3dworkers

[3dworkers]

Computers and Philosophy (Short 3dwi.scr Analysis)

During a read through of 3d Workers Island, page #153 comes out of nowhere for some and later will continue to prove their point in that scenario. It’s an ambiguously labeled HTML website on geocities with starkly bad grammar. It’s also, as we learn, never really brought up again. There are a couple of theories that are capable of rectifying any confusion in place, however something that juxtaposes so heavily from the rest of the story deserves proper understanding as everything else. In my opinion, the “Computer Philosophy 1. Windows” is one of the first pieces of parallel we get to brace ourselves for throughout a narrative of confusing shifts, twists, and turns. 

Around the time I got to this point in my initial read through, I was puzzled but intuition told me at first glance the grammar would be a callback to a character with similar syntax. That by viewing this, we were peering into what was essentially a later reference, we would be given more clarity then what we first were met with. Which, was a little assumptive of me. Considering that throughout most of 3dwiscr we aren’t given many direct answers, this wasn’t going to be an exception. 

However, I want to break down this short two page sequence, something that lingered on so little that it couldn’t help but catch my attention. It’s easy to surmise that the metaphor here is alluding to our workers. We are looking in at them, and we don’t know what we’ll find or expect. When reading the very first opening line though, we are met with the introduction, windows are perceived as scary here. The writer is showing us abstract ideas and concepts that we haven’t really been personally introduced to ourselves. That plus the grammatical errors, give off a childish atmosphere. The babbling of someone with little to no understanding of what they’re talking about. 

With little elaboration, this still stands to be recognized as something important enough to be added to the whole of the narrative. If you subscribe to the theory that we are viewing from PLawler’s perspective, her access to the internet, is she the one viewing this? Why is she looking at this? It doesn’t match anyway she has written before, so how are we to assume she wrote it? 

I believe that everything we are viewing on this page is a part of the direct obsession we see PLawler have. To grab a little from blog posts she has created, we know she has an unhealthy attachment to the stories that unfold in the plethora of computer screens she owns. Each having a portrait to tell that she is a witness of. It really makes you wonder what her initial obsession was to begin with. Did PLawler know about the horrors beyond the screen? Is that what we’re made to connect, the “part that makes them scary”? It is quite the item to delve into.

Back when I mentioned parallels, this is exactly what I meant. This website, a seeming red herring to the grandiose tale unfolding, could be read as the true back to back of PLawlers story. She finds something, something bad she finds herself responsible for throughout these screensavers, these workers' lives. PLawler does nothing to stop it. Perhaps, even multiple people see it and do nothing to stop it. 

The last phrase and then imagery we are met with is truly the metaphorical kicker here. What maybe drives someone away from looking further into this, yet leaves a haunting memory of it.

“I’m trapped here, and I may never return home.” 

What do we mean? What we can gather begins to form sparse strings of thread at this point, but I believe what this means is a more mental, metaphorical image. Constantly throughout the story we are given the idea of looking, peering in. To be trapped is a statement from multiple angles, such as the philosophical essay suggests. Whether it’s looking in or out, one could be trapped, isolated, or maybe even ignorant. This gives us a lens of multiple characters then. 

Amber, trapped in a repetitive cycle. The forum users, trapped and confined by the rules of the owner. Or maybe even PLawler, trapped with the guilt or even consequence of her failed responsibilities. As a forum moderator, as a witness of the island, or as a mother. All of which, becomes a downfall to everything that was her discovery pages. When do we think about never returning home? Do we think about it when it’s gone, as a form of escapism for something that is out of grasp or may never return to us? Or maybe, we become dependent, paranoid, for when it does. Does PLawler fall into the former or the latter? 

All of which proves to be interesting. And as a last note, the imagery that is the computers at the bottom of the page, including the link to “Back Home” all are interesting as well. Typically, when we see a “Back Home” link, we default to the idea of being sent to a home page of a website, but It should go without saying why in this context, especially of which the last sentence of the page is given, the connotation changes here. While the picture slowly changes, allowing the perspective to shift through itself.

Is it hopeful or fearful?

[3dworkers]

if you think that you’re strong enough, if you think you belong enough