I forgot to mention in a previous reply that this question betrays a very simplistic understanding of the internet.
The internet is nothing more than an interconnected series of independently operated networks--some privately run, some government run, but all separated physically, administratively, and financially.
They are interconnected via circuits that generally fall into one of two catagories, transit and peering. Transit circuits are your basic ISP/customer type, where one customer--who could be a smaller ISP--pays for connectivity to a service provider--who may, in turn, pay an even larger provider for their service. Peering circuits are commonly arranged between networks that exchange roughly equivalent amounts of traffic, where neither party bills the other for service. If billing is done on a peering arrangement, one network bills the other based specifically on the amount of imbalance in traffic between them, eg. the network sending more data gets paid.
The only technical aspects of the internet that are centralized administratively are domain naming and ip address allocation authority. This is a pain point for some non-US networks and governments, who want more influence over policy decisions. That's understandable. And if the world manages to wrest total control away from the US-based entities that have complete authority now, things will probably be okay, as long as there remains a single centralized and authoritative system for DNS and address allocations.
If alternate authorities start flourishing, the namespace will get unstable and corrupt, and Bad Things (c) will happen. For example, if your naming authority and my naming authority separately assign "slashdot.org" to different sites, you may get a useful tech news site...and I may get this one.;^)
How do you think world news content wanders onto US-based sites?
I bet the computers on which the articles are created and the computers that serve the articles are all connected to different LANs, which are internetworked.
Hm. "Internetworked"...There's something familiar sounding about that.
That's a case of the technology not working as it's meant to,
I disagree. All the mentioned devices work precisely to standard. It's just that they all live in the same crowded RF range, and this makes 802.11B/G a bad idea, relative to wired ethernet, for my home network. It's a great idea for other networks, where the frequency range is less crowded or the environment is more controllable.
Anyway, I've enjoyed this discussion and have a lot of respect for your positions. Thank you.
I think this is where we differ. I think at this level the student knows the best way for themself to learn. They know themselves better than the prof does. It's their learning, it's their responsibility to do it right.
Yes and no. Yes, I do believe a good student will have enough self-awareness to know what learning techniques work best for them. For me it is reading, hands down. No, because much of the responsibility for communicating information rests with the communicator--or educator in this context. Skilled educators are as familiar with the teaching process as they are familiar with the curriculum. They make conscious and deliberate choices in how they present the material and through those choices they do partially dictate the best methods for students to receive the information.
Perhaps, but I'd be surprised...
Why?! An example--I'm a network engineer for an ISP/Telco. I'm educated regarding, and practically experienced with the design and implemention of, various flavors of 802.11 networks for our own HQ and for customers, and also have used it extensively at home in the past. I think the technology is great!
I don't currently use it at home, though, because it's not a good fit for my current home network. Why? The 2.4GHz spectrum, and specifically 802.11B/G chanel range, is just too crowded in my neighborhood. I can war drive 4 different neighbor's APs, and see 2 muni wireless APs from about any room in my house--then there's my game controllers, the microwave and the neighbor's phones. So...I'm all about Cat6 to several jacks in every room, plus the garage.
It's hard to tell without context.
I guarantee you he isn't. I've worked for the guy in two differrent contexts, and he is the kind of extraordinary visionary force that truly drives technology forward. Anyhow, I would agree that anyone managing to have a productive meeting in any context, should be able to do it in most contexts.
Rather than expand our point-by-point discussion further, I'm going to perhaps err on the side of brevity in my reply...
I wholeheartedly agree with the idea that technology, and specifically laptops, in the classroom can greatly benefit students and educators alike. I also wholeheartedly argue that this is not automatically or universally true, and that educators have the right to dictate what tools they allow in their classrooms. Further, I argue that they definitionally know better than their students about what environment works best for learning the material at hand.
Regarding the applicability of the luddite label to this professor, I believe there is a difference between not finding technology useful in general terms--perhaps she uses a laptop regularly for many things--and deciding that they are not beneficial in specific cases--such as her classroom.
Finally, I'll leave you with a paraphrased quote from an Internet pioneer I have had the benefit and pleasure of working with several times. He is a dyed-in-the-wool technologist who was almost singlehandly responsible for initiating regional Internet connectivity where I live, who has served as the CTO for my state's government, and who currently leads the networking arm of a major university.
