"I would argue that this semi-structured organisation through a network of quests and always available self-selected activities within set boundaries matches the way we read and experience the world today. These days we do things in fragments: we surf, channel flip and multitask. We write and read emails and blog posts rather than novels, we listen to 4-6 minute songs rather than symphonies, and we listen to the news in 30 second sound bites. We devour these fragments, flicking through hundreds each day, and we return to many, spending a few minutes at a time on one topic or blog or news story, maybe, but returning to it again and again. This fragmentation doesn’t necessarily mean that we’re more superficial. We return to things again and again, and the cumulation of fragmentary experience may be as deep or deeper as a single but lengthier exposure to something." (Jill Walker in "Second Person: Role-Playing and Story in Games and Playable Media", Cambridge, 2007).
We return again and again... to the same net pages, blogs, bits, topics, favorite fragments of this spinning, dizzying, alive multi-verse of a world. Which kind of makes it home. And family. New faces of alienation? Or is it the contrary, a tendency to soothe and tame the cold machine-created virtual wilderness? Aren't we all that insane man talking to a rock and pretending it's a lively pet?
We return again and again... to the same net pages, blogs, bits, topics, favorite fragments of this spinning, dizzying, alive multi-verse of a world. Which kind of makes it home. And family. New faces of alienation? Or is it the contrary, a tendency to soothe and tame the cold machine-created virtual wilderness? Aren't we all that insane man talking to a rock and pretending it's a lively pet?
