Greebo asks: “What morality exists in the context of a game? Do we treat a game as a subset of ethics or should virtual reflect our ethics in reality?”

He says in order to answer this question, one must understand that there are two types of games: finite games and infinite games. Finite games have a rigid set of rules and limited playing time. Infinite games have flexible rules. Infinite games can last forever, without limits.

“Life itself can be included in the realm of infinite games,” Greebo said. “Life is the ultimate game.”

He says there is a distinct difference between finite players and infinite players.

Finite players searches for a set of rules that best suits him or her. The timid player, or infinite player, will cling to guidelines and rules. The infinite player will not question the authority of the virtual creator.

Greebo says infinite players “seek their own cage” while the finite player “has adopted a set of rules for themselves.”

Greebo says he is an infinite player because he believes that he can best benefit others as an infinite player.

“I believe that most situations should be left to the mortal players to resolve,” he said. “Immortals should become involved only if a player shows extreme disruptive signs or has gained some unfair advantage.”

While Greebo agrees that players should be infinite, choose their own world, and make their own virtual decisions, he says it is important to respect the rules of the implementor. But, he says it is only human nature to try and manipulate one’s virtual environment.

“We are humans, and we seek to dominate our environment,” he said.

Underwood focuses on the role of women online. She said women bridge the cap between public and private life with the use of technology.

Underwood says that the internet is a “hyper-masculine environment, dominated by males, technologically and culturally intimidating to women.” However, women are now harnessing this power for their own purposes.

“An intimacy has developed between us and our computers that is physical as well as emotional,” Underwood said. For example, laptops are extensions of self by name, they are designed and advertised as machines to connect with user’s body — the machine meant for one’s lap. Consumers carry such machines with them. There is a connection, a bond.

Women use technology as an extension of themselves. Their computer affects them. There is no disconnect from physical body to cyber body.

“I really *do* laugh out loud,” a woman said in an online chat room.

Identity may be changed for reasons of: Persona, Character, Self, Control, Masquerade or Role-Play.

Different ways of immerson include:

1) Player — the human being sitting at the computer, interacting

2) Avatar — namely seeking the image onscreen as a puppet, a doll to control

3) Character — the avatar/image is characterization of the player him/herself; an expression of the self

4) Persona — the player is the character in a world

Frasca claims that videogames affect human relationships and social issues and encourage critical thinking. She says that games do not necessarily do this through a narrative but rather through a “cybernetic approach.”

“Narrative is based on semiotic representation, while videogames also rely on simulation, understood as the modeling of a dynamic system through another system” (86).

What does this have to do with religion, ritual, or vitual reality? Well, Howcast showcases various videos that deal with gaming obsessions. While many videos on the site are meant to be entertaining and humorous, there is an element of truth to all delimas explored on the site. Check out the following clips:

How To Compete with a Video Game for a Boyfriend’s Attention is a guide for girlfriends who think their boyfriend’s gaming system receives more love than they do. The clip tells girlfriends how to trick their man into getting out of the house, away from the controller.

How To Justify Your Video Game Obsession gives gamers intelligent reasons and statistics why gaming is a tool for real world success. It tells players that their quick-controller reflexes are marketable.

How To Workout To Be A Gamer shows current or perspective players how to train their bodies to improve their gaming skills. Real world skill is needed for optimum virtual skill, the video clip says.

The ritual of gaming can be seen as a ritual if the player habitually plays a game for a purpose of winning. Through this ritual, players may have a spiritual experience — they may take away a meaning from the game. The meaning could come from the game structure itself (the designer’s hand in the journey) or found knowledge achieved through the interactive processes in the game.

The danger associated with such a connection with virtual reality is a warped sense of real. Games may imply a fixed and reliable world. Games, through their structure imply that the world can be fixed at any time through actions of violence, new lives, or cheating.

Schultze is the Arthur H. DeKruyter Chair and a Professor of Communication Arts and Sciences at Calvin College, Grand Rapids, MI.  Over the last 30 years, Schultze has served as a communication professor, writer, speaker, and consultant. “I explore what it means to communicate wisely and well,” he said on his personal webpage (quentinschultze.com). He has a Ph.D. in communications research from the University of Illinois. Schultze says that through Habits of the High-Tech Heart he is “trying to reclaim a sense of moral proportion amidst informational overindulgence” (13). He  concentrates on cyberculture, “the technique-laden values, practices, and beliefs of people who spend a great deal of time in cyberspace and who perceive themselves as informationally well connected” (18). Schultze focuses on this topic of moral wisdom through a lens of from Hebrew Christian traditions and moral conscience (21).

