I love computers and what they can do, but I hate the results of most modern technology. There seems to be a fixation on “single-serving tech,” whether it’s the MP3 player, the cellular phone, text messaging, hand-held gaming units, or the miniature TV/video players for which I recently saw a commercial. The problem with these is that they shut people off from their immediate environment. Anybody who has had a conversation interrupted by a cellphone call knows what I mean–social interaction between two face-to-face people takes a back seat to whatever the technology delivers. Don’t get me wrong–I find the technology itself amazing, and I do see its value in terms of potentially connecting people when there’s something important that needs to be communicated, or in terms of entertaining a person when there’s nothing else happening. However, where others are present, there is a tendency to favor the tech over the individual.
Even with something as simple as an MP3 player, the results are pretty incredible. As an experiment I did a couple of years ago, I took a player full of music with me for a day. I have to admit that the music improved my general mood, transporting me to a conscious plane of oceanic sound. However, it also caused me to miss sound cues in my environment while going about my daily business. When actual people got my attention, even to help me, I found myself getting slightly aggravated by the interruption. Cellphones, for me, work in the opposite direction–when I used to have one primarily for work purposes, I found that people would frequently call me just to talk about things that weren’t important… you know, stuff better handled by e-mail, at leisure. If I missed a cellphone call, the message would make me feel guilty for ignoring someone. These days, I keep one for emergency purposes, like on long trips, so that if my car breaks down, I can call for help.
This is primarily why, when I design games, I design board, card, and roleplaying games. It encourages people to interact with each other, face-to-face. They keep people, more or less, in this world and enrich their connections with others. Games over the internet, for all their richness of content and internet-socialization, just aren’t the same. They leave the user at home or, in the case of hand-held device users, travelling “virtual bubbles.” To me, it often feels like people are sealing themselves off from each other, and that seems rather sad.