On the IETF mailing list, there was a great whine-fest about wireless connectivity provided during a regional meeting, and he finished his comments on the matter with something like, "I remember a time when we developed many, many wonderful protocols in highly productive meetings without laptops and wireless connections. I guess that time has passed."
You only consider the portion of her decision quoted in the article. You did not consider the room size, seating room, desktop space, room acoustics, HVAC/power capacity, or more esoteric concerns such as the classroom decorum and tone the professor wants to set. Perhaps she purposefully wants a stodgy "old school" feel to her classes.
But at this level you have to let the students bring what they want to it.
Unless you feel it damages the classroom environment in some manner. My work laptop has a fan that could compete dB-wise with a business jet. Put a few of them in a subdued classroom setting, add keyboard clicking, and touchpad tapping and it could be quite disturbing to others.
Then there is the inherent distraction of having dozens of TFT screens blocking sightlines and drawing student's eyes from the professor.
Meanwhile, pencils scratching paper is comparitively minor distraction.
It's an argument for letting the students choose whichever medium they feel best suits them
Not really. A laissez faire position is more of an acquiessence than an argument.
My notes are far more legible when I type them than when I write them
Isn't your penmanship essentially a personal problem rather than a technologic problem? Hell, if all of your gradeschool classmates have the same bad handwriting, I could accuse you of "blaming the technology for a social problem."
And having them in electronic form means I can search them quickly for the case I can't remember, rather than having to look through and try and remember which week I learnt it in.
Lecture note organizational skill is a personal problem too. One that we share, BTW...:^)
On what basis do you consider this limitation arbitrary? Arbitrary is, of course, a very relative condition that describes most rules given the flexibility of one's perspective on it.
Doesn't an educator have the right, as well as the responsibility, to create what they feel is the most productive learning environment for students? Or must every classroom decision an educator makes be subject to the fractured will of the student body?
Yes, lecture transcribing in any medium can impact the amount of analysis and critical thought students can muster in the classroom, but that's not actually an argument "for" anything is it?
And what technology problem do student laptops solve in a first-year law classroom?
She believes she knows the "one true way" for people to absorb and learn information. It requires pen and paper and excludes laptops. A free thinker would say "use what works for you".
I have several problems with the assertions you make here. Denying one of many ways to document a lecture doesn't imply that she believes there is "one true way" to learn. It simply and wholy implies that she finds that laptop notetaking is incompatible with the classroom environment she wishes to provide for her students. In that sense, it's as fair to ban laptops as it is to ban food and beverages, gum, portable music players, fashionably small dogs, etc.
First, I doubt that consumer web use drives the growth of the internet in the US. Commercial, government, and education user traffic far exceeds home user traffic for most ISPs.
a stranglehold on the web that they're only recently losing!
If your argument held true, wouldn't M$ losing their stranglehold trigger *more* growth? It seems contradictory to me to say, "Current growth is slowing because M$ used to be more ubiquitous."
I help operate a medium-sized ISP, and I see bandwidth usage increases stalling in our larger commercial and educational markets more than in our consumer business, where the latest P2P app always keeps the interface counters rolling.
The fact that internet-related venture capital dried up during the dot-bust.
That the same dot-bust manifested itself in diminished demand for connectivity across the whole industry.
That diminished demand, plus price compression, poor capital management, failed mergers, accounting scandals, and bankruptcies brought the whole telecom industry low for years.
That the whole industry (in the US) has been slow to deploy next gen services because they simultaneously watched their revenue streams dry up at the same time they wildly over-built their last gen networks to meet demand that went away.
Wow, pardon me for being helpful. You expressed confusion over what the AC said, and I thought you may actually want to know what they were sniping at you about. Sorry. I thought my tone was nice and lighthearted.
By the way, you're the first person I ever recall screwing up that "commonly overlooked" idiom. First and only. In over three decades. You tell me, how common is that?
Now, if you want my opinion on the content of your original post and what's going on: I
think you're confused. I think you misunderstand the way movie ratings and theater age-limit policies work. Theaters are not bound by local, state, or federal statutes to forbid access to minors, they're under contract with movie distributors to follow the motion picture ratings board guidelines. So only contract law--which is quite different than criminal statutes--applies in that case.
