ICAM 120 Week 2 Reading

I found the reading by Baudrillard interesting, though doubtlessly dense and a little hard to follow, since he leaps from subject to subject in each paragraph like a kid who forgot their Ritalin. He does have quite a few interesting ideas; the one I specifically like best is the discussion of simulation. He talks a great deal about people who pretend to be sick and are actually sick, and who so firmly believe themselves to be sick that they show symptoms that even a doctor can see. This obviously applies to in class in reguards to the time we will be spending in Second Life and World of Warcraft.

MMOs and other virtual realities are only as real as people want them to be; limited technology at this time does not allow for a Neuromancer or Snow Crash - like reality that allow people to fully taste, touch, smell, hear, and see their environments. Relatively speaking, sound and visuals are relatively well on their way, but technologies allowing full immersion are a long ways off. Until the day a device is invented that can take care of a person's basic biological needs such as food, sleep, waste disposal, hygiene, and maybe even sleep, everyone, even the most hard core raider, must take a break.

While many can and do make lives for themselves online, with friends they talk to and 'see' daily, guild roles and organization that are like part time jobs, and even online weddings, divorces, births, and funerals, all of them must eventually log off for their real job or to give in to their biological needs. That is not necessarily a bad thing, however. There is a point where everyone should just step back from the computer, play with their cat, and go outside and remember what a real time tree looks like.

There is also a degree of suspension of belief, no matter how a person tries, there will always be a part of them that knows they are not a half ton eight foot tall hoofed being, famous throughout the land as being a slayer of elves and rider of dragons. This is a little different from the example of a person who thinks themselves sick; there is no way, not in the near future at least, of a hard core MMO player tricking themselves into thinking they are a fantastical creature.