A couple of days ago I saw the movie Gamer (2009) and the concept made me immediately think of the cyborg. In this movie convicts who are on death-row are giving the chance to survive. The only thing they have to do is to survive thirty sessions in a game environment as human avatars. Through nanite technology, the cells in the human brain are replaced by cells that can be externally controlled by gamers. In the movie, the convict Kable gets controlled by the teenager Simon. The human avatars have to kill each other and all their moves are dependent on the connection between them and the gamer. There’s this delay in the connection, call the ‘ping’. This is the time the information sent by the gamer has to be received by the avatar in order to perform the tasks the gamer initiated. This ping is the weak spot of the human avatar, making him vulnerable to his opponents. [SPOILER ALERT]: In the film the chance that Kable survives the last round, gets smaller because of this ping. Other people want him dead and that’s why he has to get freedom to function without any delay (and later because he can escape the game by himself). [/SPOILER ALERT]
I thought the concept of the film was really interesting. In class we were talking about cyborgs, but I think this is whole new kind of cyborg. I can also discover several concepts we discussed during the course DAC. Through nanotechnology humans can be controlled by humans. Here, the human as a medium gets used as extension of other humans (McLuhan). Related to this is also the feedback loop between gamer – technology - human avatar. There’s also the blurring boundary of physical reality and virtual reality: for the gamer, it’s just a game (with real human beings). For the human avatar, it’s ‘real life’. He can kill real people and they can’t be resurrected, because it’s all real. There’s also the possibility that he can die himself. It’s also about absent presence, because the gamer is virtually present through human avatar, but physically absent.
I think it’s very interesting, because the film is about freedom and free will. In the movie, death-row convicts can gain freedom, but only if they give up their freedom and their free will. It’s kind of a paradox. I also think the clash between what the human avatar thinks and what the gamer makes him do is interesting. When a human avatar sees someone he wants to rescue, he can’t because his body is controlled by the gamer. The fact that the human avatar can’t talk with his gamer makes it even worse. The human avatar doesn’t have a voice and has to obey someone else.
When technology makes humans able to control other human beings, technology went too far.
By Délisa