As far as the whole debate raging about these laws, I think industry self-regulation should be the primary focus, and I think this is just the latest, "see--I"m doing something about something," election year issue for politicians...Enough said.
I normally don't get all picky about these kinds of things, and when I do I'm a lot less rude than the AC was in his/her comment. However, I would just as soon avoid reading goofed up idioms.
I'll take your gaming and first amendment loving credentials without question. I still don't know how you separate violence for entertainment in all fictional media from the singular entity of video games.
I just can't accept the "only interactive medium" argument, because every medium is interactive at some level. Watchers and readers make choices in what content they find entertaining. And as I've pointed out in multiple posts, the interactivity that seems to apply to this discussion is mental and emotional--not button pushing or plot-deciding. Reading beats gaming hands-down for interactivity of the mind.
If it's safe for authors to create stories for entertainment purposes, and it's safe to read the stories for entertainment purposes, no one can convince me that video games are a singular threat to society.
I have no problem keeping these things away from kids altogether and hopefully convincing game manufacturers to move away from simulating extremely violent environments that may occur in our real world.
Games are the only ones that are TRULY interactive.
I guess this is one point that I really dispute.
In a game, I may make choices in how game actions and plots unfold using the interface offered to me by the game, but the fact that the interface is explicitly defined, the context is explicitly defined, the realm of possible actions is completely established, the visual and audio queues are limited to specific content. In this context of explicitly established settings, games share much with other audio/visual media, such as TV and movies.
In a book, I don't drive plot elements or make character decisions, but I do get to flesh out the entire spectrum of environments a good author creates, including the sights, sounds, smells, character traits, and I get to fill in details the author omits by imagining the nuances that he/she left up to me as a reader.
I also get to choose what characters I relate to, what passages "speak" to me, and what entertains me as a reader. I find books very mentally and emotionally interactive. Admittedly, my thumbs don't get sore, and my wrists don't hurt after a few hours reading.
The author, filmmaker, playwright, artist chooses what you see.
But I buy the books, or the tickets, so I choose what I read or see, based on what *I* find entertaining. Ultimately, responsibility always ends with me, the individual.
I will respond further but I'm out of time for now. Stay tuned...
However, I think we have found the point on which we disagree.
Seems so.
The author, poet, director, etc, is telling a story. He or she is not doing so merely for personal entertainment, but to convey some idea or belief.
Really? You think all fiction fits that profile? Sometimes--especially in genres like crime fiction, spy thrillers, and horror--a story is just entertainment, meant to be read or viewed as such. I don't think Quentin Tarrantino had a big message or moral in the highly regarded Pulp Fiction--which had a whole scene featuring extremely predatory sexual behavior.
The actor is a little different, because the story being told is not his or her own. But for the actor or actress, there is no choice involved.
Your impression of acting is possibly quite different from mine. First, I'm fairly certain that actors get to choose the roles they portray. Second, I believe quality performances likely require some commitment from the actors to "own" their parts and essentially *be* the storyteller when called upon by the script.
There is no audience for which the action is intended to convey some idea or meaning. The act of playing the game has no purpose other than to entertain the gamer.
When I'm reading a book, the audience is me. When I'm watching TV or a movie, the audience is me. When I'm playing a game, the audience is me.
The difference is passive interaction versus active interaction.
Well, first I'll reiterate what I said to end my last comment, I think reading engages a person's mind--via the imagination--to a much deeper level than any other media, such as television, movies, and video games.
If written fiction has its intended impact on the reader, the reader is transported into the pages, the story and the characters in a very significant way. Audio/Visual mediums spell it out in rote, which may be explicit, but it inherently involves the reader's mind less.
The gamer is actually choosing how the character acts.
So in essence, the gamer is the author--or director--of the video game story. So...I would ask you, how does an author, screenwriter, director or producer of violent fiction fare within your argument?
Are they not magnitudes more involved in choosing how characters behave in their fictional portrayals of our world? And how about actors? They actually perform the simulated violence.
Again, I argue that it's virtually impossible to be intellectually honest about singling out video games.
If you say that Joe Blow shouldn't play a violent character in a video game, how can you say it's okay for him to write, direct, produce or portray the bad guy in this weekend's blockbuster?
