Davis Ch. 7&8 - Jason Komoda

Chapter 7 mainly talks about the idea of video games and how they act as an online world that is created by phantasms and imagination, yet this world can seem so realistic for players that get really into it.  The most interesting part of this chapter was when Davis talked about how these games slowly transformed from single-player, text-based, hack-n-slash games to multi-player RPGs.  Once networking was a thing in video games, avatars were slowly created and people began to have their digital version of themselves in these games.  Players get so into their "virtual doppelgangers" that they start to lose track of reality and they begin to crush on other "virtual identities" in the world.  Even I had this experience when I was in 5th grade and started playing the MMORPG Runescape with my friends.  I remember my friends and I would meet girl characters in this game and thought that maybe one day they could actually become our "Runescape Girlfriends" in this virtual world.  I also remember at the time that we all thought it was a ridiculous idea, yet it seemed really fun and we continued to do it despite how dumb it was.  The fact that video games (which are nothing but a fake, virtual world) can put these real life fantasies in player's heads is absolutely insane but really cool at the same time.  Another interesting area that Davis talks about is the idea of how icons and graphics relate to the internal and external aspects of coding.  Being a programmer myself, I appreciated how he actually broke GUI down into different levels of code.  Basically, the more simple GUI interaction is, the more complex and higher level the code needs to be.  Imagine if there was no such thing as just dragging a file into the trash can to "delete" it from your desktop on MAC computers.  People would need to actually know how to use the terminal and recursively search through their file system in order to find the file and delete it.  Advanced GUIs just make life so much more easier, especially for those who aren't very proficient with using computers or any type of technology.

Chapter 8 is mainly about UFO conspiracy theories and an in depth look at virtual reality.  Davis presents a lot of information about UFO theories and how it affects our society, especially by means of the internet.  Personally, I don't believe in UFOs, but I do believe that there is some other life form out there besides humans because I feel like there has to be.  The universe is too huge for only us to exist, there has to be other creatures or beings somewhere out there.  I found the Heaven's Gate religious UFO cult very interesting, as it was the first time I ever heard of them.  Basically, every cult member committed suicide because they all truly believed that their goal was to find an extraterrestrial form of life which existed in the "heavens of the universe" or "another dimension in the universe."  When I read this, I thought these guys were absolutely insane, but they actually didn't identify with their bodies because they all thought that it wasn't a reality, the true "reality" was what they have yet to found (and will never find).  Apparently a majority of them were Sci-fi and virtual reality enthusiasts which makes a lot of sense, but at the same time is extremely scary that it actually played an important role in their suicides.  The fact that virtual reality made people kill themselves is alone insane because there's a reason why it's called "virtual" reality.  But at the end of the day, I guess we all have our own minds and can train them to believe in what ever we wish and I feel like that's a really cool, yet really scary characteristic about our brains.

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