My trip to the Faroe Islands was inspirational. It wasn’t a roller coaster of excitement. It wasn’t a sun-drenched getaway. I didn’t sleep a lot, nor did I feast on exotic fruits fed to me by sun-kissed maidens — in fact, all I ate was meat and potatoes. The Faroe Islands were educational. Eye-opening and and interesting.

The Faroe Islands are unique in that they’re the smallest Western nation in the world. 45,000 people spread out across an archipelago of 18 islands. They have three cities, the biggest of which has a population of 15,000 — the next, Klaksvik, has just 4,000.

Zoom in on that city. A village or small town by any other standard, Klaksvik is the capital of the Northern Isles and the hub of culture and commerce for 6 of the Faroes’ 18 islands. Once upon a time it would’ve been a village with a thriving marketplace, a civilisation whose only contact with the outside world was by boat. In fact its tunnel to the mainland was only finished in 2006!

But is it a backward, single-street village? Is Klaksvik a second-world shanty village reliant on good weather and safe waters for its survival? No. When the fog horns bellow do women run helter-skelter to the harbour hoping that food has finally arrived? No. Klaksvik and the Faroes themselves are actuallty one of the most developed nations in the world. In Klaksvik alone they have multiple deep-sea harbours and dry dock. A cinema and theatre. Two gymnasiums and a skate park! They even have a fully-featured hospital and – get this – a football stadium with more than enough seating for the entire town — city! I meant city! (Don’t call it a village. They really hate that. I did it a few times…)

They’re also planning an indoor football pitch for use during the dark and cold-rain winters that descend upon their city for two thirds of the year. An indoor sports arena for just 4,000 people; just 4,000 people utilise these awesome and ludicrous amenities. Four thousand happy little souls, living out their lives as humble fishermen and sheep farmers but with access to resources that would put most western nations to shame.

But how do they do it? How can economy on such a tiny scale work?

More importantly: why don’t all towns of similar size around the world have the same resources?

Now that I’ve painted an objective picture of Klaksvik, it’s necessary for me to tell you what it’s like to live there. What’s it like to live in a city where everyone literally knows everyone? What’s it like when the bank manager is both your uncle and the one signing your mortgage agreement? How about when the city’s star football player is also the same person that you regularly head into the Arctic Circle to trawl cod fish with? What’s it like to live in a place where it’s not unusual for teenagers to head out together for a 9-month stint as fishers in the Barents Sea off the coast of Russia?

But the weirdest thing about the small city of Klaksvik is this: nothing is locked. Car doors are left unlocked with their keys often on display. House doors are (usually) closed but never bolted. Boats and bikes are left running: nothing is chained down.

As a result, life in Klaksvik felt just as I expected: it’s like one big family. Because that’s what it is. We’re talking about a city that formed by the coalescence of nearby villages; from just 200 people a thousand years ago, there are now 4,000. You don’t need a piece of paper to work out just how closely related everyone is.

There was the possibility that I would be thought of as ‘the stranger’, the freak that would draw people to their windows. The other-world alien that would pull crowds of pointed fingers, furrowed glares and nervous giggles.

I thought I’d feel like an outcast, a tourist — or worse: a journalist — an outsider come to investigate and poke and ridicule their ancient form and customs.

Instead I was welcomed with open arms and hearts. And legs.

[Next part tomorrow... hopefully!]

Would you rather be an artist or engineer?

This is a question I often ask myself on trains and planes or as I lay in the still solitude of my bed. Do I want to create art so beautiful, so inspirational that people actually enjoy life a little bit more? Do I want to develop infrastructure and technology that provides clean drinking water for the billions without?

In this crafted and cultured world, this world without boundaries that we have persisted in creating and destroying over ten long, illustrious millennia, which is more important: art or engineering?

Which was more instrumental: myth and wisdom — or creating fire?

The Bible — or the Roman Empire?

Michaelangelo’s David – or Kodak’s film camera?

