This is a follow-on post from my last one on the reading this week Ten Dreams of Technology where one aspiration is that of symbiosis with technology that it might enhance our normal capacities as humans. I mentioned a game in that last post too, Deus Ex: Human Revolution, a game I’m revisiting recently with newfound perspectives in technology and it’s place within society and culture. Continue reading
Ten Dreams of Technology
This article here. Symbiosis is something I daydream of. The closest I’ve come to enacting that dream is by playing Deus Ex (Human Revolution to be precise, an excellent game too). The story of Human Revolution is based around the insurgency of ‘pure’ humans that have no opted to have any kind of cybernetics installed, a concept mentioned in the reading. Continue reading
My weekend!
I spent the weekend as Media at Shadowloo Showdown, and wrote on my experience there. Check it out on my other blog! I found the idea of a scale free network operated within the event environment interestingly enough; the way the venue was setup didn’t create one central hub of activity, rather people were spread out and formed their own little networks within the network. This is rather unique to most other gaming type events where you usually have one big stage that demands everyone’s attention.
The first piece of content we’ve produced is also online, check that piece out here! I worked with friend and Journalism student Joshua Clark who did the write up while I focused on filming and taking photographs. I’ll be working on a video over the week from the footage I have, and hopefully have it up by Saturday.
Doing that meant I didn’t have any time to work on Uni assignments over the weekend so prepare to have a handful of blog posts put up this week.
Gift Economy
I’ve heard this term before, but that’s about it, I’ve never actually known what it meant. Combined with an idea I discussed earlier this semester, “Content is not king”, the Gift Economy seemed to fit right into the Internet as a huge network. Where content and information is perfectly accessible and totally free it’s the services that are much more valuable; since content moves so freely it’s hard to demand money for it.
Music, movies and TV shows are a prime example. Online most are available for free through piracy or simply Peer to Peer sharing with others you might know, however this can be troublesome and requires some knowhow to be able to access the content easily. Take services like Netflix, Spotify and the like and you’ve got reliable, streamlined access to the content that requires a very basic knowledge of navigating web pages and a subscription fee. These kind of services, being legal, generally have more reliable financial and technological support too which makes them very enticing for the majority of users.
I think my main take away from the discussion of the Gift Economy was the reinforcing that services are the priority nowadays.
Actor-Network Theory
I’m going to try and explain this as simply as I can because everything I read up on it made it either very confusing, or outright said the theory is still disputed, which is fair enough. First here’s a video that best helped me understand the concept:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X2YYxS6D-mI Continue reading
Oculus Rift @ PAXAus 2013
“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”
It’s a bit past due but I’ve been meaning to write something on the Oculus Rift since I first got to experience it at PAX Australia this year. It was nothing short of magical, and the implications are mind blowing.
Gaming & Internet Culture; A Multi-sensory Experience
A friend put it perfectly in a tweet just the other day:
https://twitter.com/HarrisonTheFan/status/385352799199838208
I feel like this encapsulates my feelings towards both of those things. As you’ve probably seen in my past blogs I really like the culture of the internet, even the dark bits of it. It makes for a psychology that’s so chaotic yet colourful and beautiful at the same time. Hence why I enjoy YouTube Poops so much; they offer a succinct, humorous, and accessible way of defining the environment of the internet.
I feel the same toward gaming for similar reasons, yet quite different reasons. Modern video games are a truly magnificent amalgamation of past mediums. Elegantly weaved together they don’t only tell stories of characters, but of entire worlds, and galaxies. They offer a space to explore, not simply a narrative to obediently follow along. Video games create a space for a player to have their own take on the world, or completely submit to it’s rules in an act of roleplaying.
Narratology vs. Ludology
During my continued adventures in learning about video game study I came across this ongoing debate. I was immediately curious because I love – seriously, LOVE – diffusing conflict using the power of raw logic. I won’t be able to ‘solve’ it per se considering how ill knowledged I am when it comes to the field, so it’s something I’m very interested in following. For now I’d like to map out my understanding of it.
Lev Manovich: Database as Symbolic Form
I had a read of this extract but I must say it was a bit confusing. I’m not entirely sure what Manovich was getting at apart from his suggestion that Narratives and Databases are at odds with one another. I gather Manovich is discussing these things in terms of storytelling and narrative, and how “New Media” prefers a more non-linear approach to it via databases and user input. Even then it doesn’t seem to coalesce into any particularly strong ideas.
I did like the bit about video games though, and the fact Will Wright was quoted, and a thought that came from that section was how competitive video game players learn the game’s algorithms to try and beat their opponents. Quake in particular is a great example, being a legacy competitive game, where the game’s core mechanics were so familiar to the players they could manipulate them in ways that seemed superhuman to more casual players. Similarly Brood War was infamous for some of it’s poor design aspects – such as maximum selection limits, and micromanagement – that when perfected, were a sign of true mastery.
…but yeah, still confused about that reading there.
Technological Determinism
This is an interesting topic primarily because I’ve received two perspectives over the semester; Communications Histories and Technologies leans towards the anti-Determnism argument pointing out that we do indeed have control over technology and when we think otherwise it is due to a lack of knowledge surrounding it. Adrian pointed out during the symposium however that Technology can have control over us whether it’s to do with the way we travel or how we approach the creative side of things ie. physical limitations of the technology.
The argument that really got to me was when Adrian supposed that technology has become a part of us, a part of what makes us up as beings. This was intriguing to say the least, and with some reasoning I think I could agree. His primary example was that of the invisible waves of energy that we are constantly exposed to namely wireless internet signals, radio waves, even perhaps surveillance signals we are unaware of. Even if you travelled to the centre of Australia or a desert in the middle of nowhere there will more than likely be some trace of a wireless signal passing through your body, even if it is just latent satellite transmissions drifting into the atmosphere.
This is not exactly a strong argument for Determinism over our agency and everyday decisions but those invisible waves are physical oscillations in the air, electrical impulses that affect the atmosphere enough that they can be received by other technologies from hundreds of miles away. For at least the idea that technology is separate – a them and us situation – this blurs the line. The argument for whether technology determines our very behaviour is not entirely addressed by this though.
The thing is how can we claim that technology is entirely under our control when any technical invention is considered a technology. Right down to a neanderthal tying a sharp rock to a stick to fashion a spear, technology is almost ubiquitous. There may be a hidden assumption here though: we choose to live within a society that is built of technologies, what if we were to live without any kind of technical invention? Say we up and left our homes tomorrow morning with nothing, not even our clothes, and chose to survive in the wilderness with just our bodies as our only tool. We could, most likely, survive even if only just.
Do we then have to cordon off the idea of Technological Determinism to civilisation? We could very well choose to live in the wilderness and survive sans technology, but to survive within a civilisation without technology is, as far as I am aware, not possible. The very presence of technology influences how we would be treated if we tried to sleep on the street or if we tried to hunt for food from a farm. I figure then that Technological Determinism holds true under the broad assumption that living in the wilderness is not considered a valid lifestyle.