Comments on: The Future of Humanity is White and Male (Again)

By: Juan

Juan — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 16:02:42 +0000

^^^^
i wuv woo =p

By: ripsconscullmin

ripsconscullmin — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 09:29:11 +0000

I’m troubled by that sampling of the people chosen for so many reasons. Whether it was serious or in jest (for publicity), more thought should have been put into the choice of participants. One can only hope the remainder of the list is better.

Note: Now that I think about it, Mission Genesis may not be the show that was referred to in the previous posts. That show was about 6 clones (3 males, 3 females) searching for a new home for humans after we were wiped out by a virus. Interestingly enough, they were in possession of a “gene bank” that (if I remember correctly) contained samples of every human alive at the time, despite the fact that we had “colonies” on planets besides Earth.

By: ripsconscullmin

ripsconscullmin — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 08:43:47 +0000

The name of the show was Mission Genesis (here in the US) and Deepwater Black in other countries. It was loosely based on a series of books written by Ken Catran.

By: Juan

Juan — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 00:39:14 +0000

I’ll let ya know when I do. Has been driving me crazy all day long when I tried to think about what the name was.

By: M

Thu, 02 Jul 2009 19:32:42 +0000

Yea, I agree that a project like that should be more diverse, but not only in terms of different Americans, but people from every continent.

By: nojojojo

nojojojo — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 17:06:16 +0000

Hi Jed!

I think you’re right about the Gamasutra article; I read it too fast. -_- It’s hard to find demographics re the race of players (or at least buyers) in the game industry; not sure why. I haven’t seen any studies from the ESA or other big orgs. Gender, but not race.

By: nojojojo

nojojojo — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 16:58:54 +0000

Juan,

If you could remember that show’s name, I will love you forever — because I think I remember it and I had the same reaction. (”WTF, we don’t get to survive except as $%^ing breeders?”) But I can’t remember the name!!

By: Jed

Jed — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 16:26:14 +0000

Good points, but I wanted to nitpick one specific item:

That Gamasutra article about the study of gamer ethnicity is very confusingly phrased, but I’m pretty sure that what they’re saying is that 50% of the black and Hispanic people surveyed in the 18-24 age group were PS2 owners, not that 50% of the PS2 owners were black or Hispanic.

When the article says “black respondents [age 25-34] came out ahead in PS2 ownership,” I’m pretty sure that they mean that a higher percentage of black respondents had PS2s than the percentage of white and Hispanic respondents, rather than (as their phrasing seems to imply) that a higher percentage of respondents were black than were Hispanic or white.

(PS: In a quick search, I can’t immediately find anything about what the survey meant by “Hispanic.”)

By: Juan

Juan — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 03:23:55 +0000

That and the future shouldn’t be amazingly american.

I thought it was one of the coolest things when I first heard about it, then I thought about the sort of people probably selected and it just reminded me of the usual makeup of science fiction plots like these. In fact it almost fits it perfectly, i.e. the last vestiges of humanity being mostly white and the only people of colour are women. I think I remember at least two shows like that geared towards a younger/teen demographic. One of them I think was on the scifi channel when the station first got started.

Can’t wait to read the rest of your series.

By: Sally

Sally — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 03:01:20 +0000

Disturbingly like the just-released-for-Canada-Day list of “10 Iconic Canadians” whose photos were shown in a survey to determine how well Canadians know “their” culture. 7 white men, 1 Metis man, 1 white woman, 1 black woman.