This topic has been brought up, I'm sure, in several different flavors:
Media has, in all aspects, become more emersive. The general public spends more time engaged with fantasy than with reality -- be it through television, web media, computer games, or the ever shrinking traditional realm of written material. I do not believe that this is due to some inherent evil in the different media types -- I think that the public is so much more enthralled with fantasy because technology is making fantasy so much more enthralling.
The question begins to loom: What responsibility do the providers of media have for the consequences the content they provide might have? It would be naive to point to a computer game or a TV show and say that it is the root of undesired behavior; however, repeated images and fantasies that come from all sides will certainly begin to change behavior. Since computer and television are taps to both the real (news, education, information sharing, etc.) and the fantasy (games, movies, sit-coms, etc.) it becomes increasingly difficult for a generation who knows no other outlets to distinguish which is which.
What are your thoughts, as a provider of cutting edge, emersive media, on where and how the responsibility lays? Is it a matter for lawyers and government through liability (a dirty word)? Or should it be incumbent on the providers to be proactive in distinguishing between the consequences of fantasy and reality (which are becoming blurred)?
Slashdot Mirror
all i saw were pcs references... will there be a gsm model for *the rest* of the world?
Media has, in all aspects, become more emersive. The general public spends more time engaged with fantasy than with reality -- be it through television, web media, computer games, or the ever shrinking traditional realm of written material. I do not believe that this is due to some inherent evil in the different media types -- I think that the public is so much more enthralled with fantasy because technology is making fantasy so much more enthralling.
The question begins to loom: What responsibility do the providers of media have for the consequences the content they provide might have? It would be naive to point to a computer game or a TV show and say that it is the root of undesired behavior; however, repeated images and fantasies that come from all sides will certainly begin to change behavior. Since computer and television are taps to both the real (news, education, information sharing, etc.) and the fantasy (games, movies, sit-coms, etc.) it becomes increasingly difficult for a generation who knows no other outlets to distinguish which is which.
What are your thoughts, as a provider of cutting edge, emersive media, on where and how the responsibility lays? Is it a matter for lawyers and government through liability (a dirty word)? Or should it be incumbent on the providers to be proactive in distinguishing between the consequences of fantasy and reality (which are becoming blurred)?