The Journey to the Wild Divine Review

|Tap-Repeatedly|FFC Archives

            MrLipid’s Closet of the Odd The Journey to Wild Divine

Review by MrLipidMarch 2007

Dedication

On November 22, 2003, Jen posted the following message:

“I know not everybody celebrates Christmas, so I will make this a generic ‘what game do you really wish someone would give you out of the blue’ thread.

“Me? Journey to the Wild Divine. For the sole reason that it’s too much dineros for a pig in a poke.”

Jen, this one’s for you.

Intro

I have long maintained that interactive electronic entertainment, whatever the platform, functions, regardless of the intention of those building the software, as a teaching machine. Players supply an input; the game universe responds. Players supply another input; it doesn’t respond. We, as players, are taught, input by input, how the universe before us works. It doesn’t feel like being taught because we feel we’re in charge and we get a happy jolt whenever what we predicted would happen, based on past inputs and responses, happens. We live for that jolt: that moment when the pieces fall into place, when the dots connect, when the universe we’ve been providing with inputs responds in a way we’ve been quietly taught to expect.

Viewed as teaching machines that provide responses to inputs, both installments of The Journey to Wild Divine (The Passage and Wisdom Quest) look and sound, at first glance, pretty much like every other adventure set in some vaguely Mystoid world. Navigation, as in most such games, is handled with the mouse.  As for everything else, well, that’s what makes the Wild Divine offerings unique. Instead of using a keyboard or a Wiimote or a gamepad or a touchscreen to accept player input, Wild Divine I and II use fingertip sensors on the index, middle, and ring fingers to monitor skin conductivity and heart rhythm variability.  The hand with the sensors remains still while the physical state of the player drives events on the screen. Thus, unlike any other adventure game, The Passage and Wisdom Quest consist of challenges that can only be overcome by the conscious manipulation by the player of his or her physical state. This is the skill these teaching machines teach. The oddest quality about learning this skill—controlling items on the screen without moving—is that it doesn’t seem odd at all.

In a November 2003 article in Wired, Brian Lam described the uniqueness of The Journey to Wild Divine: The Passage by asking readers to meditate on this: You are the controller. After experiencing both The Passage and Wisdom Quest, I think it would be more accurate to say: You are the puzzle. Solving the challenges in The Passage and Wisdom Quest would be trivial with a mouse because they are not about what needs to be done but whether the player has sufficient focus to do what needs to be done. Success requires players to develop an understanding of the variability of their energy levels and a grasp of techniques to regulate those levels. Players are solving themselves. The modest puzzles on the screen are just there to provide a measure of how the solution is going.

Qualms

As someone who grew up among pragmatic farm folk on the prairies of the midwestern United States, I found myself wincing, flinching, and cringing at the look and tone of the Wild Divine website, the Wild Divine packaging, and the Wild Divine products themselves.  Everything about all of it felt way too much like a flashback to the heyday of headshops, Hair: The American Tribal Love-Rock Musical, renaissance fairs, the Age of Aquarius, crystals, dreamcatchers, and whatever the New Age was supposed to be. At the same time, as an amateur medical historian, I found the idea of bringing the technology of biofeedback to a general audience by wrapping it in the trappings of an adventure game appealing. The first step in my journey was clear: I had to allow my curiosity to override my impulse to recoil if I hoped to experience the effects of guided biofeedback. Giving in to my curiosity turned out to be the biggest step of the journey.

What’s in the Box?

I don’t usually do commentary on how products are packaged, but The Journey to Wild Divine: The Passage is not a usual product.

The packaging of The Passage does everything it can to assure buyers that the $159.95 MSRP is appropriate. The box is covered with lush images of game scenes, endorsements from Deepak Chopra, M.D., and a promise that you, as a buyer, can expect to “Discover the power of your inner magic with easy-to-use biofeedback technology.”

Lift the lid and you’ll find … another lid, also covered with imagery and copy, promising a “truly inner active experience” courtesy of biofeedback sensors. Open the inner lid (which is unaccountably blank on its backside) and you’ll find a vacuum-formed clear plastic cover that fits snugly over a vacuum-formed black plastic tray covered with faux black velvet. The faux velvet tray securely holds the biofeedback unit, PC and Mac game CDs, a Soul Flight music CD from the Wild Divine Band, a bonus CD featuring an interview with Deepak Chopra, M.D., a user’s manual, and a spiral-bound Companion Guide for The Passage.