Band Aid’s Feed The World — or a network of satellites that enable global communication?

Lennon’s Imagine – or Apple’s iTunes?

Art or engineering?

Do I want to be the person that enables and improves the lives of millions through advancing technology? Should I be the one that converts magic, wished-for technologies into the accessibly mundane?

Or should I be the culmination, the end point, the person that uses contemporary technologies to create art? Art that resonates within and amplifies emotions; art that triggers further explosions of creativity until we have a more beautiful world.

I keep trying to be both an artist and an engineer but I fear that it’s time to choose just one.

Michelangelo or Edison.

Einstein or Plato.

I’ve never written poetry before. I just thought I ought to try. The photo underneath is unrelated, but I took it last night and thought it was pretty!

–

Evoke love and conjure desire, elicit tears and laughter inspire, craft dreams and banish doubt.
It is from within the desolate plains of mundane that the artist’s seed and culture sprout.

Bunsen and bellows both brazen and bold,
Latent and chemical and forms untold,
Exploited, excited,
Molded, contorted,
Bent to this engineer’s will.

Were it not for the artist,
Plain it would remain.
Were it not for the engineer,
What would we have,
Coal, ocher, fire, spear?

Forged through time, forever entwined,
Twins in kind, differing only in method,
Same in soul, a parity in purpose,
Art and engineering.

–

Imagine for a moment a world where clueless people remain silent; where those without working knowledge shut up and listen. A society whose people, instead of making wild, uneducated stabs, feels compelled to investigate, question and probe. Consider a culture that actually cares about the damage caused by ignorance and prejudice, to friends and strangers alike.

* * *

Once upon a time there was authority. I don’t mean in the policing or juridical sense — Rome didn’t have police, you know? — I’m talking of intellectual authority. If you had a question about childbirth you went to see the wizened midwife that delivered both you and your mother into the world. If you were ill, your only hope was if the sawbones had seen a similar case, or had a beaten, weather-worn hand-me-down almanac that described how to use leeches effectively. Slowly though, over thousands of years, authority shifted to the written and printed word; the professionals remained masters, but they could not travel the world as quickly or as effusively as books. Information became available, accessible, free — and both culture and science surged forward as a result.

Society began to revere the written word. For some reason, ink impressed on paper in the shape of words and sentences have immense weight and meaning. What you read about giving birth is suddenly more true than the wizened midwife’s decades of experience. A book says the world is flat and, in your mind, in an instant, the world becomes flat. It’s magical just how much credence the written word is given — people will believe the craziest things if they’re written down.

Whoompf! Religion.

Blam! Newspapers.

Poof! The Internet!

Authority still exists — somewhere — but its voice is muffled, drowned out by a sea of disinformation; information that gets propagated as wisdom because we simply don’t know any better. That’s what old wives’ tales are incidentally: something your great, great grandmother once read, assimilated as truth and then forwarded it along through the generations. Does masturbation really give you hairy palms? Is thirteen actually unlucky? No.

And therein lies the problem: knowledge is power whether it is proven true or not. Fallacy, slander and gossip — it is all, from the (unfortunate) recipient’s point of view, working knowledge. You read some juicy little factoid about a famous celebrity and… it makes you feel good. Chances are it’s not true, or only partially so, but knowing that little nugget of knowledge somehow makes you feel enlightened, powerful. “A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on” Winston Churchill famously said. There is a reason people peddle in lies and half-truths. There is a reason why newspaper editors ‘add one’ to death tallies or run with unnamed sources. And that’s the other, far more tricky problem: lies, if repeated enough by any kind of authority — a priest, a mother, a teacher — become truth. Cold hard truth that, within a generation, becomes wisdom.

We’re all walking around with a lot of data that we think is true. It’s a survival trait: our nurture is like gospel. And that’s bad when it overrides our nature, our experiences. We feel qualified to dispense these false truths to others.

‘You must have something wrong with your head’ we tell our friends and loved ones.

