Are Video Games a Waste of Time?

No

Flow in Gotham

I experience flow in most things once I make myself focus on what I need to do. But the easiest way for me to enter flow is when I play really engaging games. I recently started playing Batman: Arkham City and getting used to the controls in the beginning was not irritating but helped present a bit of a challenge for me until I got used to them. Once I got used to them I was able to become more involved with the combat and started implementing counters and was able to maintain my combo number and increase it. The game is constantly trowing new mechanics which keeps the game from getting stale but it's never so hard that it's frustrating. Being able to just fly through the city as Batman is engaging and I have found myself losing track of time and on what I was setting out to do just by moving around the game world.

Remediation

Remediation is when you represent a message in a medium through another medium. An example of this is the kindle/nook type program in the iPad. The readings are shown in the forms of books even though they aren't there. It's a transparent immediacy and a hypermediacy combination.

The medium is the message.

Metalanguage

Metalanguage is a system of symbols used to discuss another system. A language used to explain another language.

An example is Steve Jobs's outfit. He wears the same black shirt, jeans, and shoes every time he's in front of a camera or audience. His outfit conveys the message that he wants people to think of with apple. Apple products are hip, laid back, accessible, and for the every day person.

Modern Semiotic Mythology aka WWE

Wrestling is an example that was used back in the day as a myth in semiotics, the study of symbols and communication. Well that still holds up today. Wrestling is scripted and told mostly through body language and there is a clear good guy and bad guy and they symbolize the two sides and fight. They signify the opposing morals. They're the signifiers and the concepts of good and bad are the signified. They're connotations that are geared towards spreading a particular message.

Technological Determinism

Technological determinism is a theory that states that technology drives the development of a society's social structure and its cultural values. In simpler terms our society is formed by our technology. We are shaped by the technology that we live with. This is what Marshall McLuhan argued and he was actually against technology despite the fact that he was viewed as a guru on technology and media. The irony i suppose was self inflicted since he used media and technology to talk against it.

Not everyone agrees with McLuhan about technological determinism. Others state that our technology is formed because of our needs and our culture shapes our technology, not the other way around. This is the position that Raymond Williams took and was basically against McLuhan in everything that he had to say about media and technology.

If I had to pick a side I'm more inclined to side with McLuhan's view but I don't really feel that Williams is completely wrong either. I feel that it's more like we create a technology to better help us i.e. it's an extension of ourselves but as we become more comfortable with that technology we discover other things we can do with it and it forms new needs and brings forth more technology. We start with creating something because we need it and it in turn makes us need more. We shape it for us and it shapes us. It's cyclical and McLuhan does actually point that out. McLuhan was ahead of his time with what he spoke of and it's too bad that no one could get what he was talking about back when he was alive. What he had to say then is so much more prevalent now.