Turn the box over—the clear plastic cover, not to mention the inner and outer lids, will keep everything from falling out—and you’ll find even more imagery and copy, including an explanation for how biofeedback works. Promised biofeedback benefits include reduced stress and anxiety, increased relaxation and energy, enhanced creativity and focus, restored balance of mind and body, and improved mental and physical performance. All this for a mere $159.95. While that’s steep by game standards, it’s not at all unusual for biofeedback gear. And it’s cheap when compared to the cost of most console and launch title bundles, especially when players of The Passage will likely revisit particular challenges over and over to refine their breathing and meditation techniques.

Yesterday’s QuickTime Blues

The Passage and Wisdom Quest are, like all games that rely on QuickTime and Macromedia, hostage to the vintage of the technology with which they were built. The system requirements on the box state The Passage works with QuickTime 6 (or higher).  The website says QuickTime 6.3 or higher. If you’re running Windows, you’ll find that higher means 6.5 and not a point release more.  Fortunately, 6.5 happens to be the version of QuickTime that ships on the installation disks for The Passage. Seems there is a fundamental problem with how Macromedia Projector 9.0 interacts with QuickTime 7.x; a problem that makes the audio in the QuickTime movies unintelligible. Hard for mentors to guide seekers if the seekers can’t understand where they are being directed to go.

Though the installation procedure checks for the presence of QuickTime, it appears to assume that everything is fine if the version of QuickTime present is 6.5 or higher. The first clue that things are not fine comes when Sophia, the guide in the tutorial for The Passage, opens her mouth and gives the impression of lip-syncing to an AM radio broadcast riddled with heavy static.

For those running Windows who have QuickTime 7.x installed, there is only one fix for the audio problem in The Passage and Wisdom Quest: drop back to QuickTime 6.5. Of course, dropping back to 6.5 means giving up, temporarily, all of Apple’s iTunes goodies. It seems a transcendent irony that one’s journey to serenity through technology begins with the installation of an older version of QuickTime.

Vista?

Anyone running 2000 or XP should have no trouble running both The Passage and Wisdom Quest. While The Passage will run on 98SE and ME, Wisdom Quest won’t. As for Vista, well, that’s not clear yet. Folks at the Wild Divine Project claim to have had success running both on Vista, but there have been hints of some problems. Proceed with caution.

Finally Underway …

So what happens once you’ve installed The Passage’s two disks full of data, made sure you’re running QuickTime 6.5, hooked up the “LightStone” interface to your PC or Mac, plugged the three “Magic Ring” sensors into the “LightStone,” put the “Magic Rings” on the index, middle, and ring fingers of your left hand (assuming you are going to be using your right hand to control the mouse), and clicked on the desktop icon to start your journey?

First, you’ll have to register your copy of The Passage. It’s a painless process that can either be done through the Wild Divine website or with a call to technical support. The registration process generates a number that links the serial number of your LightStone to the serial number of your software. Enter your activation code and you’re golden. And put your CDs away. They are no longer needed (yay!) once The Passage is installed.

The Passage begins with a movie about creation and your place in it. Seems you’re a gardener. When the movie ends, you’ll be dropped off at the main menu. The main menu is worth a closer look.

Along with the usual New Game, Load Game, Save Game, Return to Game, About, and Quit buttons, there are also How to Play, System, and FAQ buttons. (There is no Options button because The Passage only plays at 800×600. The only audio control is the one on your speakers. Nor is there a your-name-here blank because The Passage doesn’t keep track of who’s playing. Finally, there is no difficulty adjustment. One either overcomes a challenge or one doesn’t.)

The How to Play button takes the mystery out of the interface.  Good thing, because the interface is, at first glance, pretty mysterious.  The System button shows the player what the Magic Ring sensors are picking up in terms of heart rhythm and skin conductivity. The FAQ, which shows up in the Readme.txt in most games, allows players with questions to find answers without leaving the game. As for quitting the game, be advised that the game will allow you to quit without saving. There is no warning that you are about to lose all of your progress. Then again, progress is such a Western idea.

