McLuhan's Zombieland

A friend sends along this link

To recap for the link-click lazy, this is a prototype for simulation software that allows someone to sit at their console and ‘participate’ in a live competition, in this case racing. The software people canvas the real life playing field before the event and map you into a virtual car during the race so you can simulate participation. I presume they plan to add code to simulate your collisions, which would always affect you and never the real racers, obviously. Or, thinking ahead, you could participate in the play of your favorite football team, or call balls and strikes like an umpire in a baseball game, or try to catch your favorite pitcher, or participate in a SWAT team raid, or combat mission overseas. The software could be used for training as well as recreation for aspiring soldiers and athletes.

I instinctively recoil from this technology. It is not that the singular concept does not intrigue me, but the connected data points in this vein gives me pause. The sub trend of dissociative voyeuristic adventure is saturating our media. Video games and reality television are capturing a large market share of people who’d like to live a rich, adventurous and fulfilling life - as long as it is not their own. I may (probably am) overreacting a bit, and turning a minor anecdote into a trend as one commenter put it a few posts back, but this tuning in while tuning out is downright creepy. Our media is increasingly reflecting voyeuristic fantasy of non-participating participation. Some follow celebrity or reality television lives as closely as their own personal lives. We increasingly numb ourselves to our real lives with medications. These new technologies give us the feeling of having an experience without any experience at all. Like The Dude, I still jerk-off manually.