Week 10 - Games and Avatars
Ask your parents, what do they do usually when they were at our age? They would probably tell you that they have already started working and their lives are always full of adventures. What about us? Most of the time, we are always with our computers, no matter mobile phone or laptops. The moment that we start utilizing technology in our daily life, we are no longer humans but cyborgs.
We live in a visual culture, and our eyes are an important gateway for information. According to Biocca and Levy (1995) , it has been estimated that normally sighted people received 80% of their information input through the eyes (p.66). Last week we were exploring on the effects of television and cinema representation of the real life and this week, we will discuss about the realm of cyber culture.
People use virtual reality system in the military where they train the flight attendance to fly the airplane by using the visual simulation.
Later, virtual reality is used for entertainment purposes. However, virtual reality has turn out to be a great deal more comfortable than our own imperfect reality (Barrie and Phil, 1992, pp.126-27). According to Robin (2000), the new technology has delivered the user from the constraints and defeats of physical reality and the physical body (p.81). Fung also stated that cyberlife has helped restore participants’ lost confidence and given them a second change to develop a new life in which they learn to train the strength the virtual body, personality, and mind of a fictional character to accomplish pre-set linear goals (2006, p. 134).
Confusion between cyber life and real life?
According to telegraph.co.uk, more than 1,000 people have signed an on-line petition to present to the government to establish a law permitting marriage to comic characters.
Also, according to CNN news, few months ago, South Korean couple whose three-month-old daughter died of malnutrition while they were raising a virtual child in an online game pleaded guilty to negligent homicide on Friday.
There are also many people who collapsed or even died after playing in their online world non-stop without a break. As virtual universes grow, so do the game obsessed. Has this gone too far? Confuse of the fine line between cyber life and real life? When people start to involve themselves in the virtual world, it means that they are escaping from the reality. But the point is, is there any difference between the real and the virtual? Our knowledge and understanding of reality, mostly was formed by visual representation. So what does it mean to be human in today’s world (McCaffery, 1991, p.8)? What is the world of reality?
References:
Biocca, F. & Levy, M. (1995) Communication in the age of virtual reality, Routledge. Retrieved from http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=XmoWjyZd6pMC&oi=fnd&pg=PR7&dq=history+of+virtual+reality&ots=El-YFmsTc7&sig=FVA0hYuLu-AYt2rKgE1O6LeDP8A#v=onepage&q=history&f=false
CNN news. Retrieved from http://articles.cnn.com/2010-04-01/world/korea.parents.starved.baby_1_gaming-addiction-internet-gaming-gaming-industry?_s=PM:WORLD
Fung, A. (2006). Bridging cyberlife and real life: A study of online communities in Hong Kong. In Silver, D.M. and Adrienne Steve, J. (eds.), Critical cyberculture studies (pp. 129-139). New York: New York University Press.
McCaffery,L.(1991) Introduction: The desert of the real.
Robins, K. (2000). Cyberspace and the world we live in. In Bell, D. and Kennedy, B.M. (eds.), The cybercultures reader (pp.77095). London: Routledge.
Sherman, B. and Judkins, P. Climpses of Heaven, Visions of hell: Cisual Reality and its implications. London:Hodder & Stoughton.
Telegraph.co.uk http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/japan/3283463/Japanese-launch-campaign-to-marry-comic-book-characters.html
