Comments on: Our Abstract Society

By: BigLion

BigLion — Mon, 03 Sep 2007 05:33:49 +0000

Interesting perception.

It is through modernization that we prosper and accumulate material wealth, so that we can travel back to primitive Africa to get away from modernization, prosperity and material wealth.

Go figure…

By: Santi

Santi — Tue, 19 Jun 2007 19:09:54 +0000

Very interesting post Thomas.. I feel very related to you thinking. There’s a bunch of very interesting economists that are describing how our economy (and hence our material world) is abstracting.. Just think of how the consumption of music went from big orchestras in the 19th century where only a few could pay the ticket to the vinyl, casette, compact disc and finally the MP3 where anyone in the whole world can download any music from anywhere for an imperceptible cost. And that process, of abstraction and going from a society of products onto a society of services has a lot to do with media. The XXth century discovered the Radio, the TV and finally the Internet.. and media is about concepts, ideas and statistics above anything else..

There’s an interesting book, The Age of Access from Jeremy Rifkin that talks about this.. I often find that kind of stuff very relevant for game designers, because our task is to create artifical worlds, and the best example for a world.. is the real one.

By: jeff pd

jeff pd — Thu, 15 Feb 2007 00:41:51 +0000

I like the post, grover. Our existence is without question easy and numb on a relative scale. I don’t know if that’s good in an absolute sense, but it’s something to keep in perspective.

By: Hans

Hans — Tue, 23 Jan 2007 05:42:24 +0000

Interesting post Thomas, for sure! Im sure in many cases people are more happier there too. We have the tendency to focus more on things that are not important. but in places like that they dont take their life for granted so they have their priorites right. Anyway, hope things are going well. Hans