In Turkle’s “Video Games and Computer Holding Power,” one thing Turkle brought up that interested me was this idea of an altered state when playing games. Turkle states that when people play a video game and enter the world created by programmers, they must identify with a character and act through that identification. This puts people in this altered state where they are focused on a task and Turkle notes how people pursue this altered state, giving anecdotes with people saying this altered state is relaxing for them.
I think this is fascinating because I am aware of this sort of altered state but I have never been able to quite explain it. There are video games I play where I am extremely focused and enter this altered state. I do not think of anything else in this state and this can be a liberating feeling.
In Haraway’s “Cyborg Manifesto,” one thing I want to note was how Haraway states that cyborg feminists do not want any more natural matrix of unity and that no construction is whole. She talks about how there is a need for political unity to confront social constructs such as race, gender, class, and sexuality and how there was no other time she would have thought it to be possible for this kind of unity than the current times.
Now, I am still confused by the reading, but I will try to give my best interpretation. I think that this natural matrix of unity that is being described is this idea of a single monolithic ideology and that such an ideology was not whole and did not account for everything. The political unity is this idea of a unity that has various points of views which come under a sort of banner, if I could try to describe it. As for the current times being ideal for such a unity, I believe she is right in that the current times was better than all the other times because there are people who go against the binary of things such as gender, sexuality and more. This current age is one where people are exploring more parts of their identity than ever before.