‘You shouldn’t do that, it’s wrong, it’s bad’ we say to our girlfriends and boyfriends.

‘How can you believe in that?’ we say to our friends with a differing faiths.

Anyone that’s mastered a field or subject will know that it feels a lot like peeling back layers of untruth — Oh, so that’s how it works! — that’s all real education is. It fills in gaps and rewrites what we’ve known and worked with for years. But it’s not easy. It’s no simple task to alter your entire vision of the world just because an encyclopaedia or wise man tells you to. How long did people hold onto the fact that the world was flat? That’s why false knowledge and data will continue to propagate through generations. We’re stubborn bastards.

Next time, before you pass along a piece of information, think about whether it’s actually true or not. If you’re not sure, go to the library and find out what the truth really is. At the very least you’ll be doing the next generation and tomorrow’s civilisation a huge favour.

* * *

Please excuse my use of the African American vernacular — dis, to disrespect –  but it was necessary. It’s altogether more punchy than ‘Don’t go insulting what you don’t know nothing about.’

This isn’t finished. Next I want to tie this into religion, prejudice and ignorance.

I’ve covered the sorry state of knowledge and inherent lack of truth that plagues contemporary society.

But it didn’t start yesterday or even 100 years ago! It’s an eternally recurring theme of dumbing-down and almost-truths dispensed by nasty people posing as intellectual authorities over thousands of years. There is an endemic ‘loss of wisdom’ that has an iteratively degenerative effect, gaining more momentum with each generation.

Historically these lies, these tales, were of a philosophical or mythical nature and virtually harmless. They were stories that became true through retelling: Hercules, Romulus, Arthur. The stories were told first by the travelling bard, then more abstractly through tribalism and shamanism. Polytheism followed with its anthropomorphic (god of wine, god of war) pantheon of valiant heroes and demigods. Finally monotheism trumped them all and wrapped up with its epic, fearsomely vengeful tale of apocalyptic events.

Old wives’ tales (or fables or myths or whatever!) might’ve been lies or half-truths but they didn’t really harm anyone; they might have been ‘not ideal’, but that’s not the point — they were moving towards the ideal — they were retold to children with good intentions! The same could be said for the basic spiritual maxims of most religions: everlasting life; don’t murder; try your best not to sodomise your brother’s wife; treat others how you would like to be treated. All good but… it sadly didn’t last. Something changed. All of a sudden enforcement entered the equation. Arbitrary enforcement: rules, laws and peer pressure with little or no basis in moral/cultural advancement or ethical living. If abstract/intellectual enforcement wasn’t enough, there was a strong physical aspect too: witch-hunts, the Inquisition and the Crusades are but a few obvious examples.

Why did it happen? For thousands of years our focus had been on becoming a more advanced race. But one day, probably after the fall of Rome, we woke up and well… we fell asleep again. Life was no longer about pushing the progress of civilisation. Perhaps it was our growing understanding of human anatomy and psychology that caused the change. Maybe it was due to the formation of metropolises like Rome and the urgent need to control large groups of people quickly and easily. Personally I think the continued development of written and spoken language — and rhetoric — played a big role. Whatever it was, something snapped. No longer was storytelling used to share wisdom or morals to improve our progeny’s standard of living. Gone were the tales that frightened children away from actual dangers like dank caves or poisonous fruits.

A new breed of story started to appear, tales that weaved lies and believable half-truths into their narrative. And we know that words, both written and spoken, have a terrible power. Instead of cresting taller peaks and pushing towards new horizons people started to fear their surroundings. Authorities of knowledge slowly faded away to be replaced by scary chieftains, oppressive teachers, greedy priests and, of course, a vengeful God.

I’ve written about magic before and how it is ultimately synonymous with technology. Television was magic (find an old person that was around when television was invented and talk to them about it!) but sure enough, it very quickly became mundane. What do you think would’ve happened to the inventor of the television if he had been around in the Middle Ages? What do you think ‘witchcraft’ actually was? With such an attitude towards innovation and revolution (or evolution, hah!), is it a surprise that books, education and intellectual enlightenment all but disappeared for 1,000 years?

