[Jacob Geller, Ace Combat] I Am Turning Myself Into a Video Game Plane

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• HarkMahlberg@kbin.earth ⁨18⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  There's a really fantastic YouTube comment that I don't know if I'll ever find again but NewPipe made it easy to copy it's content, so here it is.

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  When I left high school 27 years ago, all I wanted to do was be a pilot. I went to flight school and got a commercial pilot's licence just in time for 9/11 to happen and end that career before it started. In the years since, one of the things that I've studied is the cultural phenomenon of cybernetics (which is a relatively new term for a positively ancient human behaviour).

  Humans have an exceptional ability to concieve of our self extending past the physical matter that makes up human biology; it's probably the most critical tool we have as a species to develop and use complex technology. The whole idea that "the sword is an extension of the swordsman's arm" isn't a bit of fiction or flowery metaphor; it's exactly how humans psychologically and neurologically process how we use technology. The glasses that I wear aren't a piece of plastic and glass external to my self, they are as much a part of my system of vision as my eyeballs or my visual cortex. Remove them, and I feel their absence like a lost limb.

  It isn't computerized implants under the skin that makes a human into a cyborg, it's the psychological process that incorporates human-created ideas and objects into one's identity. I sit behind the wheel of my car, and I don't percieve of myself as a lump of flesh within an external machine. The machine becomes an extension of my will, my mobility, and my interactions with the world. I don't percieve the vibrations of the seat against my skin and bones, I feel the friction of the tires against the road. I don't think about turning the steering wheel to change directions the same way I don't think about the microflexing of my abdominal muscles to maintain ballance as I turn my head while walking. The line between the biochemical mass and the mechanical machine blurs in my consciousness untill I literally feel the pain of a tree branch scraping against the paint on the door.

  The human consciousness is incredibly plastic and can (and regularly does) embody things beyond it's biological self, usually without our awareness or explicit intent to do so. Loosing your phone feels like you're loosing the fingers on a hand. Getting disconected from the internet can make you feel like you've lost a physical sense, like suddenly being blind or deaf. It would be an absolute "boomerism" to say that this generation is weak without their technology, but approach someone from an older generation and take away all their writing utensils and say they can never make a mark on paper ever again and watch them panic. It's not a weakness, it's how human psychology has evolved to maximize and optimize our use of tools: to make those tools the extension of the self.

  And Ace Combat and video games are not the first time we have made these tool-extended selves for purely entertainment. This is the same psychological mechanism behind all sport. The plane is an extension of yourself in Ace Combat, the same way the bat is an extension of the baseball player's arms, the same way the football player's pads become a second skin, the same way a thrown ball or stick becomes an extension of the ancient olympian's self. It's the same way we feel the thrill of victory or the sting of defeat when your favourite professional sports team does or doesn't get a higher number on your TV screen. Selfhood and identity  are complicated things, and they don't end where your skin meets the air.

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