Unit 3: “When is the Future?”
Prompt: “We’ve encountered several Big Ideas this week: the sublime, hyperobjects, and the anthropocene. Paste a screencap of your current Universal Paperclips game here, and then connect your playing of the game to one of these Big Ideas. How does the game illustrate—or not illustrate!—one of these concepts?”
Response: I would say that this game illustrates the concept of hyperobjects quite well, utilizing paper clips. The game essentially started out as a fun little paperclip-selling game, which I was surprised to be quite enjoyable. However, the more I progressed with the production and selling of these paper clips, the more I really lost the scale of just how many paper clips I was dealing with. I have never actually laid eyes on more than a few thousand paperclips, but the total number I ended up producing at the time of this screenshot/post was ~1.4 billion, which is utterly inconceivable to me, even while acknowledging the minute size of a paperclip.
Expansion: After first learning of the hyperobject, being confused, and then becoming somewhat overwhelmed by the concept and what it might entail, I have been able to take some more time and consider it. The paperclip game, though theoretical and a fun little game, was an excellent example of a hyperobject. Following this post, I managed to reach well over 50 nonillion paperclips, and was subsequently forced to look outside of earth for materials to continue producing them. Though I knew it was just an imaginary situation, the idea that we have to look toward other planets for resources is utterly jaw-dropping, or at least it used to be. I would say energy is a prime example of a resource we may eventually have to search for away from earth. Fossil fuels are being used up at alarming rates to produce just about every single thing we use on a daily basis. One day, there will not be anywhere near enough to sustain the world’s population, and as such, if we don’t find a renewable energy source that has fewer drawbacks when it comes to its production and consumption than positives it comes with, I would certainly expect the hunt will continue on into the stars.
