Convergence

I particularly found Convergence interacting because it focuses on quickly growing technology. A certain passage I found interesting was "They wake up together, work together, eat together and go to bed together even though they live miles apart and may have face-to-face contact only a few times month." This quote is in the context of long distance relationships. Convergence talks about how you are able to interact with people who may in fact live on the other side of the globe. Couples can communicate, parents can tuck their kids in and families can have their Sunday dinners together.

This semester I did a research project on long-distance relationships on college campuses. Throughout my study we learned that many couples felt tensions and strains in their relationships due to the distance. With growing technology and social media platforms communication across the country is not all futuristic. The rapid speed of communication with such things as FaceTime and SnapChat couples and families can see their special someones within seconds. Though this speed is a blessing it can also be very very dangerous. In particular, this can be dangerous for college students and teenagers.

Many students and teens do not realize the speed and or repercussions this can have. Sending a snapchat to a friend on the weekends could seem harmless but this can lead to a much bigger problem. Underage drinking if often found out due to social media. Within minutes pictures of drunk students at a party can be sent to an entire campus with just the click of a button. So though convergence and growing technology can be a blessing, I think it is safe to say that it is the often known "blessing and a curse."

Real World vs. Game World

My reaction to Exitenz is very similar to my reaction to the idea of having technology so advanced that humans can become completely emerged in a gaming world. Though many feel that this phenomenal technological step towards the future is fantastic I feel that it may become a huge problem for our society. As the gaming world becomes more real many users may start blending, without realizing, their real world and gamer world. 

The fine line between violence and repercussions will become more and more blurred. In games currently violence is all fake, you put the controller down and the game is over. As games and simulators become more popular people will have a better “real world” experience of violence because the games are so lifelike. Which I feel poses a problem. I don’t think that Americans are all of a sudden going to justify shooting someone but the more real the game becomes the greater the possibility for humans to have this blurred image between game and reality.  It has been studied that violence in video games has caused the people, mostly children, to be violent in the real world. Today’s controllers only allow users to be looking at a screen or through goggles. With the new immersive software, users are literally immersed into the game. 

Exitenz is a movie about a similar phenomenon happening, immersive video games are created. Throughout the movie it shows characters justifying violence by saying it is only game, some characters even kill other players in the game that are their family in real life.  At the end of the film the users come out of the game to discuss how it was. It is then revealed that 2 characters are actually the “bad guys” and they then kill the game maker and some of his workers. The very last line of the movie is a man sitting on the other side of the barrel of a gun, asking the “bad guys” if they were in fact still playing the game. I found this very impactful. By that man simply asking if they were still in the gamer world completely sums up my argument as to how and why the line of reality will be blurred with the continuous growth in technology for video games.