“Technology is changing at a rapid rate.” I suspect this sentence could have been
written in Europe at any time since the renaissance. Alongside this is the idea that advances in
technology mean that society is changing … almost certainly for the worse.
The printing press ruffled feathers when Guttenburg
introduced it (making literature available to everyone for a modest fee). Ned Ludd didn’t like automated weaving looms (hence
the word ‘luddite’). Television was
believed to herald the death of theatre and movies.
One of the things I am interested in at the moment is the
way technology is developing and then the ways we change in response to
this. I think it is dangerous to start
drawing conclusions about effects on society or culture right now (not least
because my local cinemas appear to be thriving even though every house has a TV).
A couple of quick examples of changes I have seen
recently:
1] Fewer pupils
seem to wear a watch - instead many people use their phones to tell the
time. On local commercial radio on Sunday
morning the presenter talked about not knowing whether her phone had updated
the time to BST automatically or whether she would need to do it manually. Presumably she doesn’t own a watch or any
other clock to compare the time against.
Is this a problem? No. I am happy wearing a watch because I am used
to it. Would I want to use a fob and
chain? No.
2] We have a ‘phone
chain’ of people to call if school is ever closed (it has only been used in
cases of severe snow). Older colleagues
have two phone numbers listed (home and mobile). Younger colleagues only have a mobile number. Maybe I don’t need a landline any more?
Computer Games
In the 1980s computer games were mostly mind-numbingly
repetitious. If you were unsuccessful at
Pacman or Space Invaders or Chuckie
Egg or Manic Minor, etc then you restarted from the very beginning and had to
replay every single moment of the game.
If you were successful for a while (#) you just did the same thing on
every level, but with it getting slightly more difficult or faster.
(#
In all of the listed games apart from Manic Minor you play until you fail. Manic Minor did have an end. I never got to it.)
Nowadays the games where you control a character have an author. They don’t just look cinematic but they also
have a story much like a film. I haven’t
played computer games like this in years, but have recently played Call of Duty: Black Ops 2. New skills are taught as they are needed and
if you fail you restart at almost exactly the same place. The idea of repeating the same tasks over and
over is gone: this is a world away from Pacman. Despite this there must be huge amounts of
repetition going on. I find I have to
stop and think about which button (or combination) to press, while my son and
his friends just seem to know which controls to use without thinking about
it.
Another difference that I find strange is that I am not
always clear when I am in control of a character or whether the games console
is doing it for me. This is not just
true in Black Ops, where it sometimes
takes over to move the story forwards, but also in FIFA 13, where my goalkeeper makes astounding saves without my
input, and in car-racing games where the system moves me to the starting point
of a race.
Implications
I don’t know what the implications of this massive change
will ultimately be. We won’t find this
out for a decade or so. What I do know
is that if you play games like this you are getting used to the idea that you have
enormous amounts of control and little
repetition of story, while not getting frustrated when the computer takes over.
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