In a
recent article, I discussed a form of technological expression that involved
layers of mediated experience. With
virtual robots, there is the mediation of having robots to do jobs or tasks
that would otherwise fall into the realm of primary experience for humans. And there is the mediation that comes from
these robots being in a reality without mass, matter and substance and, therefore,
where there are no meaningful primary experience consequences from the tasks
which these virtual robots are trying out.
The point is that because of the combination of these layers of mediated
experience, the combined effect of separating humans from the external world of
primary experience is much greater than the effect of each of these layers
separately.
There
are other combinations of layers of mediated experiences that are separating
humans from the primary experience external world. One of these is being sports spectators of a
sport where the bulk of the action occurs within the mediated experience world
of screen reality. Welcome to the world
of e-sports. Professional video game
competitions are broadcast live all over the world to millions of viewers for
prize money. So you have the mediation
of spectators watching a sporting activity outside of themselves. And you have a sporting activity where the
players are themselves immersed in a mediated experience activity. There is a double layer of mediation
separating the spectator from the activity.
And this a doubly mediated experience that millions of spectators all
over the world participate in.
But
there is something that makes some people’s experience of watching e-sports
different from that of working with virtual robots. With virtual robots, a person is dealing with
two technological realities: robots and virtual reality. For those spectators watching the tournament
on a television screen, there is also a double layer of technological mediation
involved. But then there are those
people who are watching the tournament live as it is happening, and for these
people, it is a different kind of an experience. Granted that like at rock concerts, the
players are magnified on large screen to make seeing them easier. But even so, the players are still visible
live. For these spectators, there is a
distinctly special flavor to their experience of the video game
tournaments. And it is these spectators
of the live video tournament that I am going to focus on here. A spectator of the live event is dealing with
one layer of primary experience external world reality and one layer of video
game screen reality. To the extent that
the arena spectator is watching the video game player play his video game, just
the act of watching the player involves the player in his external world
reality. To the extent that the player
is engaged in playing a video game, that is a layer that involves screen
reality, pure mediated experience.
Because the player is in the external world performing an action, just
watching the player is a mediated experience with primary experience
components.
Watching
e-sports live is dangerous for humans in a different way than working with
virtual robots. With virtual robots,
there is a threat to the person working with them of becoming so immersed in
the experience, that psychologically it becomes very difficult to pull oneself
totally back into the primary experience of the external world. Immersing oneself in two levels of
technologically based reality that reinforce each other in terms of their
capacity to suck people away from external world reality, will lead in the long
run to an increasing incapacity of these humans to easily return to external
world reality and to the incapacity to absorb again the gamut of stimuli that
is found in such a reality.
With
live e-sports events, the problem is not so much that of immersing in
technological realities, but rather with blurring the distinction between
external world reality and this technologically-based screen reality. And this comes through combining the partially
mediated experiences of watching someone performing actions in the external
world with the somewhat more pure mediated experience of watching the efforts
of these external world actions within the screen reality of video games. In the first case, there is normally no neat
divider separating the spectator from the player, while in the second case, the
screen normally acts as such a divider.
And yet here, the external world actions of the player’s movement and
the screen movements of what happens inside the video game become one seamless
flow of experience. This blurring is
very pronounced for the spectator. For
the player, who doesn’t focus on looking at himself playing, the only
meaningful movement he observes is what is going on within the video game.
The
blurring has a two-fold effort. It tends
to instill for the spectator a sense of external world reality into the video
game that is being played. Somehow, it
seems to have the same hard edgy sense of reality as a basketball game or an
ice hockey game. It seems to have the
immediacy and the urgency of a primary experience external world
competition. And it allows the game to
suck the spectator into the digital reality world, as if it could provide the
spectator a real sense of mass, matter and substance.
By
the same token, the spectator is imbued with the atmosphere provided by the
screen reality of the video game and develops a lighter presence like that of
an avatar. A lightness of being that
contributes to disconnecting the spectator from the mass, matter, and substance
of his own physical body. Actually, it
makes sense. This is a screen reality
world seen like an external world reality to a person who has become like an
avatar.
The
spectator of the live event, who becomes so addicted to watching a player play
a video game, wastes so much time. Not
only is he not making organic imprints on the surface of his field of
experience, but he is not even watching an external world athlete make a meaningful
imprint by beating a flesh-and-blood human opponent in a primary experience
game. Rather, he is sucked over the
bridge that is created between external world reality and screen reality, a
bridge generated by this experience. At
least when a person immerses himself with virtual reality, there is no pretense
that the person is still dwelling at that moment in external world reality.
And it
is almost worse watching a video game tournament at a stadium or arena than it
is to watch a basketball game on television.
With the latter, there is no illusion that one is participating in a
mediated experience, and that mediated experience is juxtaposed next to the
primary experience in external world reality of being in one’s living room or
in a bar watching the game. One knows
when one’s focus is leaving the external world reality to go into the screen
reality and vice versa. But in a video
game tournament, the live spectator is living in external world reality and
screen reality simultaneously. Mentally,
the boundaries between the two are broken, so that one loses his capacity to
easily retreat back into external world reality from screen reality. Which means the live spectator, after watching
these tournaments a certain number of times, will have difficulty being able to
live fully in external world reality again.
Mentally, he remains subtly numb and detached even after a tournament is
over, and he physically leaves it. And
this affects his capacity to be able to fully function in primary experience in
external world reality, having rich vibrant experience, making, receiving and
preserving organic imprints, developing a meaningful life narrative and
preparing for death with a surrogate immortality. Complicated layered experiences like video
game tournaments represent a greater danger to humans and their lives as
mammalian entities than the simple mediated experiences that immerse people in
screen reality and virtual reality.
No comments:
Post a Comment