Actors and gamers are both predominantly average human beings. One acts publicly, with a deep imaginative connection to the character, the other "acts" in a living room, with a lot less character involvement. How is the latter possibly a more dangerous behavior than the former?
Should taking part in creating an episode of "Law & Order: SVU" be banned too? You really need to think hard about where you "draw lines" like these.
There are some things that should be off limits. My reasoning is this: Games allow us to simulate life (not necessarily reality) in a consequence free atmosphere.
Like a book. Or a movie. Or a play. Or a TV show. Or a song. Or a poem. Or a campfire story...
I personally do not want the general public to find entertainment in simulating the rape of another individual. The effect on the individual is not something that I find acceptable.
Fine. Just as long as you're intellectually consistent enough to suggest we ban much of the entire literary genres of pulp crime fiction, thrillers and horror. And many dramatic films, and popular television dramas, perhaps some plays.
What is the argument for including this type of choice into games? Do you believe it will enhance the gaming experience? Is it simply a matter of principle and free speech?
I guess the argument is that games are just one form that may portray dramatic antagonism, violent conflicts and mature themes, and it's confusing to some folks why people single them out from the bulk of fictional entertainment.
A video game is no more engaging to the imagination than reading a book. In fact, I'd argue they're much less engaging.
Also, because of the "irrational fear" you describe
The GP described used a time-shifting *analogy* that made no assertion describing any factual situation regarding fears of the time.
back then people trated this stuff with kid gloves.
You've got to be joking! The industrial revolution was driven by people who worked daily in the most life-threatening and unsafe conditions around. Labor unions came to exist in part to address the complete void of safety considerations for workers of that era. History does not support your position in any conceivable manner.
I think the orig. poster's point was that there was only one total video output, as opposed to one DVI/VGA for a monitor plus one composite--or S-video or analog component or digital component or DVI or HDMI or RGB--for an analog or digital TV.
Slashdot Mirror
I forgot to mention in a previous reply that this question betrays a very simplistic understanding of the internet.
;^)
The internet is nothing more than an interconnected series of independently operated networks--some privately run, some government run, but all separated physically, administratively, and financially.
They are interconnected via circuits that generally fall into one of two catagories, transit and peering. Transit circuits are your basic ISP/customer type, where one customer--who could be a smaller ISP--pays for connectivity to a service provider--who may, in turn, pay an even larger provider for their service. Peering circuits are commonly arranged between networks that exchange roughly equivalent amounts of traffic, where neither party bills the other for service. If billing is done on a peering arrangement, one network bills the other based specifically on the amount of imbalance in traffic between them, eg. the network sending more data gets paid.
The only technical aspects of the internet that are centralized administratively are domain naming and ip address allocation authority. This is a pain point for some non-US networks and governments, who want more influence over policy decisions. That's understandable. And if the world manages to wrest total control away from the US-based entities that have complete authority now, things will probably be okay, as long as there remains a single centralized and authoritative system for DNS and address allocations.
If alternate authorities start flourishing, the namespace will get unstable and corrupt, and Bad Things (c) will happen. For example, if your naming authority and my naming authority separately assign "slashdot.org" to different sites, you may get a useful tech news site...and I may get this one.
How do you think world news content wanders onto US-based sites?
I bet the computers on which the articles are created and the computers that serve the articles are all connected to different LANs, which are internetworked.
Hm. "Internetworked"...There's something familiar sounding about that.
That's a case of the technology not working as it's meant to,
I disagree. All the mentioned devices work precisely to standard. It's just that they all live in the same crowded RF range, and this makes 802.11B/G a bad idea, relative to wired ethernet, for my home network. It's a great idea for other networks, where the frequency range is less crowded or the environment is more controllable.
Anyway, I've enjoyed this discussion and have a lot of respect for your positions. Thank you.
I think this is where we differ. I think at this level the student knows the best way for themself to learn. They know themselves better than the prof does. It's their learning, it's their responsibility to do it right.
Yes and no. Yes, I do believe a good student will have enough self-awareness to know what learning techniques work best for them. For me it is reading, hands down. No, because much of the responsibility for communicating information rests with the communicator--or educator in this context. Skilled educators are as familiar with the teaching process as they are familiar with the curriculum. They make conscious and deliberate choices in how they present the material and through those choices they do partially dictate the best methods for students to receive the information.