For a very, very long time the pursuit of knowledge and truth — science! — was frowned upon, persecuted. Scientists were shunned or burnt at the stake. Why?

Because they were dangerous. Knowledge is power.

We humans learnt just enough for the monotheistic surge to take place. We learnt how to exploit the human love of mystery with smart wit and sharp turns of dogmatic phrase. We have become a scared and tentative flock too fearful to break from the pack. In essence we learnt just enough to be dominated and no more.

And now we await — or do we create? –  the next Renaissance where veracity of knowledge is returned to us.

***

Still more to come, I think; on prejudice and ignorance. Oh, and if you’re reading this on the blog itself, remember you can double click a word to find out what it means!

For as long as we’ve been human one resource has always been valued above all others: knowledge. The success and progression of civilisation is measured in just one way: the extent of our knowledge.

We pride ourselves on how developed we are. How much more more civil we are compared to our barbaric ancestors. We sure have come a long way from the grunting, cave-dwelling proto-human. Guns. Medicine. Democracy, equality, liberty; these concepts, these inventions are fine examples of our ever-expanding body of knowledge, our scientific research and the evolution of thought.

Civilisation is like a machine, with each and every one of us playing the role of cog or spring in the great, universal machine. It spans the complete evolution of humanity through time and space and, if we avoid extinction, it will be everlasting.

And that’s how we power this machine: knowledge. Knowledge goes in one end: ‘metal conducts electricity’ — and out the other end comes invention: ‘computers’. Grossly simplified but you get the idea. This machine needs to be fed constantly. It doesn’t differentiate between new data or rehashed, time-worn knowledge: that’s what makes it so devastating! It creates and destroys with ambivalence. Cultures, ideologies, religions; all have fallen or been cut down into their constituent parts only to be reabsorbed — reconstituted.

It seems to do OK with regurgitated, reabsorbed data as long as there’s something new being added from time to time. Imagine a big cauldron of soup — wouldn’t it get a little boring if you never added a new ingredient? The soup would probably dry out even. Our greatest gains definitely come from pouring new knowledge in.

And where to find the new knowledge? Exclusively within the domain of exploration. Pushing the boundaries is the greatest thing we can do to perpetuate the machine of civilisation, of humanity.

That’s the crazy thing: all of the knowledge we need to survive is already out there waiting to be discovered. It’s like turning over rocks and finding wriggly worms and millipedes. It’s like turning over a rock and finding data that solves an unknown — ah, so that’s the solution… Eureka! But these rocks might be at the top of the highest peaks or the trough of the lowest marine trenches. These figurative rocks might be in the petri dishes of science labs or on the whiteboards of a particle physicists.

Wherever they are, these rocks need to be turned. It doesn’t matter by who, ultimately, as it all becomes part of our great machine. The magic becomes mundane and the entirety of civilisation surges forward, simply by flipping a stone and reporting your findings.

Problems arise when people stop exploring, when we cease pushing against the boundary. The machine continues to churn — it can’t stop — but with a lack of new data errors begin to appear. Our world-view begins to stagnate. Data is re-analysed and new, erroneous, contrived conclusions are drawn. False progress, bureaucracy, fads and pseudo-science can grip society in a stranglehold.

Before our very eyes exploration has become the black sheep of governmental spending: Research, science, space travel and the like all shunted onto the back burner and the back of our mind. There is knowledge out there just waiting to be discovered and assimilated into our culture, knowledge that will propel our civilisation into the next era. But it’ll have to wait. We have more pressing issues at hand apparently.

As I write this I’m tired. I’m just back from a family meet-up in London. I didn’t have enough sleep or coffee for the barrage of intimate and deeply-probing questions that septuagenarian Jewish females pitched at me over a four-hour period.

