Monday, January 31, 2011

Literature and Professional Value Systems


On Friday 21st of January, Larry Buxbaum, Executive Director of the Hennepin County Bar Association, the largest of Minnesota's twenty-one district bar associations, opened his convocation speech by emphasizing the use of literature to teach values and ethics to professionals in a variety of fields. He stated how the idea of using literature and applying it to professionals has been done as a technique to illustrate values and ethical points, and that it engaged a larger portion of the population, because now non-professionals such as non-lawyer administrative assistants working with the professionals, are able to tell them to get off the ethical high-horse because they do not have monopoly of ethics and values. Buxbaum elaborated by emphasizing two types of literature what one reads, such as plays and poetry, and ones own life experience and stating that the latter allows anyone, regardless of their profession, to examine ethical issues.

He exhorted the audience to carefully examine their rich personal experiences and the value they bring to discussions of ethics. He stressed that using literature does not mean that this is literary criticism we dont need to debate what the author intended to say with every word, but instead highlighted the participatory element; that small groups examining professional literature facilitated the merging of personal experiences, which effectively highlighted ethical values. He referred to the Swedish play The Visit and how it illustrated that concepts of power, justice, and public and group behavior are all very much entwined, allowing its readers to see that our society has been guided by group hysteria and responses. Buxbaum asked whether ethics were constants, or whether they changed over time.

He noted that sometimes professionals are mistaken in thinking that they have a certain monopoly on knowledge of ethics and beliefs, and that this was a pre-sumptuous mentality. He reinforced his notion of the importance of the personal experience, and mentioned how this tied in with the crucial nature of context. This included cultural and temporal context, and he evoked scenes from Baldwin's short-story Sonny's Blues which illustrated how much of its dynamic was a function of context and its effects. In addition, he mentioned Miller's The Crucible and its allegorical reference to McCarthyism, further emphasizing the essential role of context. This segued into the assertion that we sometimes assume that our leaders are ethical just because they are our leaders, and how this proved to be largely incorrect. He thus emphasized that since we know our leaders will be setting the tone for those they lead, we should examine the essence between ethical behavior and leadership, and how to combine them.

Buxbaum concluded that not a day goes by where we don't have a new experience, which leads to introspection and forces us to re-evaluate what we mean by ethical behavior. Through closer examination and teachings of important ethic values illustrated in literature, he hoped this would allow us to grow as leaders, students, and citizens of the world.

Monday, January 17, 2011

Visions of the Gamepocalypse




By default, we clapped for him politely as he approached the lectern. But instead of allowing it to die down, Jesse Schell - CEO of Schell Games and author of the award-winning book The Art of Game Design - motioned for the audience to continue in a steady beat. As the rhythm filled the chapel where guest speakers to the college always spoke, he whipped out a harmonica. And blasted away vivaciously, with closed eyes and tapping feet, shoulders bobbing to the music. This young man was an Assistant Professor at Carnegie Mellon University. He knew we were undergrads; after such a fiery introduction, we knew he knew how to keep us engaged. The audience, though large and enthusiastic, wasn't pushing the limits of a full-house. Indeed I knew many classmates and peers who had heard of this talk by a 'game-designer', but were discouraged to attend by assuming that it was far too technical and esoteric for the average liberal arts student. I had heard of his game-design book once before; had not personally read it, but knew that it wasn't some overly-intellectual, inaccessible realm. And neither was his talk.


Schell opened by discussing how the program he taught at Carnegie Mellon University's Electronic Game Center - which features the slogan "The Graduate program for the Left and Right Brain" - thrived by “bringing together different disciplines to teach them how to be on creative teams.” By emphasizing this need to be interdisciplinary, he commented on such a growing trend in the contemporary world of technology; that the development of the iPhone required both engineers and artists, because with a team of “just engineers it would be too technical and not pretty, but without artists it would only be pretty and not technical enough.” Schell then linked with another “growing trend that has gotten a lot of attention recently,” which was that consumers were increasingly demanding authenticity in their products. He referred to the recent book Authenticity: What Consumers Really Want by Gilmore and Pine II and highlighted that now “as a society we’ve become so technical, that we hunger for something real.”