Perhaps, but I'd be surprised...
Why?! An example--I'm a network engineer for an ISP/Telco. I'm educated regarding, and practically experienced with the design and implemention of, various flavors of 802.11 networks for our own HQ and for customers, and also have used it extensively at home in the past. I think the technology is great!
I don't currently use it at home, though, because it's not a good fit for my current home network. Why? The 2.4GHz spectrum, and specifically 802.11B/G chanel range, is just too crowded in my neighborhood. I can war drive 4 different neighbor's APs, and see 2 muni wireless APs from about any room in my house--then there's my game controllers, the microwave and the neighbor's phones. So...I'm all about Cat6 to several jacks in every room, plus the garage.
It's hard to tell without context.
I guarantee you he isn't. I've worked for the guy in two differrent contexts, and he is the kind of extraordinary visionary force that truly drives technology forward. Anyhow, I would agree that anyone managing to have a productive meeting in any context, should be able to do it in most contexts.
Rather than expand our point-by-point discussion further, I'm going to perhaps err on the side of brevity in my reply...
I wholeheartedly agree with the idea that technology, and specifically laptops, in the classroom can greatly benefit students and educators alike. I also wholeheartedly argue that this is not automatically or universally true, and that educators have the right to dictate what tools they allow in their classrooms. Further, I argue that they definitionally know better than their students about what environment works best for learning the material at hand.
Regarding the applicability of the luddite label to this professor, I believe there is a difference between not finding technology useful in general terms--perhaps she uses a laptop regularly for many things--and deciding that they are not beneficial in specific cases--such as her classroom.
Finally, I'll leave you with a paraphrased quote from an Internet pioneer I have had the benefit and pleasure of working with several times. He is a dyed-in-the-wool technologist who was almost singlehandly responsible for initiating regional Internet connectivity where I live, who has served as the CTO for my state's government, and who currently leads the networking arm of a major university.
On the IETF mailing list, there was a great whine-fest about wireless connectivity provided during a regional meeting, and he finished his comments on the matter with something like, "I remember a time when we developed many, many wonderful protocols in highly productive meetings without laptops and wireless connections. I guess that time has passed."
Is he a luddite too?
I consider it arbitrary...
:^)
You only consider the portion of her decision quoted in the article. You did not consider the room size, seating room, desktop space, room acoustics, HVAC/power capacity, or more esoteric concerns such as the classroom decorum and tone the professor wants to set. Perhaps she purposefully wants a stodgy "old school" feel to her classes.
But at this level you have to let the students bring what they want to it.
Unless you feel it damages the classroom environment in some manner. My work laptop has a fan that could compete dB-wise with a business jet. Put a few of them in a subdued classroom setting, add keyboard clicking, and touchpad tapping and it could be quite disturbing to others.
Then there is the inherent distraction of having dozens of TFT screens blocking sightlines and drawing student's eyes from the professor.
Meanwhile, pencils scratching paper is comparitively minor distraction.
It's an argument for letting the students choose whichever medium they feel best suits them
Not really. A laissez faire position is more of an acquiessence than an argument.
My notes are far more legible when I type them than when I write them
Isn't your penmanship essentially a personal problem rather than a technologic problem? Hell, if all of your gradeschool classmates have the same bad handwriting, I could accuse you of "blaming the technology for a social problem."
And having them in electronic form means I can search them quickly for the case I can't remember, rather than having to look through and try and remember which week I learnt it in.
Lecture note organizational skill is a personal problem too. One that we share, BTW...
Does this facilitate increased bandwidth or lambda density? Is it cheaper?
The neato factor may be sky high, but there needs to be something to drive adoption of the technologh
On what basis do you consider this limitation arbitrary? Arbitrary is, of course, a very relative condition that describes most rules given the flexibility of one's perspective on it.
Doesn't an educator have the right, as well as the responsibility, to create what they feel is the most productive learning environment for students? Or must every classroom decision an educator makes be subject to the fractured will of the student body?
Yes, lecture transcribing in any medium can impact the amount of analysis and critical thought students can muster in the classroom, but that's not actually an argument "for" anything is it?
And what technology problem do student laptops solve in a first-year law classroom?
She believes she knows the "one true way" for people to absorb and learn information. It requires pen and paper and excludes laptops. A free thinker would say "use what works for you".