The theme of Habits of the High-Tech Heart is that technology, if allowed to progress without sacred restrictions, will completely destroy society’s moral and ethical values. Schultze says that technology, specifically the Internet, consists merely of “fragmented information,” fabricated and truthful news combined in no cohesive way (47). He says there is no morally acute or logical organization to the Internet; thus, consumers cannot grasp insight from it or use it in a way that is meaningful. He believes that humans lose themselves in the abyss of cyberspace in an unhealthy way. “Without responsible frames of reference, we turn information technologies into cold machines that destroy our capacity to think wisely, feel empathetically, and act virtuously. Our statistical imaginations tell us that we are progressing, while we fall into moral chaos,” Schultze says (38). Just because consumers have access to a multitude of information, does not necessarily mean that these facts are being used in a meaningful way. He says that as people become more concerned with taking pieces of information, they will reflect less and less and their values will evaporate.

The way in which we take and produce information further supports Schultze’s problem with technology. He says that people use cyberspace irresponsibly. Consumers take and produce only what they want in cyberspace; furthermore, in the process, they act foolishly. “The Internet, in particular, has become a portal to evil where many people learn that incivility is fun, crudeness is a game, and the individual alone should be the only arbiter of truth and justice” (20).  People have the ability to re-invent themselves online once, or multiple times. Through those virtual identities, they can act out fantasies and indecent actions. Schultze says that this emphasis on individual power and virtual operation is dangerous because “information technology becomes a means of manipulating the world to get what we want” (33). Selfishness, he says, shields consumers’ away from any deep meaning or reflection inspired from technology. Because people sign online solely to find and grab information they wish to see or act with immoral behavior, they miss an element of the whole. People are not using technology to learn more about the physical world around them or even on the whole of the Internet world, but rather all focus on themselves. Through e-mail, personalized applications, and Web space, consumers create a cyberworld revolving around their interests and their virtual life. Furthermore, each person gains only what he/she wants to know from technology and suffers from a biased perspective of life, Schultze says. The Internet provides “information but no insight” and promotes the idea of “observation over intimacy” (31). Technology has the capacity to connect the world, but is being used in an isolated way.

Because the Internet is so individualistic, each person who enters the Web has substantial influence on the information conveyed. There are millions of opportunities for individuals to create web space that sends opinionated information to the masses. In this way, cyberspace rejects authenticity (130). An example of the individualistic (as opposed to expert) input online is Wikipedia, an online encyclopedia that informs individuals based on information that other individuals (anyone with access to the site) write and deem important. “Cyberspace further blurs the distinction between information and propaganda” (62). Schultze says the Internet is not helpful because false information appears as important as hard facts. Additionally, individuals have the ability voice their opinions and ideas about most any subject matter. Schultz says it is this “individual interpretation rather than shared interpretation” that can be particularly destructive (64). Today’s culture does not place emphasis on authenticity or facts, consumers just want information in a quick, easy accessible way. Schultz says information without authenticity is useless and will create more harm than good.

Cyberspace is not only an information source, but it is also a social network. Schultze says that virtual communities are particularly dangerous because a real sense of relationship cannot be found online. He said that just like information is fragmented without meaning, small communities are isolated and meaningless if they solely exist online. “Real community is marked by lay participation over expert control, geographic proximity instead of disembodied messaging, open dialogue rather than one-way messaging, neighborliness above bureaucratic authority, and cross-generational continuity instead of intra-generational myopia” (23). Because there is no overarching referent, these communities have no moral direction. Thus, communities use cyberspace in a foolish way. “Informationism encourages informational promiscuity: impersonal relationships based on feigned intimacies and lacking moral integrity” (35). He says that e-mail, instant messaging, and comment posting are not elements of true intimate relationships. The selfish and immoral relationships created through technology are re-defining the idea of relationships. “Instead of intentionally embedding cyber-technology within existing cultures, we let cyber-technology shape our ways of life” (20).

