Bolster & Grusin, pgs. 88-131

This reading deals particularly with computers and photography. My reflection on the reading, however, will focus specifically on computer games. The reason for this focus on computer games is because of a class I took at Clemson last fall. The class was called Visual Communication (don’t be fooled, it’s actually an English class) and the latter half of the semester dealt almost solely with computer games such as World of Warcrafts and America’s Army.

The text states that computer games today, “promise transparent immediacy through real-time interactive graphics or text” (103). It was this idea of transparent immediacy and real-time interactive capabilities that my peers and I focused our attention on during the semester. We were interested in the ability of computer games to transport you into some sort of fantasy world and the idea that once we are in these worlds we can create our own story to go with it. This is achieved through a process called flow. Flow is that force or state of mind that you're in when time seizes to exist and you just go with it. For example, when you're reading a book that you just can't put down. You end up staying up til 3 am because you can't stop turning those pages. That is a state of flow. This is something that we experience in games and in other aspects of life.