Not only is it the number of questions but the ferocity and varied intensity at which they are delivered. Think of them like baseball pitches: high, low; fast, slow; straight and curved — you need to be able to hit them all! Perhaps the key to surviving such a get-together is the ability to spot the same question but posed ever so slightly differently: Seb, what happened to that last girl, she was lovely is equivalent to What’s that girl’s name again? The one you dumped. Ah, yes, Alice? I hear she’s doing well now. Got her own business! which is the same as Seb, we’re all starting to wonder if you’re gay. You’re not gay are you? You better not be gay, you schmuck, I want grandchildren!

The following tips will help you with all kinds of family get-together, shindig or party. They may even help you with… a reunion; God have mercy on you! Don’t give up if you’re not a Jew — while Jewish relatives are undoubtedly the worst, that just means I’m able to give you even better tips. I’ve been torn to pieces so that you don’t have to!

1. Develop a benign smile

A good tip for almost every social encounter, a benign smile can see you through all but the worst and most embarrassing of situations. With a slight muscle twitch a benign smile can become an apologetic grin, or a toothy laugh as the old fogie delivers yet another awful anecdote from before the War. The reason this works is simple: when a relative isn’t asking you a deeply personal question, they don’t really expect you to talk. It’s your job to listen and look attentive. For bonus points: have a slice of the aforementioned ancestor’s cake at hand — occasionally eat a piece and make appreciative grunts as she talks to you, even if it tastes like crap.

2. Craft an air-tight cover story

Interrogation by persistent family members can be considerably worse than any and all forms employed both today and historically by international security agencies. You thought waterboarding was bad? Try being jabbed in the ribs with a 2-inch hard-lacquered fingernail. Repeatedly.

Thus, it’s important to have a cover story. Depending on your family or culture, you might want to flesh out particular aspects, but in general you must know the following two categories in great detail:

• Your job. You either have a job or you have very good prospects for a job. You are not sitting at home playing video games. You are not at university getting drunk and forgetting your own name every night.
• Your partner. Whether you have a boyfriend or girlfriend, for the sake of family get-togethers, you have a partner. Take a moment to flesh him or her out. Do they have a good job? Are they from a good (and Jewish, oy vey) family? The easiest solution here is to actually get a boyfriend or girlfriend. Never, ever admit to being single. For the sake of argument, a drunken kiss and fondle does count as a prospective relationship.

3. Appreciate the food, even if it tastes like refried week-old fish

Repeat after me: ‘Mmmm! That’s great! Did you put cinnamon in; or is that ginger? Either way it’s terrrrific!’

The only risk with such positive-reinforcement is that they might actually make it again. A fate worse than death. Hm, maybe you should just tell her that it tastes bad — cruel to be kind. But the point is: if you like the food, say so! When women get to a certain age, there isn’t much more to life than visiting the post office, writing letters or making food. Make your ancestor feel loved with a heart-felt ‘mmmm!’

4. Learn the ancestral language — Yiddish, Ebonics, German, whatever

At least in Jewish circles, a few choice phrases can propel you from ‘that runty kid with no chance of finding a nice wife’ all the way to ‘our favourite Sebby who is always given the first slice of cake’. A mazel tov here, a schnoz there and you’re well on your way to becoming the Favoured One. I can’t speak authoritatively for other backgrounds/cultures, but very few families are actually ‘old’ — go back a few generations and it’s almost guaranteed that some of your ancestors were immigrants — so the same trick is likely to work with most languages!

Of course, if you can trace both sides of your family back ten generations without leaving the country, then you’ve probably already gone to finishing school, learnt how to play polo and how to order man servants about — this guide probably isn’t of much use to you.

5. Ascertain your common ancestors and/or history

Nothing encourages love and camaraderie as quickly or firmly as locating a common ancestry! Perhaps you’re talking to a cute third-cousin-twice-removed (totally legal, at least here in the UK) and then you wow her by revealing that your parents and hers used to play naked in a sandpit together, back in 1965. You’ve as good as scored!

