years to try.
P.S. Other than the beginning, this post isn't really a direct response to you Sharkey, more just me
*As a Canadian, I'm honour-bound to invoke McLuhan ;)
