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Categories: Commentary, Interview
Tags: holodeck, judith barad, politics, red shirt, sex, star trek, violence
“I’m afraid the holodeck will be society’s last invention.” Scott Adams (Dilbert)
Adams’ point is that we’ll just waste away in the Holodeck, but I think Star Trek’s food-on-demand technology would kill us first. Actually, between the holodeck, transporters, and food replicators, it’s amazing that the Enterprise crew wasn’t dropping dead one heart attack after another. Maybe the fear of being fat in a skintight jumpsuit kept them in line. Anyway, I have concerns about the holodeck aside from the fact that it has the potential to crush human advancement.
You can do anything in the holodeck: recreate historical events, practice combat, slut it up, but Star Trek never dealt with the moral issues involved in such actions. Of course there’s a fair share of episodes dealing with holo-love, but even “Hollow Pursuits“, which showed Lieutenant Barclay recreating the ship’s crew in the holodeck in order to ridicule Commander Riker, seduce Counselor Troi and assault Geordi treated Barclay’s actions as a holo-addiction, fantasy play taken too far.
This fascinates me, because today when the player is physically removed from his avatar’s actions both by the distance between their body and the on-screen action and through the input devices and computing hardware required for the player to command their avatar, there’s grave concern about the effects of violence and sexualty in games. With the holodeck, there’s no barrier between the player and their actions. Since the holodeck represents the holy grail of gaming, it seems like there are some questions we need to answer.
In order to help sort my thoughts, I e-mailed Dr. Judith Barad, co-author of The Ethics of Star Trek and Professor of Philosophy at Indiana State University and asked her some questions.
GC: Let’s say an ensign is having a particularly bad day in Engineering and when he finally gets free time, he heads to the Holodeck. In the Holodeck, he recreates the Engine Room and vaporizes Geordi and some of his other coworkers with a phaser. How would you view his actions from an ethical perspective? Would it be different if he blew off steam by vaporizing Holodeck-generated Borg or took part in the reenactment of a historical battle?
Dr. Barad: The problem both of the alternatives you name are that they only serve to emphasize the ensign’s violent tendencies. This emphasis makes him more likely to respond in a violent way in real life situations. A person who is likely to respond violently, except perhaps in a very extreme situation, isn’t an ethical person. When one is having a bad day, a very good thing to do is to find a private area and meditate for 20 minutes. If one is having a particular problem with a person, one should first center oneself and then calmly discuss the situation with that person. If there is no reconciliation, then we need to forgive whoever seems to have triggered our anger. I use the word “seems” because we each actually cause our own anger.
Ethics isn’t easy. Anyone who thinks it requires little effort or development is fooling themselves or is ignorant of ethics (or both).
GC: Is there a difference between someone who plays violent video games for escapist entertainment or to experience compelling gameplay or storylines versus someone who uses them to live out
violent fantasies?
Dr. Barad: There may be a psychological difference between the two, with the person who plays violent video games to live out violent fantasies having more of a problem. But there could be a slippery slope between the two motivations. The escapist motivation is less harmful to one’s character, but it certainly doesn’t help one’s character development.
Interesting. I’d like to thank Dr. Barad and I’ll be revisiting this issue with other experts.
For now, I’d like to leave you with “Analytics According to Captain Kirk” wherein we learn:
What factors could increase/decrease the survival rate of red-shirted crewmen?
Besides not getting involved in fights, which usually proved fatal, the crewmen could avoid beaming down to the planet’s surface, which is inherent to their end. However, that could result in a court-martial for failure to obey orders.Besides not beaming down, another factor that showed to increase the survival rate of the red-shirts was the nature of the relationship between the alien life and captain Kirk. When Captain Kirk meets an alien woman and “makes contact” the survival rate of the red-shirted crewmen increases by 84%. In fact, out of Captain Kirks’ 24 “relationships” there were only three instances of red-shirt vaporization.
The caveat to this is when Captain Kirk not only meets the local alien women, but also starts a fight among alien locals. The combination of these events has led to the elimination of 4 crewmembers (3 red-shirts).
On January 26th, 2008 at 7:33 am, Boz wrote:
Regarding Barclay’s holo-aggression, I think there is something to the distinction between blasting aliens, zombies, or even other people - usually “bad guys,” but not always - and blasting the actual people around you.
We’ve heard of cases where gamers have made maps of their schools or other real places. Though I don’t think it should be used as any sign of potential violence, I have to admit it does seem a little creepy.
We may be far from the holodeck experience, but we have games that let us put our faces onto our avatars. The divide between real and virtual is closing, so this is an interesting question you have brought up.