Still Alive? Just Checking

Before starting any session, it’s a good idea to click on System to see if your skin conductivity and heart rhythm are being successfully monitored. The warmer and sweatier your fingertips, the better your chances. Or you could use an electrode gel, conductive paste, or just some hand lotion on your index and ring fingers to improve the connection. Keep your middle finger clean because the heart monitor is optical, not conductive.

The Sun Realm: New, Yet So Familiar

Once you’re connected, click on New Game and get your first look at the Sun Realm. The Sun Realm, wherein both The Passage and Wisdom Quest transpire, is a lovingly realized imagining of a bright, verdant, nontechnological paradise. Lots of stairs and columns and arches and potted plants and misty valleys and quiet pools and hanging banners and soaring birds and fluffy clouds. It’s a close cousin to the worlds Maxfield Parrish created in oils back in the 1920s and George Lucas subsequently recreated in pixels.  Put another way, we’ve been here, or someplace a lot like it, before.

Moved by Stillness

Upon arrival, you’ll get a tutorial from a kindly older woman named Sophia. The tutorial will give you your first opportunities to try out your biofeedback chops. You’ll move a pinwheel, juggle three colored balls, levitate a sphere, and start a fire, all without lifting a finger. Once the Lady in the Woods has given you your Magic Bag, you’re good to go. Helping guide you through the Sun Realm is Sophia’s faithful dog, Flash, who has probably guided many a noob to enlightenment. Flash quickly manifests himself in his graphic swoosh form and maintains that form for the duration.

There are other sources of assistance throughout the game. A visit to the Temple of Awareness will earn you the advice of former Buddhist monk and famed Tibetan flutist Nawang Khechog. Whenever you encounter a new challenge, he’ll appear and, if you ask, fill you in on what you need to do. A visit to the Double Durga (they’re dancers to the Mother Goddess Durga) earns you a pair of eyes that will offer a hint of where your energy needs to be to meet a challenge and an energy meter that will give you real time feedback on where your energy level is.

Special Events

Movement in the Sun Realm, like movement in Dog Day, involves triggering QuickTime movies that create the illusion of gently gliding from one point to another in a three-dimensional world. Once one stops, one may be offered choices of where to go next or a guide may appear with advice on how to approach a particular biofeedback event. (An “event” is how challenges are referred to in the Sun Realm.) The cursor takes the form of a golden wand, and when the wand begins giving off a soft purple haze (peace, Jimi!), clicking the cursor will activate an event. Upon completion of an event, it’s time to jump back on the QuickTime express and see what shows up in the next movie.

While there are few areas in the Sun Realm that are closed at the beginning of the quest, there is an order in which some events need to be experienced. Remember, no matter how twee this place looks, there is a teaching machine lurking behind the sunny scenes that won’t let you go places you are not trained to handle. It may take you to them, but it will not let you enter.

Round, Round, Get Around, I Get Around

Perhaps the biggest issue with The Passage is navigation.  Simply getting from one event to the next can take a while. Make a wrong turn, and it can take quite a while. With all movement handled by QuickTime movies, an errant click can turn into a tour of areas you may have no interest in visiting. Nor does it help that the navigation is not consistent. Sometimes, clicking to the left or right will take you left or right. Sometimes, it will trigger a panning move. Other times, it will turn you completely around. Nor can one skip a transitional movie. Once it begins, there is no choice but to sit through the whole thing.

There is a map, but it’s isometric and it’s inert. No zip mode here. The best that players can do is find a landmark and then try to orienteer from that. There is a teleport mode, but it is limited to moving you back and forth between places you’ve already visited and bookmarked. And the teleport mode only works with two places at a time. Add a third and you give up one of your previous bookmarks.

The challenge of simply getting around is compounded by the fact that there is a sequence to some, though not all, events. Miss picking up your Magic Bag in the beginning and you’ll soon find yourself stalled. Fail to solve the riddle of the Rainbow Rocks and you’ll never meet the Lady of Compassion. And she’s a very important lady.  Click on some doors and you’ll find yourself being transported to places you are not ready to visit; places where, once there, you’ll be told you can go no further. Fortunately, you’ll most likely be tossed back to the point just before you selected the Gate of Overeagerness or the Portal of Prematurity … or whatever a door that gets you someplace too soon should be called.

