The Legend of Blogging: A Link Between Books

     Throughout the three books we've read this summer (I read The Shallows), there has been a recurring theme, or message, or whatever you want to call it. A theme I saw in common between AOTD, The Shallows, and Brave New World is that a change in mediums greatly changes many aspects of society and thought. Postman saw how views of information and culture changed when television was introduced to the world. Carr observed the process of our brains being reshaped by the Internet. Finally, Huxley told a story about how radically twisted society became when the way humans are born was changed.

     I think that changes in mediums do bring massive changes in certain situations. To bring in other examples across media to support this, let's take a look at the world of The Legend of Zelda. (Warning: I may digress a bit here) The first Zelda titles used a 2D gameplay style, meaning that there is an x-axis (left-right) and a y-axis (up-down) that characters can move across. This made exploration easier, and allowed for complex puzzles and hidden details everywhere. Then, The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time was released. It was the first 3D Zelda game. In the 3D world, the meanings of the movement axes changed. Left, right, up, and down had to change to west, east, north, and south. The new z-axis was the only thing that could use true up and down. This 3D world also changed the way the game itself was played. Before, in 2D, you just had to point your sword in one of four directions and hit a button. Slice, pow, boom, the enemy's dead. Now, in 3D, the locations of characters is more clearly defined. There's no more point-and-hack gameplay anymore, as you have to carefully aim your weapons toward the exact space your enemy is. There are a lot of things that change when you transition to a new medium, and sometimes the changes aren't even for the better, which is what I think the three authors were trying to show.

If you want to hear someone else talk about how Zelda changed from 2D to 3D, watch this video. It's funny. There's cussing. And while we're talking about Zelda, check out another cool video by Smooth McGroove. He does acapella arrangements of video game music, which if you think about it, is a change of normal music creation. And thus, my final credit blog post was finished, and the world was calmed.