July 27, 2008
TECHNOS QUARTERLY Spring 1994 Vol. 3 No. 1
EdPress Winner
Of Techno Wizards, Cyber Puppets, and the Persistence of Vision
By Frank J. Batavick
It was the third day of the CD-ROM Expo ’93 in Boston, and this 20-year
veteran of instructional TV settled back in his seat to hear yet another presentation
on the promise and growing profitability of CD-ROM technology. As in previous
sessions, the panel presenters all seemed to be under 30 years of age and
able to speak glibly of the arcana of cross-platform compatibility and asymmetrical
CODECs. One in particular looked to be a clone of the ambiguous Bob Roberts
character in the recent film of the same name‹tall, athletically lean, and
clean shaven in a blue blazer and a conservative tie. The only off-key note
was his sunglasses, which he never doffed, not even when the lights were dimmed
to show his latest creation, a CD-ROM-driven interactive game titled “Jump
Raven.”
This is Progress?
As the small silver platter began to spin, the projection screen exploded
with energized pixels, and the stereo speakers pulsated with a techno-pop
soundtrack. Immediately the audience was transported to a future urbanscape
populated by gangs of vicious skinheads. To play in these mean streets, we
were invited to join the local security force, which uses ground-skimming
jet craft equipped with an arsenal of high-tech armaments. Up to this point,
“Jump Raven” may sound like just another arcade game, but that is
purely a fault of the shortcomings of prose. The product was a quantum leap
from the quarter swallowers at the local mall, and no doubt it soon will dispatch
the current generation of electronic games to the “Donkey Kong”
scrap heap.
The instant interactivity of the disc permits players to communicate with a host of cyber puppets, sophisticated computer-animated characters that speak with the voices of actors. A click of the mouse or similar interface showers users with an initial battery of questions, sprinkled with profanity, concerning their suitability for the assignment; invites them to choose a copilot by interviewing a batch of “A-Team” wannabes—including one woman, a bubble-headed valley girl (“for sure…”); and transports them to the armory where they use an electronic catalog to shop for the perfect mix of powerful weapons. Just gearing up to play the game seemed to take a good six minutes.
Once the mission started, we soared past and around 3-D buildings, keeping perfect perspective, and blasted away at villains who appeared to have a similar arsenal at their disposal. The developer was proud to point out that, unlike other games on the market, these weapons and their destructive aftermath obeyed all the laws of physics, especially regarding shrapnel spread and secondary damage to buildings. It was at this point that my blood began to boil.
Here we were, on the threshold of a whole new generation of interactive technology, and we hadn't come all that far from the shoot-'em-up script of the very first film, 1903's The Great Train Robbery. The only key differences were color, sound, the interactive nature of the medium, and today's unstanched flow of blood in our streets and school yards. This is not progress.
The Return of Cynicism
While I don't subscribe to the magic bullet, cause-effect school of thought
regarding violence in the media, I do believe that the media, from comic books
to video games, share responsibility for the fearsome state in which we find
ourselves. Adding easily modeled and realistic, violent enactments to the
myriad pathologies born of poverty and fractured family life too often is
like striking a spark to tinder.
On my return trip from Boston, I read in USA Today an FBI report that the number of youngsters under 18 arrested for homicide had soared more than 128 percent since 1983. Arrests for violent crime overall were up by 57 percent in the same 10-year period. The impact of this on education rattles through a recent Metropolitan Life study that reports 10 percent of teachers and nearly 25 percent of their students have been victims of violence in or near their public schools. If this trend isn't reversed soon, we'll someday feel like the time-tripping Jimmy Stewart character in It's a Wonderful Life. However, the nightmarishly brutal town we try to make sense of will be more like Blade Runner's decayed Los Angeles than the wanton Bedford Falls.
Beyond violence in the media, our seemingly endless propensity to take every new communications technology and warp it to serve the basest of motives looms large. David Sarnoff, one of the founders of RCA, had the hope in 1916 that the “radio music box” would be used for transmitting music to parlors or living rooms and for “receiving lectures at home which can be made perfectly audible…to farmers and others living in outlying districts removed from the cities.” What a noble thought. But in 1994, our ears are assaulted by Howard Stern's broadcasts.
In 1925 Thomas Edison wrote of his invention, the motion picture projector: “It may seem curious, but the money end of it never hit me the hardest. The feature that did appeal to me about the whole thing was the educational possibilities.” Edison would have been hard put to glean any educational value from the multimillion-dollar hit, RoboCop 3.
In the early days of television, legendary CBS newsman Edward R. Murrow remarked, “This instrument can teach, can illuminate—yes, it can even inspire—but it can do so only to the extent that humans are determined to use it to those ends. Otherwise, it is merely lights and wires in a box.” What would Murrow have thought of MTV's “Beavis and Butt-head”?
Now we've done it again with CD-ROM technology, even before anyone of note has had time to wax poetically about its educational promise. Maybe cynicism has finally won out.
Whose Vision Is It, Anyway?
I don't mean to overreact. I know libraries already have exploited the capabilities
of CD-ROM and use it for everything from an electronic card catalog to storage
of full sets of encyclopedias. And I know that there are some new educational
applications, such as “Who Built America?” and “Global Explorer,”
which combine video, audio, and graphics in exciting ways that are instructionally
sound.
My point is this: Here we have the opportunity to shape a new medium, as in the early days of radio, film, and television. What we don't need are cyber puppets representing the worst stereotypes or breakthroughs in simulating on-screen explosions that obey the laws of physics as we learn how to kill and maim efficiently. Instead, our best and brightest techno wizards should be worrying about such things as how to teach children new ways of knowing and of constructing meaning by using transparent interfaces. Only in this way might pure content be manipulated, unhindered by the programmed limitations of mouse and icon.
Another thing we don't need is censorship. Grandstand plays like the December 1993 Senate hearings on violent video games rarely amount to much—and I don't welcome the chilling effect they have on First Amendment rights.
Perhaps a partial answer to the problem lies in the Software Publishers Association's January 1994 proposal that they implement a four-tier rating system for games. Like Hollywood's movie ratings, this would put the onus on parents and ethical store owners to keep violent and sexually explicit software out of the hands of children age 17 and under.
However, a ratings system still begs the question. At this pivotal juncture in technology development, we require more from an industry than a defensive flanking movement. We need inspired leadership. For this generation of nascent Gutenbergs, we need a new Plato to sum them from screens of dark shadows to those of real substance and a new McLuhan to give them the vocabulary and the vision to understand the power and the promise of multimedia.
Film, video, and animated computer graphics fire still picture upon still picture in rapid sequence at our eyes and thus trick the mind into perceiving continuous movement. This phenomenon is known as “persistence of vision.” Would that Sarnoff's, Edison's, and Murrow's vision had been equally as persistent.
“In a Young Boy's Dreams” computer illustration by Frank Morris.
Frank J. Batavick is the former director of projects and new products at the Agency for Instructional Technology. He serves as an editorial advisor to TECHNOS. Currently, he is vice president for he is Vice President for Acquisitions for Films for the Humanities and Sciences. Batavick has designed, produced, and written more than 300 video-based products, including instructional programming for the K–12 curriculum and teacher inservice.