What’s That Sound?

Let me pose a rhetorical question.

When a game is released with a CD of music from a band that takes its name from the company responsible for the game and that features the company’s founder as lead singer, how likely is it that the music on that CD is going to memorably shed new light and give new voice to humanity’s longing for the divine?

The Passage answers that question by making sparing use of the Wild Divine Band, relying instead on a peculiar mixture of orchestra, wordless choirs, incidental guitar riffs, and techno ambient of the sort heard in the original 1996 version of Safecracker.  The soundtrack of The Passage needs, as one of the guides might suggest, some controlled breathing to help it align its discordant rhythms and bring harmony out of its dissonance.

Playing Through the Passage

The big question, of course, and the only question that matters is: Once the software’s set up properly and the Magic Ring sensors are working and you’ve managed to find your way to an event, how does it feel to play a game by manipulating your skin conductance level and heart rate?

Great. That’s how it feels. Just great. Where it really counts, The Passage really delivers. The core experience of biofeedback-based gaming, as realized by the Wild Divine project, is wonderful. No other game I’ve ever played has required such an intense level of concentration and stillness and produced such a feeling of calm and satisfaction. It is tremendously illuminating to learn how controlling one’s breathing can affect one’s overall sense of being. And it’s hugely gratifying to watch, and feel, one’s energy level change in response to what one has been taught. And because The Passage and Wisdom Quest really are teaching machines disguised as adventures, what one has learned is very portable. It’s easy to take the techniques into new situations and enjoy the benefits without the assistance of the Magic Rings and LightStone training wheels.

What About Wisdom Quest?

Wisdom Quest’s packaging, because it contains nothing more than the PC and Mac installation disks, the User’s Manual, and the Training Manual, is considerably less grand than that for its predecessor.  It’s just a box. After installing Wisdom Quest’s four CDs for Windows, applying the patch (available here for Windows and here for Mac), and registering online, I was eager to see what had changed.  Short answer: Just about everything.

If one views The Passage as proof of concept, then Wisdom Quest is the concept both refined and, perhaps inevitably, exploited.

The refinement is immediately obvious. Everything looks better, from the sharply chiseled Main Menu to the QuickTime VR nodes that allow one to take in the full beauty of the imagined surroundings.  Wisdom Quest features images and sequences that are truly inspired. There is a flight in a magical boat through a snow storm that is exquisitely realized. And in keeping with a more polished look, everything sounds better, too, thanks to a more unified soundtrack.

Players can choose from five difficulty levels and select screen resolutions ranging from 800×600 all the way to 1150×768.  If a QuickTime movie is losing your attention, click and, in most cases, it disappears. Nor is navigation as trying as it was in The Passage. It is now possible to navigate using the map. One can return to anyplace one has visited with a click. In addition to the return of the “Purple Haze” to alert players of events with endings, there is now the “Orange Mist” signaling events that are just for practice.

Also immediately obvious is the perhaps inevitable exploitation of the franchise. While it’s good to see Nawang Khechog again, this time he is joined by two new wise guides, both sporting M.D.s and publishing ventures: omtrepreneur Deepak Chopra shows up as Rama and diet guru Dean Ornish weighs in as the Wisdom Keeper. Ornish, in his brown robes, looks like Harry Shearer doing Merlin in a road company production of Camelot. Whether you view them as pedagogues or peddlers depends on how much value you place on what they have to offer. Nor do the offers stop with the cameos of these wellness stars.

Wisdom Quest also features product placement of Chopra’s New York Times bestseller, The Book of Secrets. An extended animation sequence centering on a rendered version of Secrets left me wondering if his books are imported into the Sun Realm or if a resident pixie had picked up the local publishing rights.  Fortunately, as with the transition movies, a single click can make all of the advice and the ad go away.

After the Fall

Where The Passage was built around the idea of the individual player doing a Joseph Campbell-style hero(ine) journey, Wisdom Quest is built, in the mold of Jewels of the Oracle, around the idea of recovering seven jewels that were lost when an enchanted being of being—as opposed to a being of doing—augered herself into an enchanted sea. Recover the jewels and restore balance and harmony to the Sun Realm. Under New Game Options, you can choose whether or not you want to be joined in your mission by a green-winged pixie girl who’ll pop up at the end of each event. Only in the world of computers can one select “pixie girl” as an option.

