Tuesday, April 12, 2011

Chaffing the Media Wheat

I’m currently reading the book Reality is Broken by Jane McGonigal, an experienced game designer, who gives some interesting insight and framework into why so many people flock to games for hours at a time. She qualifies her theories with past history (e.g. game origins and historically popular games to shift focus away from poverty, etc.). She mentions the word “god” in her book 15 times, but only in the context of “god” games like The Sims, but not Him, my God, the God of all. Everyone is seeking something. Games are a great outlet and McGonigal’s interesting proposals for positive game design incorporated into reality evoke “utopian”-type hope. It’s all interesting, but God is my hope and the Bible is my media to grow closer to Him, take risks in the world for Him, and act for Him. Media has many interesting options, but God is ever forging my participation. Media can be positive, complicated and surprising, like this recent health feature, but it is not always essential. I have adapted a scan, skim, then trim method, but occasionally find myself engaging with more media to extract the best. The basic logic of "more is better" still applies here. I want to cut down my media consumption, but end up adding more because of the excitement, interaction, and overall experience. Relating this information to my Biblical/essential knowledge is paramount here. So keeping my crop size the same while still taking out the non-essential chaff will be a big challenge. Anyone have some recommended methods?

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