Portfolio Essay 1

Games vs. Reality

       After watching “The Gamer”, I was shocked that the human population is projected to be in that state of mind after a certain amount of years. Its a pretty obvious fact that todays lifestyle is much faster paced than it was ten years ago. Everything seems to be happening so quick and in order to reach your goal, you need to put more effort into it. Back when I was young, I was the happiest kid on the block to even have a game boy. But nowadays we see eight year old kids walking around with iPhone’s and iPad’s. And in my opinion THAT is the reason why life (at least in America) is projected to turn out like that. To put it short, I feel that this modernization and the very quick advancement of technology is the reason why people are slacking off and doing things in unorthodox ways compared to lifestyles five, ten, or even fifteen years ago.

Take business or big corporations as an example, typically what I see these days is a big chunk of them go on a video conference call when they want to have a meeting. What happened to actually going to one anothers offices and using the actual conference room? I guess its these advancements and all this spectacular technology that made society too “comfortable” where they are and keeping everyone in their little nest. Everything is done online these days making face to face communication almost close to none and this is why I can understand what Kable’s “owners” bedroom was modeled after. Almost everything is at our fingertips these days. We no longer have to call our stock brokers to buy or sell shares, we can simply log into our account and do everything ourselves. In my eyes, life is turning virtual day by day and we do not notice it because of how comforting and convenient it makes everything for us. I can see a lot of this from the gamer who was playing “Society”. In my eyes he was portrayed as a slob who does not do anything productive even if his life depended on it. And the funny thing is, that his life was actually behind a television screen and his controller to his avatar.

Its not only adults who take advantage of this modernization. I constantly see young children using their new devices or playing on their gaming systems. Back when I was a child, playing consisted of going outside and riding my bike around the block, playing catch, and hide and seek. These days I only see kids playing angry birds or using the hottest new apps. Another example that is very common presently is young kids having Facebook’s or being members of other social networking sites. I see a lot of internet rage memes mocking 9 year olds on Facebook and why they need one in the first place. I for one totally agree with this. Just looking around myself on a regular day shows me how fast were moving. How fast were growing up, how fast our lives are going. What I see happening to children starting so young these days is the same thing that happened to children in the fifties and sixties. Back then, the product was tobacco and the targeted market was adolescences because once they hooked someone at a young age to use their product, they’ll have a customer for life. This is what I feel is going on with technology and convenience of everything. They are hooking children with the hottest new product and the company has one more consumer under their belt. What I feel is that it is a part of globalization and it is simply business.

Thorough research done in 2009 showed that children are being more and more exposed to technology and they are becoming more dependent of it. Tests have proved that they are becoming to attached to social networking sites and text messaging that they are having difficulties developing basic communication skills with people outside of their comfort zone.

Ultimately, I think that I am not the only one who feels that we are not living the lives we use to ten or fifteen years ago. Back then, even for adults, things seemed respectively nonchalant. My parents and relatives are the only people I need so I can rough idea of how things have changed. Since both of my parents are employees versus being employers, they feel more pressured doing more work in a less amount of time. So people are being pre-programmed in a sense, just like a machine.

The only thing that I would have to strongly disagree about the movie is how violent, narrow minded, and disgusting we were portrayed to be. In the film we were portrayed as people who do not mind killing another person in a “virtual” world even though the characters are real people. Even though our lives are turning fast paced and our lifestyles are changed, it does not give justification as to why we would turn into such cruel creatures. We still care for human life and no matter how bad conditions may get, there will always be a force that brings us to a medium between good and evil and that is what I feel will not allow us to do such things. We may turn into a less productive race as a whole, but at that point, the ones who are productive, are the people who are in control (in this case the owner of “Slayers”/”Society” in the film). The entire idea of “Society” can also come into play. I understand that its a real life version of The Sims but that does not necessarily mean that we are going to be narrow minded. All you would see in Society was people wanting to have sex and just doing disgusting things in general. People who actually play The Sims do not even go that far. What you would do in life, even in a virtual world, comes from who you are as a person and what kind of background and mentality you have. These people in the film seemed like they escaped out of a mental institution or they were some sort of molester and it is truly sad that we as a human race are perceived to be so low and naive. 

Source

“Does Technology Stunt Children’s Social Development?” Realtruth. 06 Mar. 2009. Web. 

13 May 2012.