Mind Wide Open
Everything in the book was informative and interesting. As I read the book and learned about what the chemicals in our head cause us to feel, I reflect back on parts of my life and realize I could write about anyone of these chapters. I wanted to write this over laughter and the first part will be but include references from the conclusion. It will touch on the way Steven Johnson learned to recognize, or taking notice of, the chemicals and the effects they have in his brain. This is because after finishing the book I found myself doing the same.
When I was reading Johnson’s findings about laughter and what some of his experiences were, I found even myself laughing out loud to parts, often getting up to go read the passage to my roommate so we can laugh together. Then as I read further into the chapter and started to learn about the social implications of laughter and our almost innate need to laugh that it started to really sink in how important laughter really is.
The chat group was of particular interest to me, I found it interesting that no one even had a chuckle to themselves or their neighbor. Although, I look at today with the internet social networking sites, and they lack a real social bond, it is more of a way to show of how many people you know or met. Then I remembered a group of PhD students who did a study on the effects of online gaming, in particular World of Warcraft, and its ability to utilize the social networking power of the internet more efficiently than any static webpage like Facebook or MySpace. This game is similar to the F2F/chat group in some ways, but different in others. The group doesn’t meet F2F in real life but in a virtual world, they still have the same chat features over the computer, but they utilize software to allow them to speak to each other in real time as well. Players of this game opted to use this 3rd party software to build bonds between each other much closer than if it were just the written text. Friendships that eventually result into F2F meetings, even marriage and funerals have become part of the game. There are stories of couples meeting in the game realizing how close they live together meeting in real life to eventually go on to be married.
As for the funeral, and Johnson’s darker side of laughter, there was an in-game funeral held for a player who died in real life, her friend logged on to her character so her online friends could pay their respects. They posted times for visitation on the internet, a group of opposing faction players read this and ambushed the funeral killing several players at the funeral. The aggressors recorded their actions and made a short film of their exploits that they released on the internet bragging about their achievement. It was widely viewed and downloaded, and generated an equal array of reactions from other players. To me something that can invoke such a wide array of responses and emotions has tremendous marketing power and it shows, World of Warcraft is the most successful online multiplayer game ever.
Johnson observes his mental state more acutely, I found myself doing the same the other night. I had to be a witness in a mock trial; I was supposed to be the father of a 13 year old girl who was kidnapped and murdered. As I was reading the deposition to myself outside the courtroom it was getting hotter in the building and my stomach had butterflies. My anxiety level had increased significantly, it was then I thought back to the book, my adrenalin levels had increase, I thought to myself “it was just the chemicals in my head causing this feeling”. I immediately started laughing to myself after realizing I had just made my first real connection with what was going on in my brain after reading the book. My friend, who also happened to be the prosecuting attorney immediately asked me not to laugh while I was on the stand “You are suppose to be someone who just lost his daughter and wife…”
I’d be interested in reading Jerry Fodor’s “The Modularity of Mind” next.