With younger relatives — the generation below — you can become good friends very quickly by warning them of what to expect when they get older. Tell a kid how to win the affections of his nasty, doddery grandmother and he’ll be eternally grateful.

With older relatives  it’s even easier as they’re so soppy and sentimental — trace their history back until you have a common ancestor, or ancestors that were siblings. Perhaps they were in Auschwitz together? Or worked at the same cotton farm? Finding such common ground is vital to forming strong familial bonds! And might even score you a sentence or two in their final will and testament!

* * *

Any similarities to actual members of my family either living or deceased are purely coincidental. This list is entirely fictitious and does not represent my actual views of my family meet-ups which are, incidentally, pure joy. Please do not stop bringing your lovely smoked salmon lemon drizzle cake to parties, grandma.

Recently I was contacted by a very nice Canadian chap called Lee. He writes for a big Internet blog and news source — the kind of site that has a million unique visitors a month — and he asked me if I’d like to write for them! Apparently, I’m a bit snarky. Apparently that’s what they want; someone that tells it like it is. Someone that isn’t afraid to step on a few toes.

And that’s cool. I can do that. Artists will do anything for a cheap buck.

But I can’t believe he actually called me SNARKY! Of all the things he could’ve called me! Intelligent, wise, bright, charming, charismatic… even tall or hairy would’ve been fine. But snarky? Who the fuck does he think he is? I wouldn’t mind if he was American — that would explain a few things — but a Canadian? A civilian pawn of the mighty, Earth-spanning British Empire? Really, some people ought to know their place.

Which brings me neatly onto the topic of the Internet class system. Or the sickening and complete lack thereof. Online, everyone is born equal. From the moment you plug that cable in and battle your way through Internet Explorer’s shit MSN homepage redirection, you are… A NETIZEN — an Internet citizen — a very grandiose term that basically means you belong to the Online Community. A small monthly fee, a modem and a computer — that’s all you need to become a fully paid-up member of the largest, most powerful and ubiquitous community in the world.

You can become a civilian of the modern society — the only real society that counts — where rules and etiquette are created and destroyed as technology and peer pressure dictates. This often happens so quickly that no one really knows what’s going on: The Internet is in disarray! Anyone and everyone rules the roost, or their small part of it. The Internet is an anarchic system of authority. And therein lies the problem: there is no social structure.

Historically the citizens of a country are those that are born there. Changing your nationality was something that very few people did; you only emigrated or sought asylum during the most dire of situations. Why? Because there was a class or caste system in place; a pecking order. Jobs would be given to specific families first. If you were born into a family of cleaners or chimney sweeps, you really didn’t have much of a career choice. The rich died rich; the poor died poor. When you move country you drop down to the bottom — and trust me, there is always someone worse off than you — a thought petrifying enough to scare off all but the most desperate emigrants. In a world where class means everything, losing your class is not unlike dying. Social status, perks, opportunity — all gone.

But there’s one exception: a new country. You can move to a new country where everyone is equal, at least for a short time. A new, primordial society, amorphous and malleable. A new culture just waiting to be defined by creative and daring individuals. A New World. America.

Is it really a surprise that five hundred years later we’ve created the virtual equivalent of America?

The Internet is still at that stage where everyone is equal. The loud-shouting neophyte is as much a patron of the new world order as the venerable Internet veteran. Is that correct? Should we be born equal in this New Virtual World? After being on the Internet for 15 years should a jumped-up newbie with bold, brash ideas be able to tell me what to do? No! Should I defer, prostrate myself and shuffle nervously around those that have been online since the very dawn of our current epoch 40 years ago? As much as it pains my ego to say so: yes, yes I should.

In the hope of achieving a more sane and useful society, in true Virtual World style, I propose a level system. When you first connect to the Internet, you are level 1. Every year of continued use thereafter, you gain a level. It would need to be tracked by some kind of governing body — like the Censor’s Office in Roman times, or the peerage registers in the UK.

