Games have preceded overall computer development, rather in the way that games precede human development. We learn as children how to compete, how to play fair, how to work with a team – a lot of basic skills we need as adults. You see it with lion and bear cubs, their banter prepares them for the life and death struggle of the permanent hunt.
Our computer games are preparing us for that world which is to come, that point where we evolve and become something more than human, the day when we reach our childhood’s end. What that will be, we don’t know, but the games are preparing us for it.
Perhaps, some day in the not so distant future, in some Sims like, civilization building game, someone will design a society in which the infrastructure of man works in perfect co-ordination and harmony with nature to give everybody fresh water everywhere and the food will grow to provide all humans with sustenance and pleasure, as much as we need in the times and places we need it, and everybody will have a nice home, or two, and the schools will be temples of brilliance and the march of science will continue to move forward at a nice, steady pace, and there will be no need for war because there is no want, and no borders, and we can move out to explore the stars with a clear conscience, as the Earth will be a paradise.
Meantime, I have another book of poetry out: Quest for Enlightenment and Stuff, which was supposed to be The Quest for Enlightenment and Stuff and I can’t believe I proofread the whole thing and screwed up on the title, but if you buy it now (very reasonably priced on Amazon and Kindle) and I change it later, you will have a collector’s item. On the other hand I might just leave it alone and consider it a fortuitous accident.