Schultze says that technology permeates almost every inch of individuals’ lives. More information, fast is what appears most important to modern society. He said this idea is seriously flawed. “Slowing down our rate of retrieving and disseminating information is a necessary but insufficient step toward reclaiming the habits of the heart” (69). If we can’t slow down, we will have “thinner lives,” lives without moral conscience (68).  Schultze places great importance on listening in relationships. However, he said that a fast-paced society, as promoted by technology, discourages listening because there simply is no time allowed to stop and care about others. He says that one must listen above the noise to be truly human. “A faithful listener no longer hears information and technique as ends in themselves” (80). Pausing to reflect on information is the answer he provides for individuals wrapped up in cyberculture.

            The book made me think about “fragmented information” in a way that I had not before. To me, googling only the information I wanted to grab from the Internet never seemed like a selfish or biased pursuit. More importantly, I clutter my life with information that I do not take time to reflect on. I agree that our culture is too concerned with a fast-pace lifestyle, but I do not solely condemn technology for this trend. While I understand his logic about specific communities within cyberspace, I do not think that technology is destroying communities in any catastrophic way. I use technology to re-enforce and supplement my physical relationships. For example, thanks to my Facebook updates, I discovered that today is my friend’s 21^st birthday. I immediately messaged my friend and also received an invite via my message box to her birthday party. Without such technology, I would have missed out on an important social experience with my friends. Technology helps me stay in touch. Also, I am convinced that without the help of technology, my friendships would not be as strong because we would never have time (I didn’t say I don’t enjoy a busy lifestyle) to communicate in person as much as we do online. I wish that this book would have covered the social aspect of cyberspace from both sides of the issue, because I think that his view was incomplete.

This book fits well into religious discussions covered in the class Religion, Ritual, and Virtual Reality because Schultze voices specific religious messages to readers in regards to virtual reality and how it is shaping our culture. He says that technology will ultimately render us emotionless, without any spirituality or religion.  “If we are not careful, our uses of information technology can transform distinctly religious practices into instrumental habits devoid of heartfelt knowing” (73). He also discusses virtual worlds similar to those talked about in class such as SecondLife. He says that worship and religion can never be fulfilled through virtual means.  He said people cannot go through rituals online because a physical element is essential to spirituality. “Religious traditions could never exist purely in cyberspace” (74). He even says that the use of technology in brick and mortar churches impedes the religious experience because it distracts more than assists with the sermon (97).

Schultze believes that cyberspace will ultimately lead to moral evaporation. “Data storage will replace human memory. Data will be the only intelligence our species will need” (148). He says that unless consumers take time to stop, reflect, and listen to information presented to them, they will become cold and machine-like themselves. Instead of maturing into more informed individuals, people are becoming fragmented and isolated pieces of society. “Unless we focus as much on the quality of our character as we do on technological innovation, potentially good informational techniques will ultimately reduce our capacity to love one another” (19). He predicts a life of machines and computers that replace emotion or conviction of any kind. To change his predictions about a cyberspace technology, Schultze says more attention must be paid to the physical self as opposed to the cyberself.

IS CYBERSPACE A SPIRITUAL SPACE?

Wertheim draws parallels between virutal reality and heaven, saying that virtual reality is a place where people feel delivered and safe– despite whatever religious values they hold.

She notes that in Gibson’s Neuromancer, cyberspace is like the “biblical Heavenly City,” describing a place of transcendence. She also refers to Michael Benedikt’s description of cyberspace as the “New Jerusalem.”

“Nothing epitomizes the cybernautic desire to transcend the body’s limitations more than the fantasy of abandoning the flesh completely by downloading oneself to cyber-immortality,” Wertheim said.

Additionally, she said that many cyber-immoralists say that death is impossible in virtual reality — this thought re-enforces the idea of Heaven, a place of infinite life. She said that you could always be restored from backup files.

Thus, games create a world where consequences are simply a new beginning.

Mircea Eliade, American philosopher and historian of comparative religion, said “no event is is irreversible and no transformation is final.” He said, in reality, nothing new happens in the world — “everything is but the repetition of the same primordial archetypes.”

I changed up my outfit in New York City. The appearance settings are really the only amusement that I found right now. I haven’t really seen many people and I’m not finding much of a virtual community here at all.