GAM3R 7H30RY
Suppose there is a business in your neighborhood called The Cave™. It offers, for an hourly fee, access to game consoles in a darkened room. Suppose it is part of a chain. The consoles form a local area network, and also link to other such networks elsewhere in the chain. Suppose you are a gamer in The Cave™. You test your skills against other gamers. You have played in The Cave™ since childhood. Your eyes see only the monitor before you. Your ears hear only through the headphones that encase them. Your hands clutch only the controller with which you blast away at the digital figures who shoot back at you on the screen. Here gamers see the images and hear the sounds and say to each other: “Why, these images are just shadows! These sounds are just echoes! The real world is out there somewhere.” The existence of another, more real world of which The Cave™ provides mere copies is assumed, but nobody thinks much of it. Yours is the wisdom of Playstation: Live in your world, play in ours.
McKenzie Wark
posted: 5/20/2006
You would not believe how many times i rewrote this opening section, but i know from previous experience that there’s probably some really dumb-ass mistakes here still. So feel free to leave comments over here, about form or content!
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