to what end?

Back in 2002 I sat in on a reading group of some students in the Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design which included a couple books by Neil Postman. We read Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology and another collection of essays. Given that Johnson mentions a different book, my comments might not apply. Postman was asking TO WHAT END are these forms of media the means?

We can criticize their content -- the games teach us how to pragmatically negotiate the achievement of social rewards (commodity fetishism). Was anyone else horrified at the guy who spent all his "leisure" hours clicking to virtually mine ore, make tools to sell, and purchase a new virtual home? CLEARLY, the video game gives him something his dead end job doesn't (the illusion/feeling of progress). This doesn't mean it should be celebrated; it should be seen as a pathological symptom of life in the garbage heap of late capitalism.

Postman followed in the footsteps of EP Thompson who saw oppressive social relationships embedded in the technologies themselves (as did the luddites who resisted them) and the way they became the foundation for further entrenchments of class domination. His focus was more on how culture now tends to be determined more by its participation and dissemination through high technological means (and produced by those with the means to high technology). His book was about the social and ecological relationships on which these technologies were based, NOT how these technologies and virtual entertainments can teach us how to better negotiate the world (and on its terms). Their goals are opposite.

Our kids supposedly get cognitive exercise while electronic waste floods the developing world with heavy metals doing actual brain damage. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_waste

My question is really: who cares? What are the problems these games are helping us to solve? At best they come closer to mimicking the life we already live but presenting it in a way that obscures our REAL relation to it *cough*Althusser*cough*.

Here are two "false morels" a couple friends and I found today in Frick Park (this great 3 dimensional and topographically challenging interface with hypertextures and multi-sensory engagement). We were, of course, looking for REAL Morels. These false ones will put you in the hospital if you improperly ID them. The humidity conditions weren't right (although they ARE growing further away from the dry city).