All entries for Monday 17 April 2006

A delayed response

L: The world is sad, even the closest people don't get to know each other.
Me: (the immediate response) of course some people know each other. How about your parents?
L: Of course they love each other, but there is no way they can know each other.
Me: …

(My parents lived together for 25 years, and within that marriage, there were a lot of lies – well intended or just lies by nature, there were suspicions, and there were cheating. I found no way that I could construct a respond to that argument.)

But I looked at it again, and now I have an answer ready:

It is the desire wanting to know 'the others' drives you away from knowing anyone. It is the desire to create an identity that drives the others from knowing you. In the core, everybody is more or less the same: there is a thirst for striving for survival,there are fears of the unknowns – like darkness and death, and maybe a few other basic elements; all the others are constructed and changable hence they are unimportant. So that if you want to know others, you need to deconstruct yourself first, reduce the ego to the basic components, and then you can tell: your depression is others depression, so are your ambitions and happiness. So rather, there is a need to live simple than to live curiously about the so-called the others. You yourself is the others.

———
The girls were talking about marriage again last time after Easter feast. It's still something unimaginable for me and the majority on present. But my parents start to talk about it to me. Some marriages are to possess another person, and the others is helping one to enrich the living experiences. Before one more or less know what him/herself is about, it is very difficult to contribute to a relationship so it's gonna be like a battle over properties – that's my problem, but my parents dont see it this way.

——-
Talking about the Double Life of Veronique

When Veronique finds another Veronique, it's not a miracle or coinstance, it's neccesity. That's why the film is so delicate. It raised a puzzle but the puzzle is answering itself…

lol

: 17 Apr 2006 19:48 |  Tags: Zp I Meaning Of Life |  Comments (1) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

The geeky world – digesting an afternoon reading the geeky stuffs

It's hard to distinguish myself from a geek:

This week I have received three warning letters from eBay concerning about my bad consuming behaviours – bidding without paying. Such emails reflect nothing but my craze of e-shopping. Apart from various fake eBay buyings, I have also done a lot of business with Amazon this week – a voice recorder and some few books. One of my secret admirers (or at least I'd like to think it this way) even sent me a book anonymously via Amazon. My life is half based on virtual spaces: I update my iTunes and MSN Messenger every two weeks, I use google everyday, check my hotmail ten times a day, most geekily I have a blog empire in which each blog doesn't make much sense. But then from what's written you can also tell that my geeky experiences are really confined with e-consumerism which is not too much distinctive from the traditional forms besides the fact that it is designed more to slackers like me.

Of course most of the geeky producers are not half as lazy as I am. They do some good things except from draining money from the Generation G (game/geek). Pam Omidyar, who happens to be the wife of eBay founder, is working on an interesting "'serious game' ": link called re-Mission, modelling a female fighter called Roxxi fighting against cancer cells. After the testing this month, they will send this game to several health centres free in the hope that young patients suffering from cancer would benefit from the game playing experience: gain some knowledge of how cancer cells work and confidence in fighting against it.

Technologies based on virtual spaces seem to have merged with real life solutions more and more. Apart from helping to fight cancer, we also see in-game advertisements booming; a good number of faithful game fans putting on costumes in the games and name such act as Cosplay – which gradually becomes a serious art; if a USB -compatible vibrator is invented cyber-sex can be as 'real' as sex in bed; so that someone suggest that our generation is no doubtedly a generation G, giving out some significant features to distinguish this peer from others, if any:

1. arrogance: heroism towards killing the bad to preserve the good
2. sociability: being alone at home with a connected computer is not 'alone'
3. coordination: 'visual processing dramatically increases with as little as 10 hours of gameplay'
4. flexibility: to win a game there is always several ways, same to real problem solution.
5. competitiveness
6. insubordination

But is there generation G? I have not gotten any concrete evidence yet, but people spending a lot of time on virtual seems to be concentrating in the city. It is at least more explainable like this: living in block apartment, the space distributed to each person on average is far from sufficient to feel free. So in order to chase that eternal desire for freedom virtual spaces become extension of real spaces. I think it's rather generation U (urbanisation) rather than generation G. :) Moreover, like other medias, the creation of virtual space does not change the core of the system – it is after all consumerism that is the bread feeding this whole internet/game industry, among which there are charities and NGOs like the Hope Lab who hosts re-Mission mentioned above. Generation G (or even generation U) is after all no difference from generation XYZs.

(information generated from the Wired magazine April 2006)

: 17 Apr 2006 18:46 |  Tags: Zp V Academic |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem