CYBEREVOLUTION

Well I may have hinted at a revolution taking place in a previous post - so thanks to the short geeky slot on BBC2’s Newsnight tonight, does that make me some kind of Internet Prophet?!  Sheesh I hope not!  It did provide an interesting view point on the role the internet is starting to play more and more; there are probably a hundered and one different advocates for and against this point of view, but isn’t that the same with any revolution?

I strongly believe that the internet (for all the technology that underlies it) is becoming less and less, “inhuman”; as applications and games allow more client (person) to client (person) interaction.  Having played Everquest, World of Warcraft, and a number of other lesser MMORPG (Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games) << write it down I won’t repeat it again!!  I can empathise a lot with the view that the user when interacting with the pc (via an application) online is refocusing on a psychological level that can vary from person to person from mild entertainment immerssion to complete personality displacement (limited to whilst online I hope - otherwise seek medical help NOW!). 

I joke not about displacement here.  I am lucky that I have a strong sense between what is real and what is imagined (though I am open to debate so bring it on!) At one point Everquest nearly took over my life not through addiction but through displacement, I was getting so drawn into the game I literally became my character “Sparhook Tripleflame” the level 70 Wizard!  Since the game world functions on a different time scale to the real world around us, I could have easily played for over 4 hours none stop (in the past) in fact often I would play on into the small hours of the night, every spare moment I could find was spent logged on grinding those levels and gaining online currency to spend in the form of copper, gold and platinum!  Of course I have got over that level of displacement over the last four years with the help of a few patches (groan…sorry an “in” everquestian joke there…) oh dear….maybe I still need therapy after all?

Anyways, I thought I would share part of my perspective on what is surely going to be quite a talked about subject in the coming weeks and months. 

Sigh - I am such a GEEK!  Yay!

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 10th, 2007 at 11:41 pm and is filed under General.You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.