American iGods

It has now been a few weeks since I finished American Gods but I still can't help thinking back to how perfect my timing was. I was right in the heart of the book, around the part where Wednesday and Shadow were getting into fighting the tech gods, when the iPhone 4 came out. To top it all off, by pure coincidence I ended up at the Eaton Centre that day and got to witness the insane line that had formed for the Apple store. As I stood there I contemplated whether there was another example I could think of that so perfectly demonstrated our addiction to, and worship of, technological gadgets. I came up with nothing.

As a disclosure, I am a huge fan of Apple products. I have a MacBook, an iPhone, and an old iPod. If I had the money, I would have an iPad by now too. So if you were hoping this entry would be a rant against Apple, you will be sorely disappointed. I also don't completely hate technology (one would hope the fact that I am writing a blog would illustrate that very fact). Technology has brought numerous advances to society. Where I personally draw the line is where technology so dictates our life that it becomes an end instead of a means.

Thinking about this brings me back to something I read several years ago (and thus have forgotten both the source and context) and have kept in the back of my mind to this day. The gist was that in the past, people used to shop to live. One would only go to a store because a basic necessity, such as food or essential clothing, were required. Now, at least in North America, we live to shop. Unfortunately, I myself have fallen into the consumerism-as-pastime trap. But ever since I read that brief, but ultimately accurate, description, I have become more conscious of how frivolous-shopping dictates 21st century western life.

So when I saw the line-up outside Apple that fateful Friday (if only it was a Wednesday....apparently coincidence isn't perfect) my mind immediately went to how our relationship with technology has flipped. Just like shopping, we have stopped using technology to live and instead now live for technology. Instead of seeing an iPhone as a convenient device to making talking to people, texting, listening to music, and getting directions easier, it has become something people centre their lives around. Everyone in that line had taken time out of their life just to line up. Almost akin to the die-hard religious devotees who line-up to pay to touch the reliquary of a saint, these people were lining up to give a corporation their money in exchange for a piece of technology that would, like its theological predecessor, provide no meaningful internal comfort.

By the time I finished American Gods I knew that the new-found worship of technology was not sole aspect of the novel. But for me it was the most paramount point I took from Gamen's work. It shall now join the numerous life-lessons that I have extracted from the written word, and hopefully my life will be all the more fulfilling for it. For if there is one thing I am sure of, it is that technology will only continue to exponentially seep into our lives, and thus the more wisdom we can accumulate to keep our priorities aligned, the better.

The Problem of Why

Guest Blog by Chris Habib

When it comes to life in general, there are many questions we ask ourselves.  In journalism, they ask: Who, What, When, Why, How.  Lets take a brief moment to see if we can answer these as they pertain to our lives.  The Who is a little bit tricky.  At the ripe old age of 25, I can safely say I know a large part of who I am.  I play many formal roles (such as husband and doctor) and I play informal roles (that guy who cracks jokes).  The What is a little less tricky.  I am human and everything that entails biologically, physiologically, and psychologically.  The When is seemingly the easiest question to answer, using science we can answer in many ways.  A quick Google search reveals the age of the universe to be 13.75 billion years, within a margin of error.  Skipping ahead to the How, that’s a story that my parents can probably describe in better detail than I can.  Those 4 questions seem to be fairly well understood.  The Why is the real problem.

As far as I can tell, there is no real answer to the reason for my (or your, or our) existence.  If we only look at final destinations, we all end up in the same place: dead.  From this perspective, it doesn’t matter if you lived a great life, or a terrible one.  It’s all the same in the end.  Then there is the wise old saying to enjoy the process and the experience of life, not just the end product.  Well, this makes sense insomuch as we make the best with what we have, rather than spending our years on this planet brooding until our inevitable expiration date.  It’s a realistic solution to a seemingly unsolvable problem.  But it’s only a coping mechanism, not an answer.  The real only realm that seems to provide an answer is religion.  In other words, you exist because you must live by the golden rule, be judged, earn a pleasant afterlife, worship God, etc.  They all say it with a different flavour, but the overarching message is always the same: you are insignificant, unworthy, probably immoral, and your only hope lies in the next life.  I find this answer completely unsatisfying because there is no valid evidence to back it up.  No one knows what happens after we die.  I don’t know what happens, and neither do you – despite what you may tell yourself or what you believe.  I’d rather have a truthful answer than a made-up one.  I just can’t seem to find one.

Fiction's Final Frontier?

I am a bit of an anomaly in that I love books and I love video games.  So when I read a few months ago that Random House was working in conjunction with Stardock to create a video game, it felt like two of my favorite worlds were colliding. I knew that houses had been publishing books based on video games--hello! War Craft--but the idea of turning the relationship around is completely new. Already, Random House has created a video game division to work with their authors and various gaming companies. I instantly thought that this would be my dream job. Make the games historical and set in another country, and basically all of my passions would be residing under one umbrella. 

After thinking more about this new publishing venture, I began to think about the difference a good plot and character background can make to a game. When I play RPGs, I admittedly get complete sucked into the storyline (just ask my husband, or for that matter, my cats). In fact, it is because of this very fact that I haven't written a blog post in a while--I was kidnapped by Mass Effect 2 for two weeks. I started to realize that I get sucked into the world of the game the same way that I get sucked into great books. I keep going on missions the same way that I can't stop flipping the pages of Harry Potter. The lines between the game and real life start to blur until you are Commander Shepard, or whatever other character you are playing. In essence, an RPG is a choose-your-own-adventure-and-character-profile book that unfolds through a gaming consul instead of on paper.

So what does this mean for books? Well, obviously not everyone plays video games and there are millions of people in the world who prefer getting their fictional stories in print. While there are numerous parallels between RPGs or story-based video games and novels, they are by no means equal. Each brings its own unique traits to the table. For one, it is easier to see the science fiction and fantasy genres adapted to games that it is to see with romance novels.  But the growing video game market, and the fact that it competes with books as another seller of leisure-time material, means that it can't be completely ignored. The question then is whether the two entities will continue in isolation or if other companies will follow the lead of Random House and Stardock and collaborate.

Collaboration can seemingly bring benefit to both sides. Publishing houses can tap into a new revenue stream with a different financial model, something which they desperately need. Acting as a consultant provides them the opportunity to negotiate payment upfront which would help cash flow and would provide them with a source of revenue separate from the constraints of booksellers. Game developers gain access to a bank of proven writers and the expertise of publishing houses in editing and molding content. This would allow them to meet the increasingly high standards of the gaming community for realistic and enticing plot, dialogue, and character development.

However good this arrangement looks on paper, the true test will be when Stardock's game is released in the fall. Only the future will tell if there is a role for authors and publishers in the video game universe and if fiction has found a new frontier.