Harder than it Looks

The events of Wisdom Quest are frequently more complex than those in The Passage. It is no longer enough to raise or lower one’s energy level to pass an event. One may have to raise and lower it repeatedly within an event, a fitting requirement for advanced training. There’s a glass tubing maze wherein a player must alternate high energy with low to navigate a complex path that is designed with dead ends that demand additional shifts in energy to escape. And then there is the sacred serpent event. A massive cobra guards one of the seven jewels. The jewel itself sits within a cage. Calming oneself causes the cobra to withdraw into its basket.  But to retrieve the jewel, one must use the mouse to lift the cage.  Since any movement, any change of focus, can affect one’s energy level, it’s an impressive feat to sustain the calm necessary to keep the cobra in its basket while lifting the cage and taking the jewel. Think Thief with mandated yogic breathing. While it is possible to get through each of Wisdom Quest’s events once and consider the challenges fulfilled, the variability of one’s energy level provides ample replay opportunities and acknowledges the title’s true identity as a teaching machine rather than as a diversion.

Tours Now Departing

For those who just want to jump in and test their self-control at a specific challenge, Wisdom Quest offers a Guided Mode that allows direct access to 20 of its events. The Passage also offers direct access, either through completing all of its events or by downloading the appropriate patch (here).

Orphans of the Store

As much as marketers like to be able to say “There’s nothing else like it!” they know that uniqueness can also be a curse.  The folks at Wild Divine have created a two-SKU market segment and watched while only a few other brave souls have coughed up the hefty fee for the SDK and developed titles that make use of the LightStone and Magic Ring hardware. While the uniqueness of the experience helps keep the price up, every day that passes renders the software just a bit more out of date. Assuming the Wild Diviners want to keep their investment alive, they might consider what it would take to offer, as did Got Game with Bad Mojo, Redux versions of The Passage and Wisdom Quest. Then again, the market for this type of product may already be saturated. It may be that pretty much everyone who was interested in taking The Journey to Wild Divine has already taken it.

Verdict

The reason The Passage and Wisdom Quest are being placed in the Closet of the Odd is that neither one of them is actually a game. They are, instead, multimedia experiments in biofeedback-based instruction (and shameless cross-marketing) masquerading as games.  I’m giving the pair of them a Thumb Up because they demonstrate just how much potential biofeedback has as a game interface. Of course, until the Wild Divine Project releases the last installment of the trilogy or someone else comes up with an alternative system, the potential will remain just that.

Let’s Go Shopping!

The Journey to Wild Divine: The Passage originally sold for $159.95. It still does. The Journey to Wild Divine: Wisdom Quest originally sold for $59.95. It still does. The bundle price of the two, from Wild Divine, is $199.95. Frugal shoppers can find both titles for less. I got both for 20% off retail. Had I looked longer, I could have gotten 20% off the bundle price. Of course, I didn’t know at the time that I wanted both. Still, every penny saved is a penny toward the next game. The End

The Verdict

The Lowdown

Developer: Wild Divine Project Publisher: Wild Divine Project Release Date: December 2003 (The Passage); September 2005 (Wisdom Quest)

Available for: Macintosh Windows

Four Fat Chicks Links

Player Feedback

Screenshots

The Passage

Click to enlarge Click to enlargeClick to enlarge Click to enlargeClick to enlarge Click to enlargeClick to enlarge Click to enlargeClick to enlarge Click to enlarge

Wisdom Quest

Click to enlarge Click to enlargeClick to enlarge Click to enlargeClick to enlarge Click to enlargeClick to enlarge Click to enlargeClick to enlarge Click to enlarge

System Requirements

The Passage 1.5 GB free disk space 256 MB free available system RAM 800×600, 24-bit color display CD-ROM drive QuickTime 6.3 or higher PIII 800 MHz (PC); G3/G4/G5 500 MHz (Mac) Windows 98SE,/ME/2000/XP (PC); OSX v10.2 or later (Mac) 16 MB video card (PC)

Wisdom Quest 2.4 GB free disk space 256 MB free available system RAM 800×600, 24-bit color display CD-ROM or DVD drive QuickTime 6.5 PIII 800 MHz (1.25 GHz recommended) (PC); G4 or higher (Mac) Windows 2000/XP (PC); OSX v10.2.6 or later (Mac) 16 MB video card (PC)

Where to Find It

Wild Divine Project

Links provided for informational purposes only.  FFC makes no warranty with regard to any transaction entered into by any party(ies).

