The Internet and Counter Strike, Then and Now

In the early 90’s, I introduced my sixty something year old father to the internet. For his whole life, he worked in a nontechnical field, a factory no less. For 45 years, the closest he ventured near any technology was when he changed the batteries in the TV remote. He preferred the Farmer's Almanac over the Weather Channel. Back then phones were not yet smart, and home computers were still a new appliance. One afternoon I booted up my desktop to educate my techno reluctant dad on the wonders of the internet. As the computer screen shown brightly with the Windows logo, I said,

 

“This is the internet.”

 

“The whole internet is on that computer?” my dad asked.

 

“Well not this computer. It's just connected to the internet.”

 

“So where is the internet then?”

 

“It’s everywhere. We say it’s ubiquitous.”

 

“I think you mean ambiguous.”

In September 2017, my son, Aidan, and I attended the Electronic Sports League’s Counter Strike Global Offensive Competition at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, New York. I used to be a gamer in the Doom and Quake days, until the day I came into the family room to find my wife, Christine, reading Milton's Paradise Lost.

 

“Where’ve you been?” she asked.

 

I spent the last three hours trying to jump on a ledge to get a blue key. That's when I decided to quit gaming. Now, I never played Counter Strike, but I'm familiar with game theory. As we found our seats in the large stadium, Aidan explained,

 

“The team on the right is Faze Clan. Cloud 9 is on the left. They’re the Americans.”

 

“What’s the dominant strategy?”

 

“There are terrorists, and there are counter-terrorists.”

 

"So the goal is to kill everyone on the other team?"

 

"No, the terrorists set a bomb, and the counter-terrorists have to disarm it."

 

"How come they can all see each other?"

 

"They can't. Only we can see that view. It's ubiquitous."

 

"I think you mean ambiguous."

When my desktop finally completed boot up, I thought I would show my father how email keeps you connected to your loved ones. After a brief demonstration sending and receiving email, my dad asked.

 

"If you log off email, can you still get messages?"

 

"Yes, you get email all the time."

 

"Even if you shut off your computer?"

 

"The email server runs on another computer. When you turn your computer on, it goes out and downloads all your email."

 

"Are you sure? That seems very unsafe."

Aidan and I settled in to watch the best players in the world virtually headshot each other all while an announcer gave us a play by play in a northern British accent. I asked,

 

"How do you get better weapons?"

 

"You play an eco round to save money so you can buy better weapons for the next."

 

"Did you ever find a BFG?"

 

"You don't find weapons. You buy them or take them off dead players."

 

"Why is that guy running with a knife?"

 

"You run faster when holding a knife."

 

"Are you sure? That seems very unsafe."

I figured we would move on to something online that interested my father like a website about gardening. My dad sat on the edge of his chair and looked through the bottom of his glasses as I brought up a website featuring information about victory gardens. I declared,

 

"This is an article with tips from a Master Gardener."

"Do they cover raking up?" my dad asked.

"I don't know. I didn't read it."

"I scratch and bag," he said, "Do they discuss how to use a shovel?"

 

"A shovel?"

 

"You're supposed to put the spade end down. The other end won't work," he offered.

 

"Okay, how about this article about eradicating common garden pests."

 

"Get a can of bug spray and use the edge of the can to squash them."

 

"That's what you do?"

 

"Works every time."

 

Unbeknownst to me, the match was heating up. I sat on the edge of my chair and looked through the bottom of my glasses as the crowd roared. 

"What level are these guys?"

"Master Guardians," Aidan explained.

"How do you rank up?" I asked.

"You scorch and burn," Aidan exclaimed.

"Can you hit someone with a shovel that you made on a crafting table?"

"That's Minecraft, Dad."

"Works every time."

My father never got a computer. He preferred to interact with people face to face. Technology is supposed to make our lives better, more efficient, but lately it has reduced our attention spans to a handful of characters or ten minutes of video. It also made it easier for people to stalk someone. The advanced portrait features on many smart phones ensures that even our selfies are no longer real. In the end, technology has guaranteed that we are now more likely to fall down a set of stairs or stroll into a busy street while tweeting yet another clever high school yearbook quote that will inevitably get us fired from our job.

My father expressed it best decades ago when I asked him why he didn’t want a computer. He said,

“Why would I give so many people that much access to me?”

How right he was.

Editor's Note: Originally posted on March 13, 2018.