I have several problems with the assertions you make here. Denying one of many ways to document a lecture doesn't imply that she believes there is "one true way" to learn. It simply and wholy implies that she finds that laptop notetaking is incompatible with the classroom environment she wishes to provide for her students. In that sense, it's as fair to ban laptops as it is to ban food and beverages, gum, portable music players, fashionably small dogs, etc.
Freethinkers may have sensible boundries too.
Generally speaking, Libertarians preach to a very dedicated, very small choir.
Occasionally one of their messages will get mainstream traction, but I'm betting that this is too esoteric to resonate with the mainstream.
I've always wondered if, when a pirate's ship sinks, he can get a bank to float him a loan to get back on the high seas.
And then I wonder if the loan officer has any pirated music or software on his work computer.
I get confused sometimes, but I do manage to keep my shoes laces tied in knots. How fast is that in mph?
First, I doubt that consumer web use drives the growth of the internet in the US. Commercial, government, and education user traffic far exceeds home user traffic for most ISPs.
a stranglehold on the web that they're only recently losing!
If your argument held true, wouldn't M$ losing their stranglehold trigger *more* growth? It seems contradictory to me to say, "Current growth is slowing because M$ used to be more ubiquitous."
I help operate a medium-sized ISP, and I see bandwidth usage increases stalling in our larger commercial and educational markets more than in our consumer business, where the latest P2P app always keeps the interface counters rolling.
I agree.
It surely wasn't:
Yep. All one guy's fault. Totally.
Wow, pardon me for being helpful. You expressed confusion over what the AC said, and I thought you may actually want to know what they were sniping at you about. Sorry. I thought my tone was nice and lighthearted.
By the way, you're the first person I ever recall screwing up that "commonly overlooked" idiom. First and only. In over three decades. You tell me, how common is that?
Now, if you want my opinion on the content of your original post and what's going on: I
think you're confused. I think you misunderstand the way movie ratings and theater age-limit policies work. Theaters are not bound by local, state, or federal statutes to forbid access to minors, they're under contract with movie distributors to follow the motion picture ratings board guidelines. So only contract law--which is quite different than criminal statutes--applies in that case.
As far as the whole debate raging about these laws, I think industry self-regulation should be the primary focus, and I think this is just the latest, "see--I"m doing something about something," election year issue for politicians...Enough said.
when coax cable got strung to his door.
Sorry for the split post. Hectic Sunday.
I'll take your gaming and first amendment loving credentials without question. I still don't know how you separate violence for entertainment in all fictional media from the singular entity of video games.
I just can't accept the "only interactive medium" argument, because every medium is interactive at some level. Watchers and readers make choices in what content they find entertaining. And as I've pointed out in multiple posts, the interactivity that seems to apply to this discussion is mental and emotional--not button pushing or plot-deciding. Reading beats gaming hands-down for interactivity of the mind.
If it's safe for authors to create stories for entertainment purposes, and it's safe to read the stories for entertainment purposes, no one can convince me that video games are a singular threat to society.
I have no problem keeping these things away from kids altogether and hopefully convincing game manufacturers to move away from simulating extremely violent environments that may occur in our real world.
Neither do I. Both are perfectly reasonable.
Games are the only ones that are TRULY interactive.
I guess this is one point that I really dispute.
In a game, I may make choices in how game actions and plots unfold using the interface offered to me by the game, but the fact that the interface is explicitly defined, the context is explicitly defined, the realm of possible actions is completely established, the visual and audio queues are limited to specific content. In this context of explicitly established settings, games share much with other audio/visual media, such as TV and movies.
In a book, I don't drive plot elements or make character decisions, but I do get to flesh out the entire spectrum of environments a good author creates, including the sights, sounds, smells, character traits, and I get to fill in details the author omits by imagining the nuances that he/she left up to me as a reader.
I also get to choose what characters I relate to, what passages "speak" to me, and what entertains me as a reader. I find books very mentally and emotionally interactive. Admittedly, my thumbs don't get sore, and my wrists don't hurt after a few hours reading.
The author, filmmaker, playwright, artist chooses what you see.
But I buy the books, or the tickets, so I choose what I read or see, based on what *I* find entertaining. Ultimately, responsibility always ends with me, the individual.