      Copyright © Electric Eye Productions.  All rights reserved.  No reproduction in whole or in part without express written permission.

Pages

Top

Category Archives

Top

Blog Posts

Top

16 Responses to Screw the Internet

  • Matt "Steerpike" Sakey

    God damn, Scout, I’d never heard of this Lanier fellow, but that’s pretty profound.

    Information is not a manufacturable item… as you said, we are making less and less. This is either indicative of a larger-scale societal transformation, or a bad thing. I’m afraid I’m inclined to assumed the latter.

    Thanks!

  • Mike "Scout" Gust

    Steerpike, that was exactly the argument Lanier was having with callers on the BBC. Lanier was all fatalistic about society’s drop in real productivity while his opponents claimed that this was a huge transformation and that he was just too old to grasp the coolness of it all. If you notice, the web address of that first Lanier link is well.com. I mean, that is old! The Well?

    Lanier’s thoughts were pretty much echoed by David Simon, one of the creators of The Wire. Here he speaks with Bill Moyers about the fate of paid journalism in the face of the web.

  • Spike

    I’ve read many criticisms of Facebook et. al.  I’ve also read contradictions of those criticisms, namely, that social sites are making people more connected than ever.  I think that that connectedness is an illusion.

    For several months at the end of 2008 and the beginning of 2009 my daughter badgered me to join FB.  I could connect with her and some of her friends that I know as well as renew old acquaintances with some of her friend’s mothers.  I finally signed up so she’d quit the badgering. I used to check in every day to see what daughter and friends were saying because if I didn’t she’d ask if I saw her post, or a friend’s post. 

    What I’ve learned is this:

    1.  “Karen Likes John’s photo (or post)” IS NOT communication.

    2.  The reason I lost contact with some of these “friends” in the first place is that we no longer had anything in common.

    3.  I am bombarded with so many ads in so many places that I can do without more.  My policy is to never click on ads on FB or on many other sites. 

    4.  While FB’s original mission was connectedness/communication, I think it has become “Let’s make as much money from these fools as we can.”  “Wanna have gobs of fun playing a free game on FB?”  That game is gonna cost ya big, folks. 

    5.  Social sites are just more places where your personal info can be stolen.  There’s enough risk out there as it is.  Additional risk is not providing any valuable payoff for me.

    6.  Why do I want to “friend” a certain handbag manufacturer?  Why do I want to take a quiz that tells me what my personality is?  FB content providers tell you up front that if you click the link to take their quiz (goes for other types of content as well) you are giving them permission to access your profile info.  That’s ok.  I’ll also give you my SSN, bank account number and the key to my front door.  Not.

    7.  Don’t even get me started on the number of people who start an account in a pet’s name, and even have the pets making friends and posting.

    “…he was just too old to grasp the coolness of it all.”

    No, it’s just that most of us get to the age when we demand a bit of wheat with our chaff.

    At 38 my daughter is older than the average demographic of social sites although I know that that demographic is skewing up.  She seems to be cooling on FB.  Some of her 221 friends are as well.  Many of them do want some wheat.  When more cooling has taken place I will unjoin.

    I wonder, though, what new fad will come along when FB, Twitter and others run their course?  MySpace, anyone?

  • Mike "Scout" Gust

    My favorite line from the BBC interview was when Lanier was comparing MySpace and Facebook. He admitted that MySpace had some eye gougingly bad pages but said that he liked the “strangeness” of personalities that you get with it. With Facebook, he claimed that it was like looking at a tax form. A boring, watered down, bland presentation of people.

