by
Alfie Bown
View all notes
[...] it is mistakenly assumed that human consciousness is a constant "original" which computers will either "copy" or fail to "copy". In fact, the distinction is far less sustainable, and human consciousness is already becoming computerized. This book is concerned with the question of what consciousness to come is shown by virtual reality and by gaming. It is therefore in some ways indebted to McKenzie Wark's influential idea that it is less a question of games becoming like reality but of reality becoming like games. The dialectic interplay between reality and the virtual is a site at which the future can become visible.
[...] this means controlling the actions and paths of people to best produce profit for those with corporate interests in the city, something that is now done primarily via smartphones.
on Ingress / Pokemon GO
[...] Our mobile phones pretend to be about fulfilling every desire [...] yet what is much scarier than the fact that the user can fulfill desire via the mobile phone is the possibility that the phone creates those desires in the first place. While the user thinks they are doing what they want, as if desires already exist and are simply facilitated by the device, in fact Google has an even greater power: the ability to create and organize desire itself. [...]
[...] If McGonigal is right that games can seize us and affect us when we are feeling aimless, hopeless, or anxious--dealing with those feelings of fragmentation and transforming them into something concrete and apparently positive--then this should make the alarm bells ring and cause us to be very suspicious. It shows us nothing more than the extent to which games are powerful ideological tools. [...]
referring to a fairly staid TED talk by Jane McGonigal on WoW
[...] it is essential that such games are experienced as a complete waste of time. Their purpose is in part to erase a clear distinction between work and leisure so that the worker must "pay back" their Candy Crush indulgence by answering emails in bed at night, for example.
Such games aid capitalism not by stimulating capitalist success or endorsing its principles, but by appearing to be totally useless and nothing more than a complete waste of precious time. By appearing as such they are able to make the mundane work we perform for capitalism seem so much the more "productive" and "useful" by contrast. After we have "wasted" five minutes on Cookie Clicker, we feel like we are carrying out an act that is both productive and reparative when we return to Microsoft Excel afterward. [...] these distractions not only consolidate our impression that capitalist productivity is comparatively useful and positive, but also make us feel indebted and keen to make amends to an employer after gaming. Such games are a kind of licensed transgression that not only allows society to continue unharmed, but actually reinforces our desire to pay back what we owe for our little acts of perceived nonconformism. Additionally, they renew our commitment to capitalist production when we might otherwise be reflecting on how unfulfilling our working conditions are.
p38: mentions Benjamin's theories on distraction as an alternative to contemplation