Jai Sharma's articles

So here we are, on the cusp of a technological revolution. With mobile phones getting smaller, turning into mini computers and sites like Facebook and Twitter slowly replacing old (relatively new) technology – email and sms. Not being conceited but I’ve always considered myself a popular person, well I guess not necessarily popular but not Billy no mates. I generally see myself as a conversationalist however looking at my Facebook friend’s list has got me thinking about the state of conversation.

I have over 400 friends (maybe less after this blog) according to my social friend finder – Facebook. This got me excited, “yaaaaaaay look how many friends I have, new friends, old school friends and random friends met on random nights out”. This made/makes me feel like I am in touch with the world. I am able to speak/write to my family in Trinidad without ever leaving dull and cold England :D (I’m not sure if I’m benefitting – I guess it’s the cheaper option). However aside from the time aspect this is the same as sending a letter. On the other hand the more I thought about it the more I flew the flag for Facebook – it allows me to send messages at a faster pace and I get to see pictures, I feel more involved in that person’s life – hence I feel closer………… hmmmmmmm this is where I think technology starts to work against us.

With easier means of communication, minute by minute updates of when people have used the toilet to the constant barrage of new uploaded pictures I feel that technology is killing the art of conversation. What I mean by this is that since it’s easier to send someone a message and simply comment on a status or picture, the information being transferred/communicated is slowly degrading.

Maybe it’s just me, maybe it’s the way I converse with my digital counterparts, but I’ve always preferred to speak to someone in person rather than over the phone, or I’d rather speak to them on the phone instead of sending them an email/message.

I am in contact with more people than ever in my life – old school and uni friends for example, which is great… However I recently deleted my Facebook sent messages and I was disappointed in the way I converse and more shockingly that this pattern was slowly creeping into my other conversations. I was contacting people with the same simple questions such as “what’s up?” and “how u doing, what’s new?” This is fine but how valuable is this conversation???? Do these open ended generic questions really bring me closer to my digital counterpart?? I could have a good ‘how you doing, what you been up 2’ chat with an old school friend whilst looking at pics to see what they have done with their life and I feel like this fills the void for meeting that individual. I don’t get the urge to catch up with someone since I know what they are doing and what/where they have been.

I feel my inner friend’s circle is ever present and growing since I personally need that human interaction. In spite of this, my outer friend’s circle is ever decreasing and becoming lost in the Facebook world of pretend hellos. I don’t mean pretend hellos in the sense of fake greetings; I just mean that it is so easy to connect/contact people online that it seems that people don’t necessarily think about the quality of information being transferred.

I think it’s good to leave it here so please leave any comments if you would like to discuss this further.

So here we are again…… fighting to save humanity….again – well in the ISA’s eyes.

You join Sev and his team of ISA troopers on Helghan – the infamous Helghast planet. Single player sees you fight your way through hordes of enemies, tanks and fighter plane/people things. The Helghan planet provides a beautiful arena from terrain varying from the standard grey war torn cities, alien psychedelic jungles and even to a snow blizzard wasteland that reduces visibility drastically.

The story and characters have developed slightly from the last game however it still falls short of anything special but do not let this put you off because Killzone 3 still provides you with some of the best battle scenes and scenarios to date. It’s refreshing to play a war game that actually makes you feel like you’re in a war. If it’s the side battles occurring in the background or RPG troops constantly pinning you down – you generally feel like every battle could end the war. There are better single player games out on the market however none of these match the aesthetically pleasing graphics in this game. If it’s the 10000000000000ft robot in the background, sharp lighting and shading or just the sheer brute and detailed melee killings – oh yes the brutal melee killings. Long gone are the days of simply pressing your R3 button to watch the butt of a gun meet with your enemies face to results in a pathetic and less then honourable killing. Now we have Sev pushing thumbs into eyes and arms getting hacked off. A lot of fun and something that won’t I won’t tire of, even in multiplayer.

Ohhh the infamous multiplayer. It is back with the standard Warzone game mode which pitches Helghans against ISA in an ever changing game mode. I feel the classes are more balanced and with the ability of different perks/characters the battlefield is a place for a team player rather than a rogue warrior. However you can still play like Rambo and do well.

