ReadabilityJapan's Stepford Future
Cat: You’re the ground controller?
Ground Controller: Please State your name and clearance code?
Cat: Reality Sucks
Ground Controller: Your names reality sucks? Ha Ha Ha Ha. One second Mr. Sucks
Red Dwarf 1999
I have made the argument over and over that the only reason to be a Christian in general and a Roman Catholic in particular is because it’s true. I’ve said if it wasn’t true then we’re just an elk’s club that meets on Sundays.
A person who lives according to beliefs not based in truth and reality is fooling him or her self. There are words for such belief sets.
Two are “Fantasy” if you want to be kind and “Delusion” if you don’t.
This came immediately to mind when I saw this story out of Japan.
Kozaki is one of hundreds of thousands of Japanese who have bought Love Plus, a game released on the Nintendo DS in 2009, which is intended to simulate the experience of high-school romance with one of three pre-programmed teen girl characters. For a sizable number of loyal male gamers, it has become something more: a relationship that, if not entirely like dating a real woman, comes close as a source of affection.
“I really do love her,” Kozaki explains, when he and two of his friends meet with me in a coffee shop in Akihabara, the Tokyo neighbourhood at the centre of Japan’s otaku culture. Kozaki fully expects the game to be a lifelong commitment. “If someone were to ask me to stop, I don’t think I could do it,” he says.
Say WHAT?
IN PERSON – IF INDEED PERSON IS THE RIGHT WORD – Geminoid F can appear strikingly beautiful in a way that doesn’t translate to photos or video. Her hair is smooth and glossy, and falls across her delicately translucent, pale silicone face. As she sits in the chair at Osaka University, she runs through an idling program of random motions. She blinks, fidgets and makes small, distracted movements with her lips. When she turns her head and looks at you with her plastic eyes, the effect is thrilling and unsettling. It feels as if you’re being stared at, a little too intently, by an attractive stranger.
This is cultural suicide on a grand scale. If you have people who are dealing with virtual women who are programed to be Stepford Wives and girlfriends They will have no idea of how to handle actual people with actual feelings and actual needs on their own. One can deny reality as long as you want but sooner or later reality is going to catch up.
Japan is dooming itself to demographic death and here in the US there are plenty of people also dealing with unreality that while not quite at the Japan point are going there.
The future belong to those who show up. At the rate Japan is going they won’t have to worry about being conquered by China, At this rate China will eventually just walk on into to an empty set of Islands.
“Be fruitful and multiply” is better advice they people know.
******************************************
[thermometer raised=0 target=300 height =200 ]
Well I’m back home after a morning of speaking on Behalf of WQPH Catholic Radio. It’s a new week which means it’s a new thermometer.
It’s a big week in two ways. As the final week of the month getting the paycheck guarantees the Mortgage payment in full, but more importantly if we get the 15 tip jar hitters @ $20 this week it means a full month of paychecks meaning that this system HAS worked.
Can this work to support a blogger? Well we have seven days to find out.
Cat: You’re the ground controller?
Ground Controller: Please State your name and clearance code?
Cat: Reality Sucks
Ground Controller: Your names reality sucks? Ha Ha Ha Ha. One second Mr. Sucks
Red Dwarf 1999
I have made the argument over and over that the only reason to be a Christian in general and a Roman Catholic in particular is because it’s true. I’ve said if it wasn’t true then we’re just an elk’s club that meets on Sundays.
A person who lives according to beliefs not based in truth and reality is fooling him or her self. There are words for such belief sets.
Two are “Fantasy” if you want to be kind and “Delusion” if you don’t.
This came immediately to mind when I saw this story out of Japan.
Kozaki is one of hundreds of thousands of Japanese who have bought Love Plus, a game released on the Nintendo DS in 2009, which is intended to simulate the experience of high-school romance with one of three pre-programmed teen girl characters. For a sizable number of loyal male gamers, it has become something more: a relationship that, if not entirely like dating a real woman, comes close as a source of affection.
“I really do love her,” Kozaki explains, when he and two of his friends meet with me in a coffee shop in Akihabara, the Tokyo neighbourhood at the centre of Japan’s otaku culture. Kozaki fully expects the game to be a lifelong commitment. “If someone were to ask me to stop, I don’t think I could do it,” he says.
Say WHAT?
IN PERSON – IF INDEED PERSON IS THE RIGHT WORD – Geminoid F can appear strikingly beautiful in a way that doesn’t translate to photos or video. Her hair is smooth and glossy, and falls across her delicately translucent, pale silicone face. As she sits in the chair at Osaka University, she runs through an idling program of random motions. She blinks, fidgets and makes small, distracted movements with her lips. When she turns her head and looks at you with her plastic eyes, the effect is thrilling and unsettling. It feels as if you’re being stared at, a little too intently, by an attractive stranger.
This is cultural suicide on a grand scale. If you have people who are dealing with virtual women who are programed to be Stepford Wives and girlfriends They will have no idea of how to handle actual people with actual feelings and actual needs on their own. One can deny reality as long as you want but sooner or later reality is going to catch up.
Japan is dooming itself to demographic death and here in the US there are plenty of people also dealing with unreality that while not quite at the Japan point are going there.
The future belong to those who show up. At the rate Japan is going they won’t have to worry about being conquered by China, At this rate China will eventually just walk on into to an empty set of Islands.
“Be fruitful and multiply” is better advice they people know.
******************************************
[thermometer raised=0 target=300 height =200 ]
Well I’m back home after a morning of speaking on Behalf of WQPH Catholic Radio. It’s a new week which means it’s a new thermometer.
It’s a big week in two ways. As the final week of the month getting the paycheck guarantees the Mortgage payment in full, but more importantly if we get the 15 tip jar hitters @ $20 this week it means a full month of paychecks meaning that this system HAS worked.
Can this work to support a blogger? Well we have seven days to find out.
