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I was disappointed with the way Berger allows his personal suppositions to dominate his arguments without any basis in either research or the existing literature (and occasionally with no basis is common sense). At one point Berger claims that playing video games means you are not interacting with family and friends; despite that he earlier included a set-up cost analysis for a system with two controllers (for 2 players).
This book is of little academic interest, but may be suitable for media scare-mongering or to back up the dogma of certain interest groups.
Also writes in a rather old-fashioned way .
From repose to the wandering mind and through its disconnects, the subject can feel as though navigating through a metadata atmosphere not unlike a video game interface for the 9 year-old player. Video games are not just a fantasy theater, as some fear, for the furious expression of male adolescent rage fueling new ideologies of terror, misogyny and brutalization throughout the modern world. In our "modern times", some groundbreaking museum venues are beginning to provide a quiet, safe harbor for contemplating and celebrating the best of this new American media, even while acknowledging the fears emanating from among its dark shadows that can be millions of times more [exponentially] powerful than the limitations we've known of the Gutenberg effect. For example, Rochelle Slovin, the Director of the American Museum of the Moving Image (ammi.org), has pointed us along an insightful path beginning with "Hot Circuits: A Video Arcade" 1989, then continuing through "Expanded Entertainment" 1996, "Computer Space" 1998, and " This slim volume by Arthur Asa Berger, a prolific writer, is a serious look at biological, psychological and social significance ands provides a social perspective of sexuality not usually found. For instance, his comments "Lara Croft, scopophilia and the male gaze..." frames a valuable context of sexuality. Let me suggest that Berger in this essay, like too many reporting scholars, doesn't always clearly distinguish between anecdotal references and more organized research statistics. "A neurologist ... has suggested that video games may affect [not effect?] changes in neural pathways in players in a manner somewhat like biofeedback ...". "This 'conditioning' must be seen, of course, as an unintended consequence..." This is highly recommended for critical reading because its sometimes seemingly shallow predispositions do reveal the underlying, crucial, fundamental questions. So, as critical readers of Berger's essay, we need to tiptoe through and dodge around the rhetorical thickets. In summary, we see Berger's essay frequently posits whether video gaming is alienating. His conclusions, anecdotal and otherwise, put into perspective that this is indeed the Question to be centered in the limelight. But the reader can find enough evidence elsewhere in Berger's musings that the power of the enveloping digital lifestyle may in fact be in the connecting, involving and the socializing of shared values. The reader might also look at the "Ultimate History of Video Games" by Steven Kent, 2001 for putting David Grossman's fiery challenge to video game violence (Stop Teaching Our Kids to Kill) into an expanded context. "What-if" in twenty years a 9 year-old kid comfortably uses a common, personal digital tool that is a million times more powerful than that NASA used to put a man on the moon? Let's reflect on the Gutenberg Effect. Victor Hugo might now opine about the invention of our digital lifestyle (instead of the printing press) as "... thought is more imperishable than ever; it is volatile, irresistible, and indestructible. It pervades the air... Now she is a flock of birds, flies abroad to all the four winds of heaven, and occupies at once all the points of air and of space...".
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Berger's compelling examination of the "commonplace" in our culture exposes core American behaviors of consumerism and denial in an entertaining, insightful manner, in tandem with wry and whimsical humor.
Illustrating the book's 36 essays are Berger's own delightful drawings which are reminiscent of Thurber's in their simplicity of gesture.
His concise introduction and conclusion offers the reader background information on semiotics and postmodernist philosophy.
In Bloom's Morning, Berger peels back layer after layer of the "trivial" to reveal the myths of our psyches shrouded in the mundane, opening our minds to the mysteries of our lives.