Each level would bestow rights, privileges. Perhaps you could mute lower levels in chat rooms or on forums. You would be eligible for more bandwidth when downloading illegal movies and music. Perhaps if the level difference is great enough you could even bestow ‘time outs’ on particularly irritating runts by cutting their Internet access for an hour.

You would be forced to use an Apple Mac until level 5.

Smileys would be banned until you reach level 10.

Streaming porn would remain unavailable until you reach level 15.

How about it, peons?

… it’s because I’m busy playing video games.

If, for some Godforsaken reason, you still don’t play video games, let me tell you something: Winter is gaming season. The summer blockbusters have been and gone. The warm, hazy friend-filled nights spent outdoors have dissipated with the first chills of September. Slowly but surely we retreat to our warm, cosy caves, fall to our sofas, plump our pillows and… turn on the TV! Autumn is when most big games and TV shows are released — no big surprise, considering that’s when the biggest, voluminous-backside-on-seat audience is available!

Now, historically this time of year wasn’t a problem — far from it! There used to only be 2 or 3 big games a year. I could stagger them and start one every few months. But now with the industry ballooning and game budgets growing to the size of feature films — because they are that profitable — there’s simply too many games. There used to be one big FPS a year, one or two RPGs, a sports simulator and… that would be it. There’d be other oddball games that could entertain you for a few hours, but nothing big. Some years you might not even play a single stand-out game!

That’s not the case nowadays though, and I suppose it never will be again. Just in September alone, I have the following games that I need to play through: Guitar Hero 5, Rockband: Beatles (well, I might give this one a miss…) AaaaaAAaaaAAAaaAAAAaAAAAA!!! (really a game), Murumasa and Batman: Arkham Asylum. That’s just on the PC and Xbox360. If I include the DS/Wii… well… you would probably never see me again. I’ve never been able to pull myself away from the Cake Mania series of games…

October’s even worse, but I won’t bore you with the specifics. All I’m trying to say is: if you’re the kind of person that keeps track of at least five TV shows a week (or four, if you’re a True Blood fan and you’ve just watched the finale — please don’t spam me with comments on how you want to have Cullen’s babies. Wait, that’s Twilight! Ahh, I can’t keep up…) — anyway… if you watch a lot of TV, perhaps you will now understand why it will almost feel like hard work being a games player this Autumn. Think about it: an average, big-budget game takes between 20 and 60 hours to finish. That’s the same length as a standard 24-part drama season on the short end, and three seasons on the long! And I have to play three games a month if I want to keep up with all of the releases this Autumn/Winter! That’s a minimum of 60 hours a month, or as much as 180 — or 8 solid days of gaming…

But the best thing? The caveat and saving grace? It doens’t even make me a nerd any more! Video games are now part of popular culture. They are as much a consumable commodity as movie DVDs or TV box sets. In fact, I laugh derisively at those people with LoveFilm or NetFlix subscriptions! HAH!

The point of this entry was actually to warn you that you may get an awful lot of games-related blog entries over the next few weeks and months. But that’s healthy. I’ve been ignoring the gamer side of me for much too long. And there are actually a lot of gamers that read this blog: so these months are for you, gentlemen (and lady).

* * *

Incidentally, if you’re not a gamer, but you are interested in playing them, you should read my guide: A Beginner’s Guide to Gaming. It will walk you through from the very beginning (it doesn’t tell you how to hook up a console to your TV, but everything else!) Think of gaming as ‘interactive TV’, or ‘entertainment for the intellectual’, where you give a little of yourself to make it a much more interesting (and sometimes fulfilling!) experience.

There is a reason it’s the only growing segment of the media industry.

