Media Technology and PeaceMaker

I finally finished proofreading/minor editing a game called PeaceMaker.

This was truly a labor of love. I say this for three reasons.

One – An engaging game that seriously informs and educates the player to peacefully resolve the Israeli/Palestinian conflict is enlightening and moving.

Secondly – Getting a chance to work on the only computer ‘game’ that I would ever seriously play in my adult life was an experience I couldn’t pass. It’s like being an extra in a “Citizen Kane” or a Storm Trooper in “Star Wars,” but a documentary. It was small part but still very cool.

Third - The guys in the company have a thing called a “crawler” and are reading this right now.

Crawler? What the heck is it? It is an automated search that looks for links or other information on the web. So the guys at ImpactGames can find out who’s writing about PeaceMaker using a crawler. I never heard of it until they told me. (Hi, Joe, Asi and everyone in the office.) What a smart bunch of guys! One could expect nothing less from the company that will bring you this game on February 1^st.

The crawler is a new peice of media technology, to me anyway. Boy, these really are interesting time. Reading about fact-based, conflict resolution, video games on a blog being searched by crawlers. Never could have imagined. But here's more about the game.

Playing PeaceMaker taught me more about the conflict in the first thirty minutes then all the news reports I read, watched and heard in my entire life. I’m saying this as a journalism, mass communication master’s student.

This is the main reason I offered to help proofread the content. If you haven’t checked out PeaceMaker’s website please do it now or the rest of this blog becomes harder to follow.

I was so impressed how well “interacting” with this game taught me information according to my personal logical dictates. Media technology transformed the learning experience. In other words, I wasn’t merely passively reading the history of the conflict. I was playing with history to imagine our future. By playing I learned as a child learns by playing. We need to interact/play to see what works and what fails. This is how we make sense of the world.

Child-like playing was how we learned to understand and get along with classmates. We didn't read about our peers. Perhaps adults playing/interacting with game based on actual history and up-to-date news we learn something about our global affairs.

So many other were also impressed with the game, New York Times, Washington Post, BBC, Reuters, and the list go on.

Cynicism might make you think I’m biased because I worked on the game. However it’s the other way around. I wanted to volunteer my time helping because I thought the game was amazingly impressive.

So now the media technology part of the blog.

Sometime the etymology of a word is worth studying. Media is plural of medium, in Latin. “Of course,” you might say. But in terms of communication it literally can mean, “All the thing in the middle or between us and the others.” In a sense, news, books, movies and words are technologies bridging us to others. Actually in hindsight… read the up-coming blog to continue this esoteric topic.

I think this PeaceMaker should stand on its own. To anyone that seen “Battle of Algiers” this is the video game equivalent with more facts.

(If you see a misspelling here or in the game that’s my fault, sorry. Leave a message here; don’t bother those guys at ImpactGames they’re really busy.)

Rational Discussions

I'm considering adding "rational" to the mission statement. Some are asking to themselves, "Is he crazy? What about tradition?" Perhaps this kind dramtic change with such high stakes will keep you reading. I'm sure the title scared away the weak of heart.

My reply is that we're not here to support dogma. I can hear the gasps and sighs of disbelief.

Since rational will be hard to define this might build the tension needed to maintain readers. In other words, there nothing like calling another person "irrational" to get a good fight going. Really, try it sometime.

Everyone thinks they are behaving rationally. Just like everyone thinks they're a good driver. Try this one too. Go ahead and ask the next car owner whether they're a good driver. Whether they drive too slow or lost their license from speeding or crashed numerous times, most people truly think they're the good driver.

Rational is not even subjective but people perceive themselves to be rational even when no one really is rational. How can we as humans be truly rational? Don't we all have a few things we value or believe in that we can't really explain? If we can't explain or express it, then we can hardly be rational about it.

However, that doesn't mean we can't have a rational discussion about things. In other words, once we start discussing a topic and someone say, "Well, that's just what I believe" then reason stops. We have crossed over into the land of metaphysics. Of course we can talk rationally about metaphysics but things inside the metaphysical just "is."

People might believe I'm attacking faith or religion. Let me make this clear. Faith and religion can be rational. There is no inherent contradiction between faith and reason.

So lets tie this with citizen journalism and education news. No one will be the judge of rational and irrational. I just hope people will keep “rational” in mind when writing about education.

My personal belief is that schools should teach rational thinking. Let faith be taught outside of schools. Not that there is no place for faith in America but simply not in our schools. Public schools should develop the mind. I believe, for an aesthetic reason not a rational reason, that education is about logic and proof.

Some may ask, “How can you teach morality without faith?” Love and caring can be rational, in fact it might be even better when understanding is involved. But this is getting way off the subject.

Like I wrote earlier, “rational" can cause a lot of tension and drama. Hopefully this drama will spice up the topic of education.

For a quick update: I'm still reading a bunch of articles and researching “citizen journalism.” This is just transparency in the strategy of hopefully getting and retaining readers.

What’s your thought? Please leave a comment; maybe we’ll start a dialogue.