    I joined Facebook almost exactly a year ago. Apart from sparking up a new friendship with a very dear buddy, I’ve gotten about zero back from it. I sort of read with bemusement the activities of people I hardly know and could care less about. And when you consider how much information the devs harvest there…it’s scary. Lanier claims that the information is so far worthless to the investors and that the whole thing has become a sort useless ritual serving no purpose. He claimed that Google’s ads on the other hand will probably turn out to be the greatest advertising model ever created. He also thinks Google should stop before it’s too late but says they probably won’t. Just a glance at the side bar reveals about 4 ads for advertising agencies. Heh.

  • lokimotive

    Has anybody read Anti-Oedipus? I’m slogging my way through it (the third attempt I believe), and Deleuze and Gauttari’s ideas seem relevant to this in a way that I’m not sure I can articulate. This probably has something to do with a conversation I was eavesdropping on that, coincidentally, mentioned a lot of Deleuze and Gauttari’s theories. Someone was talking about another theorist (whose name I didn’t catch) who was defending “Generation Y” essentially. The argument went that Generation Y is an example of a “de-Oedipalized” cultural group (that’s Anti-Oedipus jargon, just stay with me). Apparently this meant that they made connections in a different manner than other generations, the idea of bricollage was brought up and things were generally mired in a lot of reasons why I don’t have my Masters in English. What I got from it was this Generation Y shoots out connections everywhere and attempts to make up a whole idea with them as opposed to relying on predefined pathways. In Deleuze and Guattari’s language: the schizo as opposed to Oedipus. In language that probably makes sense: Peer to Peer as opposed to client-server.

    So, of course, no one’s really right. I’m skeptical of the idea that Generation Y (full disclosure: I’m 29 so I’m part of that group) has enacted some sort of paradigm shift in how to operate in social systems, but facebook has changed how I connect with people. Then again, it’s not like I don’t value face to face communication.

    The future is somewhere in between. I’m really not cynical enough to believe that we are at the end times of civilized society because of Web 2.0. Instead society will change and stay the same because that’s what it does. Facebook is not the future; it’s probably a rung up the ladder though.

  • kaythomas

    To me, Facebook and Twitter are 0’s. They are not worth my time.  I do not care what someone I know or don’t know did a half hour ago or will do next.  I have met up with people on facebook I had lost contact with.  But, in truth, the reason I had lost contact was I was not that interested in staying in contact.

    I think for many people the Facebook/Twitter world is great.  For me it has nothing to offer. 
    kay

  • Matt "Steerpike" Sakey

    Tap has an automated device that twits… tweets… whatever whenever someone posts a new article. Just in case it draws some visitors.

    To be honest, though, I’m on Kay’s side of the fence, I don’t understand Twitter and I don’t understand why it’s so popular. I barely care what I’m doing from moment to moment, why should anyone else?

    I don’t get Facebook either, though I’m a member to keep track of all the girls who wouldn’t give me the time of day in high school.

  • Lewis B

    Tweets are great for giving me snippets of news.  If I like what I’ve read in the short paragraph tweets give, then I will visit the main page for that tweet. (Very good for following world news, favourite columnists, etc.)

    However, reading tweets from people such as “Just woke up, Madonna is giving me a massage while I shave my nuts” is not my idea of a good read.

  • Toger

    I use tweets the same way Lewis does. Of the people/things I follow, if the tweet is interesting I’ll follow the link to read the entire article. I follow fairly intelligent people, so I’m not subjected to the idiocy of “Just brushed my teeth while sitting on toilet”.

  • Gregg B

    @loki: I’m afraid I’ve not heard of them. I’m a couple of years below you so that puts me in the same Generation Y as well. I read through a few of those links Scout posted as well as a few more on Lanier’s new book “You Are Not a Gadget” and it took me a fair while to get to the crux of what he is saying and he has a lot to say, most of which I find very confusing.

    As a graphic designer the whole “everything is becoming advertising” thing has been bothering me for years. The incessant barrage of advertising is like fingernails on the chalkboard of my soul, which sort of makes me a hypocrite. After all the years of tuning my art and design skillz my creative abilities have amounted to nothing more than crafting pretty ads that sell things. Non of it speaks any truth or has any sort of ‘beauty’; it’s just stone cold mechanical capitalism. Granted there are ads out there that are beautiful, clever and visionary but the front line stuff is as dull as it gets. I’m sure this isn’t strictly what he’s getting at but it’s definitely something that irks me in relation to Scout’s last remark.

