Week 10: Games and Avatars in the Information Age: Don’t tell me World of Warcraft isn’t real. I got married there.

1)      Do you agree that you are cyborgian in nature?

With the development of technology, people in nowadays are always depended on their material objects such as their phones, laptops, tabs and other type of technology to identify them with is a cyborgian idea that needs to be looked into. Giddens (1991) stated that “The increased use of electronic media, from radio to television to the Internet, is an inseparable consequence of modernization”. The virtual world is not defined as reality or imagination but rather as a simulacrum. Simpson (2001) states that the emergence of highly advanced and futuristic videogames and virtual world technology unfolds design games to the practically boundless probabilities of the digital field or domain. People nowadays are cyborgians, they are not only communicate via mobile phones, but also by virtue of video games.

The Sims, for example, enables a person to present themselves as an avatar by choosing the gender they want, clothes, skin color, hair style, horoscope, and ultimately he/she controls and acts out as desired.

figure 1

Figure 1 is an image of The Sims where gamers interact with others by using their avatars. These avatars can “talk”, “tell a joke”, “insult”, “compliment”, works, have a relationship, and even married in the game. This technically represents “real life”. Therefore, this validates that we are not only attached to technology, it is essentially part of our lives; it makes human as cyborg.

Humans can also illustrate themselves as cyborgs through social networking and instant messaging services to interact and socialize with others, such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, MSN, which replaces the original form of communication. Nelson and Erlandson (2012) mentioned, "In multi-user worlds, all human-directed characters in the world are continuously represented by avatars". In other words, an avatar is consider as a presentation of human in the first-person perspective to personify and incorporate the person's action through the surrounding or sphere.

Nokia 5730 Xpress Music.

I also identify myself with a few items of technology that seem to shape my identity today. I seem to create dependence to my phone. It plays a major role in my life, and I always bring it along with me all the times. Without it, I can barely focus even for a minute. I am usually use and depend on this piece of gadget to communicate with other cyborgians be it via texting, calling, or via online through my Facebook/MSN account. Other applications that I can be use in my phone are to capture events through my camera phone, to write notes, and to look up the calendar.

Other few things that I really rely on are my spectacles. It is an important part of me and I always wear this most of the time. I can say that this gadget is actually me because without it, I can see nothing, thus I cannot function well in my life. My phone and my spectacles have become a part of me and from a cyborgian point of view it already is me.

References:

Nelson, B.C. (2012). Design for Learning in Virtual Worlds. New York: Routledge.

Simpson, D.M. (2001). Virtual Reality and Urban Simulation in Planning: A Literature Review and Topical Bibliography. Journal of Planning Literature 15, no. 3: 359-76.