Schell pointed to the recent explosion of “social games”, commenting on how video games were “reaching out to reality” with systems of virtual achievements for players to obtain and measure progress. He then highlighted a similar pattern in reality; that “game structures” in the form of accumulating points and progress were rapidly appearing in the real world – from credit cards to Starbucks. In arguing that it has become “increasingly difficult to disentangle reality with games”, Schell wondered about the point in time when these two were inseparable. He painted the picture of a scenario that admittedly was not entirely hypothetical: waking up to video game advertisements of big companies; pervasive product placement on toothbrushes and cereal boxes in the form of games; an intricate world where everyone had personalized accounts that stored points and accumulated high-scores from games, which fed back to the consumer by offering rewards and discounts and more promotions. Constant internet - and by association, Facebook - connection was the status quo. More importantly, everything one did - high-scores, new records, increased average point score - appeared on everyone else's live feed. In essence, a lifestyle so ingrained with technology and social networks that everything would be monitored and saved – a livelihood Schell argued could be taken as “either a disgusting nightmare”, or could “encourage us to become better human people”. The former is obvious; constant intrusion of privacy and rights (although today one could ask exactly how much the public is concerned with this, considering Mr. Zuckerberg is the 2010 TIME person of the year...), a Orwellian evocation of surveillance and paranoia. For the latter, Schell purports that there is wiggle-room for the individual - in light of everyone knowing what book he/she reads, what movies he/she watches, what he/she just ate - to improve their lives. In the age of heightened self-consciousness, one would care even more how they appear before the world - especially online. So one might choose McCarthy over Meyer - on the Kindle of course - to impress the circle of literary friends; might choose to watch Bergman instead of Bay (because one can only take so many sophisticated explosions and wailing Decepticons) to satisfy the celluloid junkie buddies.


There is something inherently irresistible about video games. Schell explained this mass appeal; how “they give us clear feedback” alongside “a sense of progress”; how they provide “mental and physical exercise” with “something to satisfy our curiosity”, and of course the possibility of success and the sense of freedom. He then referred to the concept known as the Singularity, describing it as the extent one can accurately predict future trends and events. But with technology becoming more and more pervasive, this window of time is rapidly closing, and that soon “we will reach the Singularity when one will not even be able to predict what will occur within five seconds from now.” Schell discussed how this would inevitably lead many to become "future-blind”, but because the world was changing so quickly, and one could conjecture and fail and then conjecture again, there would also be room to actually practice this art of prediction.


Regarding the ‘Gamepocalypse’ – the scenario mentioned earlier where everything one did was monitored and uploaded to the Internet – Schell described this road as “long a twisted, with many things along the way.” He discussed these at length, such as the role of “microtransactions” and the unprecedented success of Apple’s app store and its one billion downloads, which he argued would change the way big game companies and their conventional, console-based products, would operate in the future. With regards to big names like Playstation and XBOX and the Wii, Schell discussed the sudden emergence of social game networks such as Zynga and Playfish, which he argues present a huge threat to the conventional idea of the game console. With online socializing taking the nation by such a storm, people are much more willing to forgo visual depth and plot of console games - not to mention the cost of paying $30-50 for one - and instead join a Farmville or Mafia Wars fiasco with multiple friends on Facebook for free. And Schell recognized the strain this attitude put onto the big game companies; many were unwilling to be the first to set up to the plate and invest in this new area. But some have already gone there: EA Games (Electronic Arts) laid off 1500 employees to buy Playfish Games for $400 million. Microtransactions are becoming a much more prominent factor in the modern game design industry.


As mentioned earlier, Schell claimed that the road towards the Gamepocalypse was long and complicated. He wasn't going to predict when it would come about. But he was taking note of new factors and aspects springing up along the way. With increased customization, sharing capabilities, geo-tracking and more, games were being rapidly integrated into our daily lives. But regardless of whether it leads to a waking nightmare or a prompt for comprehensive re-evaluation of our lives, Schell believed it “all has to do with people creating things.” Creation using new technologies to achieve particular ends, and having those ends determine what times of people we really were. Artists who create for the sake of the aesthetic? Humanitarians who create to improve the lives of others? Profiteers who create to deepen their pockets? As we become propelled into the twenty-first century and beyond, Schell placed increased emphasis upon that very motivation to create, because when we finally reach the Gamepocalypse, the very stuff of that reality depends on what we want and are willing to do with that new world. And no, it won't be based on how many friends you have on Facebook.