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The Communication Gap
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D I S P A T C H E S
The Communication Gap
Helsinki, Finland — The arena looked like the mission control room for an interstellar voyage. But in the hockey stadium here where thousands of geeks and video gamers huddled in August, it was touted as the world’s largest multimedia party. The celebrants established their home computers in orderly rows, plugged them into the Internet, and spent four days camping in cyberspace — taking occasional naps in sleeping bags spread out on the floor.
Spending a night here reminds you that the strength of the Internet is communication, rather than the e-commerce hype that inflated the dot-com bubble. But this technologized scene also reveals the elaborate lengths that people go to establish a mediated distance between themselves and others — favoring text messages or virtual ‘death matches’ over old-fashioned face-to-face talk.
The stated purpose of the annual event, which is called Assembly, is to showcase and judge multimedia artwork known as ‘demos’– which generally consist of animated computer art set to homemade techno music. When the event started 10 years ago, it was a haven for hard-core techies who could code these digital expressions. Now, however, Assembly has become as mainstream as personal computers in general — a place for fans of network computer games and other popular wired hobbies to come together.
Most attendees were click-happy teenage boys, though these younger participants sat side-by-side with people in their 20s and 30s. Many pointed out that there were more young women than ever at an event that has traditionally attracted nerdy males. Their numbers, however, were still relatively small. Veterans of the event, who are referred to as “old-schoolers,” get to set up their computers in a designated area at the top tier of the stadium bleachers. Old-schoolers like to complain that Assembly has become too big and commercial, and that the gamers and non-programmers are spoiling their fun. "It used to be a little group," said a 24-year-old software designer who asked to be referred to only by his nickname, Freon. He said he has come every year, which means he first attended when he was 14. "I think in the old days, people were more computer scientists. If you look at these people they mostly play games or watch porno." He is right, to an extent. The computer screens down on the main floor of the stadium mainly flicker with games such as Quake III, Half-Life, or a new one called Max Payne, in which players gun people down in slow-motion that looks like a scene from the Matrix. And yes, a few groups of teenage guys huddle around screens ogling at pornographic film clips or babe pics. Most people seem to be doing several things at once — text-chatting in one window, gaming in another, and downloading pirated music in yet another. An Assembly visitor grabs a bite to eat at his computer
But the sheer numbers here make a profound statement about the power of computer connectedness. It is 1 a.m. on a Sunday morning, and thousands of people have chosen to huddle around their computers together. The organizers don’t allow alcohol, so the drug of choice seems to be caffeine, taken in one-liter doses of Coke or Pepsi, or in cans of a Finnish energy drink called Battery. Thero Heittola, a 24-year old law student, drove several hours, from a town just north of the Arctic Circle. He brought along his girlfriend’s 12-year-old brother, who he says introduced him to networked video games. Heittola said that Finnish people are widely said to be quiet and reserved people, and yet they are by some accounts the planet’s most enthusiastic users of cell phones and the Internet. To Heittola, these two traits go hand in hand. "Finns, we try to keep the distance a little," he said, agreeing that Finnish people often seem shy. That’s why computers are the ideal medium for communications, he added, because "you don’t have to be face to face with one another." Two American authors have recently explored this key contradiction of the information age: Technology lets us talk to each other more than ever before, but it also often breeds more physical isolation. Laura Pappano calls it "the connection gap" in her new book by the same title (Rutgers University Press, 2001). “We are the new lonely," she writes, referring to Americans in particular. "As a society, we face a collective loneliness, an empty feeling that comes not from lack of all human interaction, but from the loss of meaningful interaction, the failure to be part of something real, or to have faith in institutions that might bring us together." Writing about her experiences with online shopping and e-mailing rather than talking with friends, she calls attention to the need to take note of the way human interactions are changing. "The tension here is an obvious one: We may be living an increasingly virtual existence, but we inhabit a physical world, and we are physical beings equipped with senses that inform us of texture and nuance. To be sure, we intuitively understand that relating to an e-mail address or someone’s electronic agent is not the same as noting how human beings take up space on a chair, bite at the corner of their lips, or raise eyebrows when you say something they are itching to respond to. “Yet, without acknowledging the implications, we are redefining the very basis of relating. We are making scarce the tangible and diminishing the availability of relationships built on physical proximity." In another take on the subject, Joseph R. Urgo sees the information age as one where people are increasingly bombarded with competing stimulus from real and virtual sources. In his book, In the Age of Distraction (University Press of Mississippi, 2000), he argues: "There’s too much to pay attention to, and, even with all efforts marshaled, the sense that something is being missed prevails. "As we become more at home with continuous intellectual stimulation, as images, noises, and calls to attention come to be known not as interruptions but as the environment in which we exist, then it becomes necessary to study those stimuli that manage to distract us in the midst of the ecology of din." It seems appropriate that Assembly organizers resorted to sirens to get the crowd’s attention when it was time to show some of the computer artworks that were up for judging at the event. As the sirens blared on the loudspeaker, a sign appeared on a giant projection screen at one end of the stadium with the message: "Kill all audio and lights." Most people obeyed the command, and the room was suddenly darker, though there were countless LED lights on all that computer hardware, as well as a few strobe lights and other electronic lights that some brought for decoration. A few participants simply ignored the call, lost in the parallel world of the screen. Indeed, if video gaming were an Olympic sport, Finland may very well be an ideal training ground. "We have in Finland some of the toughest players in Europe, and maybe the world," Heittola argued. "Think about the winter here. It’s all dark, snowy, cold, and there’s nothing to do. It makes gaming strong." As if to prove his point, Heittola led me to the basement of the arena, where a professional Quake tournament was about to begin. There, two tables of computers sat on opposite sides of a dividing wall where teams of four or five could sit and play against each other. At one end, a large projection screen displayed the screen of one of the game players, and about a dozen chairs were set out for people to watch the action. Among the players who were about to compete for a prize of 550 Euros (about $510 U.S.) was Michael Burman, an 18-year old professional video gamer from Helsinki. Burman said that he looks forward to competitions because they are more intense than playing at home. “It’s nice to have an audience," he said. "They clap or laugh or whatever." Even so, he says, when he is at his best, he gets completely lost in the mediated game world. "If you concentrate, you are in the game," he added. "You don’t see the monitor." It seems like many of the participants in the Assembly event shared this feeling, oblivious to the physical companions around them and absorbed by computer-mediated interactions. Jeffrey R. Young, a technology reporter for the
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