Millar, Melanie Stewart. Cracking the Gender Code: Who Rules the Wired World? Toronto: Second Story P, 1998.
Describing the love affair the developed world has
been enjoying with technology, Millar writes that
"Visions of a sort of futuristic, digital Disneyland
abound as western culture rides the latest wave of
technological wonder and euphoria" (12). Indeed, we do
seem to be inhabiting a "digital Disneyland." When I
was a child I played games like Risk with my dad and my
childhood friends. My favorite strategy was to conquer
all of Australia and South America, and from there push
my empire outwards in my attempt to win the game by
winning the world. It turns out that my husband, as a
child, used the same method of winning at Risk -- perhaps
that is one reason why these games now hold so little
interest for us as adults. We now crave a digital
Disneyland, where the game is more unpredictable, more
varied. But why is it that our digital fantasyworld is
so profoundly singular? Sure, there are MUDS (multi-user
domains, where many people are hooked in to the same
game or simulation) and net versions of games like
Civilization. At my dad's company, Friday afternoons for
the geek set was devoted to playing games like Doom and
Duke Nukem over their local network. On the surface it
would seem that they were bonding in a social activity.
But in actuality the interaction was somewhat bizarre:
4 to 6 grown men, each in their own cubicle or office
space spread out over three floors and two separate
buildings, shouting with surprise, glee, and agony over
their virtual triumphs and failures. People walking by
their space were more apt to be the audience for these
expressions of emotion than were the other players. All
the other gamers were likely to get was a rocket launcher
staring into their pixelated faces, and then the oblivion
that is the death of so many virtual soldiers.
The situation with my husband's and my seeming
addiction to Civilization is perhaps one step further
into the digital Disneyland. We sit, each at our own
90 Mhz+ machine, engrossed in our own scenarios of
Civilization worlds.
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