I watched the second part of Gamer Revolution tonight. Fascinating documentary. The way I see it, it can be interpreted in two ways: 1) it’s just a doco about computer games; or, 2) it goes much deeper than that to explore games, their impact and how the internet has spawned this whole new world.
It mentioned how kids who’ve grown up with computer games are living in two places at once: online and offline. I’m one of them. There’s this physical world I interact on and live in, then there’s the internet. It’s so intangible a thing, the internet. You can’t really touch it, or actually live in it. You can’t see it. You can observe it, interact with it, use it to connect with anyone in the world.
See, I’ve got this theory about The Divine. When They made us, They gave us a small spark of Their power. You could call it our soul, but that’s not quite what it is. It’s almost like consciousness, almost like it, but not. It’s hard to define. It’s the remnant from our creation by the Gods. Because of this, when we create things, as the Gods did, a small part of our spark is imprinted in what we make, so the Divine is passed to us and into what we make.
Now, when I think about the internet and what it is, how everyone’s connected to it, there’s a lot of little sparks flying around from all that’s been created there, so it’s not hard for me to imagine that those small sparks can facilitate the connection of people to each other.
The internet is becoming another form of consciousness, albeit in a different mould. It lives, it changes, it evolves, because of what we do to it.
It’s almost like the Unseen world, in a way, except with a different purpose. Reality is the Seen world, the internet is Unseen. It’s intangible. It’s the exchange of energy across wires, and also without wires, lets information be exchanged between people. With the advent of online games, it’s become an unreal world. Anything can happen there. It’s dangerous, sure, but the laws of physics can be ignored. You can be anything and anyone you want. The internet has no borders. It seemingly goes on forever.
I’ve felt deep connections with close and not-so-close friends online. Intense emotions that aren’t mine. It’s experiences like that that make me believe that the internet has gone beyond just a bunch of 1s and 0s. It’s reflecting humanity, it’s a shared cultural “artifact”, for lack of a better word. Our collective consciousness taps into this. No one’s alone any more. You can find someone who likes the same thing/s you do, no matter how obscure. It’s a giant unseen meeting place for humanity.
I’m fascinated to find out what it evolves into next. Humanity will no doubt live in cyberspace more than they do now, and the borders between the seen and unseen will overlap and become almost indistinguishable. I wonder if this will be a good thing or not. How far should we let this go before it goes too far?