Killzone 3 have added an Operations online mode. This sees two teams fighting for position or objectives with one team always defending and the other always attacking. I found this mode a lot of fun and really counts on team play in order to proceed with each objective.

Overall Killzone 3 is the best in the series, with bigger levels, polished graphics and enhance online mode. Oh did I mention it has a botzone and co-op campaign. This game I will be playing for days on end.

So this is life…….a cross between different paradoxes, cultural and religious beliefs. Where do we start, in which direction do we go??

I don’t intend for this to be a negative article however I do fear that most people would perceive this as negative….. I’m a scientific minded individual and have always approached things with the same question – “why”………Why anything? Why everything?

I was born into a Hindu household which is similar to Buddhism – in the sense of karma and life is eternal etc – sorry if I have offended any Hindus or Buddhists with the quick generalisation but you are meant to be forgiving people….

Anyway, I’ve never been religious and always felt that there is some greater power or bigger picture.  This can be best compared to the times when people once thought that they are in the centre of the universe and the earth was flat. So I’ve always approached everything from an analytical perspective but it got to the point where I think I was missing the entire picture. For example I got so excited when they were first building the Large Hadron Collider – “The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is a gigantic scientific instrument near Geneva, where it spans the border between Switzerland and France about 100 m underground. It is a particle accelerator used by physicists to study the smallest known particles – the fundamental building blocks of all things. It will revolutionise our understanding, from the minuscule world deep within atoms to the vastness of the Universe.” [http://public.web.cern.ch/public/en/lhc/lhc-en.html] I started to imagine the different particles and atoms they would find. It wasn’t until I saw someone playing with a yoyo that it got me thinking that mankind will NEVER find the meaning or big picture in life; and yes a yoyo – the up down string thing. I remember how popular yoyos were when I was growing up but the fad eventually died out. I also remember my mum telling me how big they were in her time – and its this pattern I’m talking about – this repeating pattern, through out life history repeats itself. I have heard this saying numerous times but it wasn’t until I applied this logic that things started to become clear. Like fashion, TV shows, games, world changing events, war; they all repeat themselves in the same manner and this is what I mean when I refer to the scientific pursuits of our new world.

So this bring me to my point about how/why we will never find the real answer to life – this is because we are looking in the wrong places, or put more correctly we are seeking for answers with the wrong questions. I studied genetics at university – this involved stuff about the cell and DNA and how the molecules spoon each other.  For example if you look at the history of the understanding of how we work and what makes us tick: 1st we discovered a cell, this was a major scientific break through but when scientists couldn’t explain how cells controlled us they built bigger and more expensive equipment. This lead to the discovery of cellular molecules, but with a little more technology and bigger machines we now have genes, then DNA, theeeeeeeeen base pairings then… well you get my point – the same thing can be illustrated going the other way round by looking at the universe, bigger telescopes = longer distances which in turns gives us new hypothesis about life and the beginning. I see the same pattern through out our scientific history… obviously all these ground breaking theories have given us the ability to look further into our paths in life and help theorize further predictions but that’s it really!! It allows us to only look further into our own bubble/existence/membrane or whatever you want to call all of this…. Hmmm it seems as though that I’m getting slightly side tracked  lol

So this brings me to my point on how we can’t find the real answer we are looking for, as we are on a downward spiral of human discovery. The harder we look the further the rabbit hole goes – for example most scientist agree that infinite things exist – then it bamboozles me when these same scientist turn around and say I have found the smallest particles EVER – but now I fear I am verging on self gratification of our species.

Ok I guess this is enough for my first blog, even though this was more of a rant, sorry if people found it boring and sorry if it doesn’t make sense, half way through this blog I realized I’m fooling myself trying to get my message across in one blog – I can go on for houuuuuuuuuuuuuuurs and I’ve just scrolled up and realized how long this blog is.

So if anyway would like to fire up a discussion I’m more than happy to debate until my keyboard breaks…..