Digital Existence: living through the fingers.

Image from http://www.additudemag.com

Engage me or Engrage me?


The discussion topic this week has sparked a reflection of my life and the life of someone close to me, my little brother. We're only five years apart, but I feel like we are clearly from different generations. Maybe I'm just behind my own times? Something about Penksy's Speech really disturbed me, but the more I think about it, I can't pin my finger on exactly why. Every day when I go home from work, I expect to find my brother sitting in front of our computer, clicking away. Once in a blue moon he won't be there, and for a brief moment I'll trip out and wonder "Is he ok!? Did he get kidnapped walking back from school!?" Then I'll hear the tell-tale flush of the toilet or the clink of dishes in the sink and he'll come trodding back into his throne, from which he commands his universe. When dinner is out, I actually have to remind him that it's time to eat, and he finishes as fast as possible so that he can return to his game. I'm left with the unshakeable suspicion that he only eats to sustain conciousness so he can continue raiding his dungeon or whatever he's doing. He takes breaks to watch TV occaisionally. More often, he has the TV on while he's on the computer, so that in the brief loading times or down times, he can simply turn and tune immediately in to the program he's pre-recorded. The only time he's not on his computer or watching TV, is when he's reading or doing his homework from school.

The constant stream of video games has definately benefited his education in many ways. He was reading at an earlier age than I did, not to mention he can read extraordinarily fast. Paragraphs flash for nanoseconds on the TV screen when he's playing video games, and I often have to ask him to slow it down or at least tell me what the little characters are saying. My one shred of technological pride stems from the fact that I can type faster than he can, but not by much. He's great at math. His online games require him to keep track of hit points, of magic points, of fake money, of armor statistics and all manner of numbers and calculations. He understands the concepts of memory, of pixels, of terms that would make me look foolish if I repeated them, because I can't even begin to fathom what they mean. At 13 years old, he is programming his own games, with custom characters and animations. He has created a forum for him and his friends of which he has surprisingly many. I could go on, but I think you're getting the point. Video games have given him all these skills, and no doubt they will be valuable skills in the "real world".

Speaking of which, the lines between what is real and what is virtual have all but blurred into inexistence. I've delved briefly into his universes, and horrified that I'd be stranded, forcefully removed myself quickly. But for my brief stay, I have to say that I wasn't aware how far along gaming technology has come. I was immersed in a world that operated on real time. There were sunrises and sunsets, there was grass, there were beaches, there were seas and lakes. You could hunt animals or fish, ride trams and fly on mystical creatures. You could buy different clothing, you could fight evil, you could buy trinkets, dance, laugh, jump, cry... In a nutshell, you could live. What was scarier still, was that there were millions of other characters all over this massive world (which probably would've taken hours or days to traverse on foot) were REAL people playing the same game. They have unions, they have craftsmen, and there is a booming virtual economy. On a morbidly hilarious note, the in-game currency is actually worth more than the currency of some developing countries.

My point from all this, is that my brother and kids like them HAVE benefitted from this engaging new revolution. They've learned math skills, they've learned computer skills, they've even learned to interact with people ableit virtually. Acknowledging all this, it still scares me to death. Maybe I'm just old fashioned and, like I said before, behind the times. I don't really know what it is. All I know is that I'm going to continue to make my brother eat and sleep, and once in a while I'll have to throw him outside and lock the door for a few hours, if only to get him enough sun to process his calcium...