In the Ted Talk, futurist, Raford discusses to importance of video games in today’s society. Already, Raford believes that video games are going to become the platform through which tomorrow’s social battles will be fought and the source of recruitment for the strangest and possibly most impactful social movements of the future. He believes that video games of the future will be run by what he calls “gamecults,” and that they plan on creating games like these:

• Druidica, a Minecraft-like nature game designed to restore damaged ecosystems and preserve indigenous knowledge.
• Walkabout, a Rust-like survival game for refugees designed to encourage skill sharing, interdependence and mutual aid linked to scriptural messages of tolerance and compassion.
• Temple, a pray-to-earn game, linked to a network of nondenominational meditation spaces where players can perform coordinated acts of care to level up on the good works board. A kind of, decentralized church of kindness, powered maybe by HOLY coin.

All he knows is that something like this is coming, and with today’s attention to things like the economy, politics, and more, game companies will pounce on this opportunity. He ends the talk with two important questions: ill the games of tomorrow be games of subjugation and domination? Or inspiration and liberation?

I liked this talk because as a pretty decent video game fan and a lover of learning, a future like this gets me excited. I think that there are so many endless possibilities in a future like this one. It would also be a great addition in schools to help with modern-day learning.

My ideas for the Unit 2 project is to either talk about the importance of the evolvement of the internet on society and the societal changes with posting on social media. The evolution of the internet has changed society in many different ways which is noticeable within the obvious generational changes. This generation grew up with a ton of useful technology that we use on a day-to-day basis, however, our parents did not. In terms of societal changes with posting on social media, I personally believe that in the early days of social media it was all about aesthetics, however in recent years this has changed to posting aesthetically, posting about societal changes, posting about politics, posting about culture, etc.