[These 'thoughtful' posts are usually much more free-form and a-wandering than my other blog entries. You are more than welcome to jump in and finish a particular train of thought, or challenge something you think is false. This is as much about me getting my head around something as it is for you! You probably want to read yesterday's entry on 'Single-Player Immersion' before you read this.]

We know that our imagination is powerful — it is as powerful or more so than actual reality. Sure, it can’t physically take us places, but do people really claim that being scared by a horror film isn’t equivalent to being attacked by a knife-wielding maniac? (OK, don’t think about that one too much — just go with it!) And then there’s the matter of time-travel: our imagination can take us back in time! Through the media of books, films and games our infinitesimally short life-span can be expanded and extended to include different places and worlds from throughout history. Magical.

Why though must all of these virtual worlds exist outside the realm of reality? Can you imagine ‘losing yourself’ in the contemporary world — while reading the morning paper? No. You lose yourself while reading about the culture and creepy rites of Ancient Egypt. You readily find yourself escaping to alternate realities where vampires and undead exist, roaming and scheming under the cover of darkness. After that scene in The Matrix, did you stop to consider if it really is air that you’re breathing? I did.

Why can’t we be immersed in real life? Why can’t we attack and question our surroundings in real life with the same fervor?

A quick change of tack: yesterday, I mentioned how immersion can also occur to groups of people. The obvious examples here are table-top role-playing games (Dungeons & Dragons and the like), Internet forums and online games. This ‘multi-player shared reality’ is nearly always cooperative, towards some common goal. They take the same form as real-life teams and groups, only… they are virtual. Or rather, their sphere of influence is virtual (though their real-world impact can be quite significant too — some people get married in a virtual world,  and later in real life too).  The inhabitants of these shared, imagined illusions are avatars, projections of one’s self upon the fundament of a virtual world.

This won’t make a lot of sense if you’ve never been part of such a shared reality, but take my word for it: community and social bonds form a lot more readily in virtual spaces. It’s like… necessity throws people together, and somehow… it sticks. Not entirely without conflict, but generally these communities stick it out. This might be stretching it a little, but it’s a little like arranged marriages: you are thrown together, perhaps against your will, but for a variety of external reasons, you are compelled to try your best. Without other choices available, you are forced to survive and succeed (not a bad thing, really?) Those of us in the West look on in disgust at these teenagers being married off without their consent. We think our system is so much better. But their system does seem to work, no?

Anyway…

My point is this: if you think you’ve been immersed in a book or film or game, it is nothing compared to group immersion. It is nothing compared to running around with other people that also think they’re vampires or piloting the same spaceship as you. It’s nothing compared to working together with hundreds or thousands of like-minded friends in an online virtual world.  By sharing the world with others, your imagination is being validated. By occupying the same world as someone else, it’s no longer ‘imaginary’ or ‘just in your head’, it’s actually — holy shit! — real.

So what about FarmVille? It’s a primitive game, sure, but it is a virtual world; a world full of rosy-cheeked, benevolent farmers that spend half their time harvesting, and the other half helping out other farmers. The level of immersion (or ‘gameness?) is limited at the moment, but I wouldn’t be surprised if the ability to group up with other farmers appeared soon. And that then is only one step away from building a town in the middle of a clutch of farms… and then cities and counties and…

Why can’t we be as immersed in real life? What stops us from enacting our imagination in reality? Is it just merely fear of failure? Or… something else?

I’m looking for a real-world analogy here, and again I’m thinking of the New World, America. A bunch of individuals lumped together in a new, harsh environment where the only way out of trouble (and death!)  is teamwork. Are we simply ’stuck’ here in the mundanity of real life because there is no necessity to try any harder?

I am just trying to work out why it feels so damn good to form a group in an online game and work together towards a common goal. I wonder why we so rarely do it in real life. Why is it every man for himself in London, while we readily cooperate in virtual worlds?

Historically, were we more immersed? When it was harder to survive and teamwork was a necessity, did we have to become more involved? I wonder if we need something dramatic like another war to force us back into our own lives, and our own world.