This is a big article, but for the time being I am just going to set this up and let you watch the video.
My friend Andrew posted the following link last night on Facebook. I watched it with my morning coffee, email, RSS and podcasts. Really good stuff.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMLtwJGA4Wc
Who would have predicted the massive impact of Farmville, for Christ’s sake? These guys are printing their own money. It must shake game developers to the very core and make them question all their existing knowledge on game design.
Here’s the deal. I am 44, today in fact. Feel free to use the comments section to give me a great orgy of birthday wishes. Anyway, I grew up in a world where information came from print media. Computers barely did anything.
Everything has changed, and I am connected in ways that I could never have imagined 20 years ago, 10 years ago, even 5 years ago. The internet and technology is a bullet train that is not going to stop for me, you or anyone to figure it out, so you better be quick on your feet and you better be paying attention.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1GaqoE_qLCs
I wouldn’t trade any of it. All of this does enrich my life in terms of access to information and connectivity with my friends and family.
BUT
…is it driving us away from the real world? Can all of this obscure our connection to the things in life we really need to be connected to? Yes, and I think we all need to be aware of how our electronic and analog lives intertwine and exercise great care that we don’t abandon the real for the electronic.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4lTprV-dRmY
If you have any interest at all in gaming, technology or social media, please take the time to sit down and watch these three videos. It’s Jason Schell, who is a professor at Carnegie Mellon University, and it’s the most compelling presentation on the above topics that I’ve seen. Thought provoking doesn’t do it justice, just watch.