    Anyway, I remember Twitter just exploding in what seemed like the space of a week and I still can’t fathom the allure of it aside from providing a direct stream of consciousness from famous folk to their ravenous fans. I wish I’d thought of it to be honest. I can see the creators sitting around a table staring at Facebook and then saying “I know! We make a website that’s just about status updates! You can even update them with your mobile phone!”.

    With regards to Twitter news snippets, unless it’s for a phone, I don’t see the point because RSS feeds do a great job. At present too great; I simply can’t keep up with my subscriptions. There’s too much information on this super highway.

  • Jen

    Twitter is officially the dumbest thing ever.

    That said, it looks like I will have to be the official “tweeter” for my day job before too long. I can’t wait! (roll eyes)

  • xtal

    I’m with everyone else here. I’m glad to say I’ve never signed up for Facebook; I fear that if I ever had I would have long ago died from loss of brain cells due to reading moronic status updates. It’s as Kay said: ninety-five per cent of people with whom you lose contact are probably no longer in your life because you have nothing left in common. And echoing Steerpike’s comment, me eating toast and jam on a Sunday morning watching Fawlty Towers is not interesting, not to me. Why the hell would anyone else give a shit?

    Twitter I signed up for about a year ago, not really understanding what it was. I now understand it…but don’t care to use it often. I have made 58 tweets over that year. I suspect for some that is a daily or weekly average. It’s just Facebook status updates without all the drunken photographs. I admit it can be mildly useful for following, say, a news site. Usually when I hop on my twitter (once every two weeks??) it reminds me that I should read The Onion more often. That’s about it.

    Let’s see… looking at the actual humans I follow, um… Wil Wheaton is happy that the LA Kings have won 9 games in a row, my sister-in-law thought our dinner tonight was “delicious,” and Kevin Smith’s batteries are recharged … or something.

    Wow, my life is already getting better!

    p.s.  <—– Gen Y'er (can we call ourselves that?) and proud that when I Google my own name a real estate company pops up.

  • Fraser

    Twitter is exactly as useless as the person who’s writing it. If someone is telling you boring shit over Twitter, it’s the person wasting your time, not the delivery channel.

    MySpace is the same, but it seems more intrinsically garbage because for some reason almost everyone who used it was an intellectual embryo with a fetish for unreadable hyperneon text on top of garish uninteresting photos. Facebook’s great trick is that it prevents you from realising that most of your friends would make a brutally hideous homepage for themselves if they could.

    That’s the argument against the whole of this post: the internet isn’t evil, but the people who use it might be. It’s people who make business models successful; people who make money flow to advertisers instead of artists, by buying into the advertising.

    This has been a pretty didactic post, so let me compensate by saying VIDEOGAMES WOOOOOOO!!!

  • Gregg B

    Good point about not blaming the delivery channel Fraser. I seem to recall Lanier saying that he preferred the personality that MySpace has over Facebook despite its Craptastic Pages of Illegibility. I’m trying to think of something intelligent to follow that up with but my brain is failing me at the moment, so…

    VIDEOGAMES WOOOOOO!!!

  • Jason Venter

    Fraser, I really loved your following comment:

    “Facebook’s great trick is that it prevents you from realising that most of your friends would make a brutally hideous homepage for themselves if they could.”

    I think that may just be one of the most hilariously true comments I’ve read in a comments area on any video game web site ever.  That sounds overly dramatic, I know, but I actually mean it.  Kudos to you!

  • Mike "Scout" Gust

    Yeah but don’t you miss all the ugliness of MySpace? All those hideous pages at least had personality or what Lanier called the “strangeness of the person” to them.

    I actually don’t agree with a lot of what Lanier says esp “the hive mind must die” stuff. But I do think he is right about the spirit shriveling blandness of Facebook.

    I also suspect that Twitter is going to be around for a while. It will be more and more influential. People are simply not as willing to ingest huge amounts of information in the form of pages of text anymore. The delivery systems that succeed will be those that can communicate a lot of information in a short amount of time. Most days we want “glimpses” or “snapshots” not total immersion. Lewis, Toger and Fraser are correct in that you get out of it what you decide to follow.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.