Pixelation: My Fractured Consciousness

[pixelation | weekly gaming & life column every wednesday or uh thursday or even more uh, friday]

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And then I just took off. Like, really took off. Dipped out of the infostream, and enjoyed my brainstem relaxing for a few moments. Right in the middle of the week. Right in the middle of Gamescom. Didn’t care, wasn’t interested. Powered down the iMac and slipped into solitude.

Apologies for no Gamescom coverage, apologies for no Desktop Thursdays.

[As a brief aside, no one really posts on Desktop Thursdays, and I’m thinking of culling the fat from the land. Or at the very least, turn the voyeurism up a notch and perhaps begin documenting more of my weekly existence. Word? Lemme know.]

I don’t really feel like talking about video games this week, but that’s okay. Note the small disclaimer at the beginning of every Pixelation, wherein I sneak in the fact that I may ramble about life.

Omega Level is an investigation of the shit that interests my brother and me. And moreso than the never-ending current of information that I am inundated with, and then consequently flip to you, I find how we’re constantly digesting this information the most interesting. How it’s changing us. Not just our society, but perhaps how we operate on a personal level. What is the effect of constantly being smashed in the dome with information do to how we function?

Some of the ideas that I have are obvious: our attention spans are way down, our interest in the multitude is way up. We like clean and lean information in continuous small, morsels. I may be projecting, perhaps I’m incorrect. Maybe you disagree with me. But I have a sneaking suspicion that if you don’t feel the same way, the momentum of our Collective Conscious is dragging all of us in that direction.

I find the never-ending current simultaneously exhausting and wonderful. I love the ability to cross-connect with a variety of mediums and news sources at the compulsive click of a button. Every time I open up Firefox I click, click, click multiple tabs open. I’ll even tell you what I scour almost every thirty minutes: io9, Slashfilm, Boing Boing, Mad Gear Solid, Super Punch, Game Freaks, and Destructoid.

Scour, scour, scour, and then I go back to my business.

I happen to think this is the direction we’re going. And instead of placing a value on it, Good or Bad, I often wonder what it means for us. You may have noticed that I am a fan of narrative. Also, you may have noticed that I’m attending graduate school so I can teach. Probably high school. So the question I often ask myself is “What is this movement to smaller, more diverse consumption and distracted attention spans going to do to our narratives?”

To our movies.

To our news.

To our video games.

To our comic books.

To our books.

I’m not really sure. I do know that when I’m reading a book now, there’s a compulsive twitch in the back of my brain telling me to check the internet. Check it for what? Shit I don’t even know. Checking to check. As someone who likes the arts, I wonder what this is going to do to them. Shall they adapt? Shall we get smaller narratives? Shall the arts decline? Will video games become a more engrossing medium for narratives? (I’m dreaming.)

I don’t know.

As a forthcoming teacher, the question I often wonder is “How am I going to show students the power of narrative in a world of Twitter updates and website refreshes?”

I sat in a classroom this past Spring semester, and the teachers there belabored the switch in attention span. The kids don’t pay attention. Not that they ever did, but perhaps now it is worse. That’s the word that continued to arise. It’s worse, that kids are getting dumber, that we are falling into an abyss.

I couldn’t help but feel that the teachers in the classroom were missing something integral. Here I am, someone who has never taught. Here I am, someone who has no classroom experience. But hey man!, I’m entitled to think, ain’t I? And the crazy notion I have is that this is simply the Shape of Things to come.

It isn’t about “How can we stop this?” but rather, “How can we adapt to this?” and “How are we going to change because of this?”

There are those who predict the change: I am not one of these people. There are those who lament and fear the change: I am not one of these people. There are those who embrace the change, wanting to see where it takes us: I am one of those people.