Breadth of Conversation on Media and Consciousness

I'm so pleased to see this discussion in association with the consciousness conference in Hong Kong. I think that it is important to early on point out that while there are many problems with media use and it's effects across types of media, but probably most with electronically mediated media, there are also great advantages. I would hate to see us simply be added to long list of voices that condemn media use to varying degrees and was pleased to see the recent post on the potential of flow as a model for motivation in gaming.

Electronic media effects are a complex picture and thus do not easily reduce to good or bad, arousal or calmness, face to face or virtual realities, etc. I face this especially with my research program into the effects of video game play on consciousness. I'll be reporting on the dream aspects specifically but we have looked at a variety of dimensions of consciousness in our lab. I recently had a review of the basic thesis appear in the Journal of Transpersonal Psychology (http://www.atpweb.org/index.asp). My thesis has been that hard core gaming, sans addiction which is about 11% of the gaming population, can be viewed as a sort of meditative technique.

This is, of course, tricky as meditation comes in thousands of forms and our understanding of it in the west is just beginning. But the foundation of this thesis can be seen in the idea that Virtual Reality is the culmination of the ages old search for physical trancendence. This view was beautifully stated by Daniel Czitrom (as cited by Biocca, Kim and Levey in their "The Vision of Virtual Reality") who observed, "The dream of transcendence through machines is an ancient one, and the urge to annihilate space and time found particularly intense expression through new communication media . . . The accelerated evolution of media hardware and software has been fueled by the persistence of utopian urges in the population at large" (pp. 187, 194). This was point out in 1982!

As much as discussions and research in to meditation in the west have accelerated, what is clear is that these practices should not be reduced to stereotypes. The tradition that I have followed the most, at least in reading and participating in their research, (i.e., Transcendental Meditation) points out that it is the experience of transcendence that is the key and not the practice of meditation per se. They do hold however, that this is most quickly attained during meditation but can be achieved in various other ways. So for instance sufi dancing, long distance running, shamanic drumming, some forms of sexual activities, and so forth. My point is that to say we must stop arousal or not be exposed to violence (and here I know I am going out on a limb!!!) is to narrow our scope, understanding and implications of the effects of electronic media.

Thus in our research program we have searched for similar outcomes from gaming as have been reported from meditation. We began with the repeated finding regarding dreams, the higher incidence of lucid and control dreams among high end gamers. Also various video game labs have noted the association of flow to gaming. It should be noted that while flow can be conceptualized as a motivational variable as noted in another blog post herein, it is also viewed as a state of consciousness by Csíkszentmihályi who originally conceptualized it. Other parallels include our prelminary association of mindfulness and gaming as well as field indepdence and gaming. The attention findings are very strong regarding the benefits of gaming. Also the spatial/vestibular implications both from the meditative literature and the gaming literature offer further parallels. The list goes on.

While media effects literature is large and broad, other than discussions of flow, there is very little discussion or research on the relationship of media use to consciousness. This is what we collectively have to offer that is a unique perspective on societies media absorption.