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Archive for October, 2007

Why Too Much Is Never Enough

By Jason Ensor ⋅ October 11, 2007 ⋅ Post a comment

“The blind eye is simply the path of least resistance.  Without a firm conviction, any guilt that might arise from habitual consumption will dissipate in a self-imposed ambiguity.” Ben Scott in Culture Works, 2001.

Learning the Interface Value

By Jason Ensor ⋅ October 10, 2007 ⋅ Post a comment

Recently, I was introduced to the latest version of the massive multiplayer online product, World of Warcraft, and have occupied a few hours here and there late at night participating in gaming strategies which have involved rather odd tasks like “kill the mine trolls” or “collect eight red bandanas from the bandits”. For the uninitiated, World of Warcraft is not your standard addictive shoot-em up or racing-car game, where you might install software on your desktop, compete against the computer to finish certain missions and then connect to multiplayer servers where you can also play with or against other people in anonymous “death-matches”. Instead, World of Warcraft hosts a persistent, hugely populated (9 million users to date), enormous 3D synthetic world, with entire continents and cities themed in the fantasy genre, and people from all around the planet participate online by piloting their own individual computer-generated body.

Our Threshold of Responsibility

By Jason Ensor ⋅ October 3, 2007 ⋅ Post a comment

Like everyone else, when I talk with other people who share living on this land that I call Australia and home, I often slip into using the term “we” and “our” when referring to the actions or inaction of the Australian government on issues I align myself for or against. It’s an easy slip for me to make, for I am encouraged to identify with the actions of strangers as my own on a daily basis. The intensity of one’s support for various football teams and AFL players I have never shared a beer with is an easy example; one’s support for or against Australian soldiers in Iraq is another. But both reflect our participation in a system that we are not major decision-makers in but which we are coerced into identifying with so that we become almost inseperable from them: “our team won!”, “our boys in Iraq are doing their bit!”, “our preferred political party is in office!”.

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