I will respond further but I'm out of time for now. Stay tuned...
However, I think we have found the point on which we disagree.
Seems so.
The author, poet, director, etc, is telling a story. He or she is not doing so merely for personal entertainment, but to convey some idea or belief.
Really? You think all fiction fits that profile? Sometimes--especially in genres like crime fiction, spy thrillers, and horror--a story is just entertainment, meant to be read or viewed as such. I don't think Quentin Tarrantino had a big message or moral in the highly regarded Pulp Fiction--which had a whole scene featuring extremely predatory sexual behavior.
The actor is a little different, because the story being told is not his or her own. But for the actor or actress, there is no choice involved.
Your impression of acting is possibly quite different from mine. First, I'm fairly certain that actors get to choose the roles they portray. Second, I believe quality performances likely require some commitment from the actors to "own" their parts and essentially *be* the storyteller when called upon by the script.
There is no audience for which the action is intended to convey some idea or meaning. The act of playing the game has no purpose other than to entertain the gamer.
When I'm reading a book, the audience is me. When I'm watching TV or a movie, the audience is me. When I'm playing a game, the audience is me.
The difference is passive interaction versus active interaction.
Well, first I'll reiterate what I said to end my last comment, I think reading engages a person's mind--via the imagination--to a much deeper level than any other media, such as television, movies, and video games.
If written fiction has its intended impact on the reader, the reader is transported into the pages, the story and the characters in a very significant way. Audio/Visual mediums spell it out in rote, which may be explicit, but it inherently involves the reader's mind less.
The gamer is actually choosing how the character acts.
So in essence, the gamer is the author--or director--of the video game story. So...I would ask you, how does an author, screenwriter, director or producer of violent fiction fare within your argument?
Are they not magnitudes more involved in choosing how characters behave in their fictional portrayals of our world? And how about actors? They actually perform the simulated violence.
Again, I argue that it's virtually impossible to be intellectually honest about singling out video games.
If you say that Joe Blow shouldn't play a violent character in a video game, how can you say it's okay for him to write, direct, produce or portray the bad guy in this weekend's blockbuster?
Actors and gamers are both predominantly average human beings. One acts publicly, with a deep imaginative connection to the character, the other "acts" in a living room, with a lot less character involvement. How is the latter possibly a more dangerous behavior than the former?
Should taking part in creating an episode of "Law & Order: SVU" be banned too? You really need to think hard about where you "draw lines" like these.
There are some things that should be off limits. My reasoning is this: Games allow us to simulate life (not necessarily reality) in a consequence free atmosphere.
Like a book. Or a movie. Or a play. Or a TV show. Or a song. Or a poem. Or a campfire story...
I personally do not want the general public to find entertainment in simulating the rape of another individual. The effect on the individual is not something that I find acceptable.
Fine. Just as long as you're intellectually consistent enough to suggest we ban much of the entire literary genres of pulp crime fiction, thrillers and horror. And many dramatic films, and popular television dramas, perhaps some plays.
What is the argument for including this type of choice into games? Do you believe it will enhance the gaming experience? Is it simply a matter of principle and free speech?
I guess the argument is that games are just one form that may portray dramatic antagonism, violent conflicts and mature themes, and it's confusing to some folks why people single them out from the bulk of fictional entertainment.
A video game is no more engaging to the imagination than reading a book. In fact, I'd argue they're much less engaging.
Also, because of the "irrational fear" you describe
The GP described used a time-shifting *analogy* that made no assertion describing any factual situation regarding fears of the time.
back then people trated this stuff with kid gloves.
You've got to be joking! The industrial revolution was driven by people who worked daily in the most life-threatening and unsafe conditions around. Labor unions came to exist in part to address the complete void of safety considerations for workers of that era. History does not support your position in any conceivable manner.
I think the orig. poster's point was that there was only one total video output, as opposed to one DVI/VGA for a monitor plus one composite--or S-video or analog component or digital component or DVI or HDMI or RGB--for an analog or digital TV.
Just thought I'd rib you a bit...hope you took no offense. :)
s/impeeded/impeded/
s/paraent/parent/
s/insistes/insists/
s/amis/amiss/
s/Johnney/Johnny/ (-- to be consistent)
s/damn/damned/
Not trying to pick, but since you brought it up...