Infocult: Uncanny Informatics

Gk. Chesterton's proto-ARG

I've been emailed about "The Tremendous Adventures of Major Brown" (1905), a G. K. Chesteron story, which describes something very much like an alternate reality game. I won't spoil the tale's charms for you, but I recommend it.  And will add that it offers an ARG business model.

Speaking of ARG antecedents, I've already noted several.  Post forthcoming.

ARGs by Jesse Walker

Jesse Walker has published a fine article about alternate reality games over at Reason.  Fine introduction, with thoughtful ruminations and a great clutch of antecedents.

New Atlantis grapples with gaming and flops

The New Atlantis has a new piece criticizing computer gaming. "Playgrounds of the Self" is an odd essay, a sort of swirling, congealing swarm of complaints that skitter across the surface of evidence it can't be bothered to understand.  It grumps and whines instead of assembling a coherent argument.  Christine Rosen, author and one of the Atlantean senior editors, touches on an ambitious suite of historical and reflective sources, none of which actually connect with gaming, and all of which distract us from her total failure to complete a line of thought. 

I wish I could recommend it to the curious and concerned as a useful example of some types of gaming criticism.  But the article isn't typical of anything.  For instance, Rosen has actually looked at some games and even ventured into a gaming store, which some critics avoid doing.  She has also heard of more than one game (although didn't identify playing any one, as far as I can make out).   Her articles toys with the old cyberspace as evil place trope, but doesn't know that such a thing exists, nor does she push it far enough to be interesting or useful. 

Yet I find myself drawn to it, perhaps seduced by its ornery persistence, or my twitchy desire to add links to a ruthlessly unhyperlinked document.  And perhaps somebody else will read into it.  Jesse Walker, for instance, has already posted a good response over at the Reason blog.  Jesse correctly notes Rosen's basic, ignorant blindness to the diversity of pop culture.

But why stop there?  When an article takes up this much of the reader's time, there's some sort of obligation (or schadenfreude) in picking it apart.  Who knows, perhaps this could become a party game.

For example, the article is ostentatiously, yet uselessly learned.  We can gasp that Rosen knows the Martin Guerre story from Montaigne, not just the film (1982)!  She quotes an essay from the 1920s (Samuel McChord Crothers, d. 1927).  Why this one? We're not really supposed to consider that, but only to keep on reading in some degree of awe, apparently.  In fact, "Playgrounds" fairly begs for readers to submit reading suggestions.  Although it plys the old reality/unreality waterways with grim enthusiasm, the essay never looks at any of the key thoughts or thinkers from a twentieth century fairly obsessed with the topic.  Shouldn't there be at least one traditional conservative snarl at pomo?   

Moreover, given her slams at pop culture, I'm not surprised Rosen skips the many science fiction texts treating the subject (please go directly to Phil Dick), but I would have thought she could consider Richard Powers' excellent Plowing the Dark (2000).  Well, there is one bit of science fiction, as she encounters one of the "new Xbox games", Gears of War - so new, in fact, that it hasn't appeared yet (sometime in 2006, probably later in that year).  I envy Rosen her ability to examine games of the future, and wish she would tell us more about her temporal adventures.

The weakness of her evidentiary layer is more obvious in her clumsy handling of gaming literature.  There isn't much there, unsurprisingly.  Nothing on the classic texts of games and play - no Caillois, no Wittgenstein.  No recent and well-known works on digital gaming: Murray, Aarseth, Manovich all elegantly ignored, as is the ludology-narratology debate.  No digital resources, of course, so no blogs, wikipedia entries, download sites, discussion fora.  Game studies as a field simply does not exist for Rosen.  We should therefore not be surprised at her sneering comment about "mere play".

What Rosen does come across, she uses weirdly.  She cites Entertainment Software Association stats about the size of the industry without question, apparently unaware that the ESA is a lobbying agency, and that numbers in this area are notoriously unreliable (although she does go after the ESA later on, when it sounds a positive note about gaming).  "Playgrounds" is sarky about Got Game (2004), but fails to note that it's a business book, advising managers about gamer employees.  For example, At another point Rosen complains about the book's positive spin, but doesn't seem to realize that it is aimed explicitly at readers presumed to be too critical or ignorant of gaming.  Got Game wants to intervent in a preexisting field of debate and discourse - a field which "Playgrounds" seems to have missed.

Rosen misreads James Paul Gee (2003) on several points, starting with the idea that he wants commercial games installed in classes.  As even the most casual reader of Gee notices, he's interested in identifying pedagogically relevant principles of computer-mediated communication (another field Rosen avoids), and arguing that educators should consider applying those to the world of teaching.  This can mean using preexisting games (more on this below), or the design of a variety of digital materials for the classroom (i.e., interfaces to databases of scholarly work, information fluency resources, simulations, courseware, etc).  But computer-mediated teaching and learning is yet another discursive field Rosen refuses to traverse.   Rosen also repeats her discursive error from her discussion of Got Game, seeing Gee's positive tone without recognizing that he, too, is intervening in a discussion of games that is all too dismissive or ill-informed.  As a sidenote, one might wonder about Rosen's collapse of learning to early education, and restriction of the space of learning to the classroom.  What she thinks about education becomes clear later on, and will be discussed below.

Yet Rosen does mention more than a few games, and deserves credit for getting that far.  "Playgrounds" gestures towards Pong and Spacewar, which reflects a nice awareness that computer gaming has a history.  I mentioned earlier that Rosen doesn't get into the cyberspace as pit of social anxieties meme, but that's not entirely fair.  She doesn't link games with terrorism, pedophilia, or copyright violation.  But she does have a keen eye for computer games foregrounding sex.  Well, a historical eye, rather than an up to date one, since she mentions Grand Theft Auto without sipping Hot Coffee.  So "Playgrounds" includes Leisure Suit Larry and Jenna Jameson.  And a local, provincial eye, since Rosen would find finer fodder in Japanese bishōjo games.   Additionally, one might think Rosen would mention the recent rise of Christian didactic computer games, which presumably are more likely to teach sexual self-control, or something like that.

Many games have hidden themselves from Rosen's searching eye, apparently.  While harshing James Paul Gee for suggesting games could be useful for learning, she fails to mention the sorts of games which have already been used, including simulation games, such as Civilization and Sim City.  The Sims surfaces far too quickly, and plays no role in her arguments, despite its enormous sales, influence, and innovation.  In her focus on first-person shooters, Rosen neglects puzzle games - Myst fails to make an appearance, but I recommend Syberia for a start. 

Social gaming barely squeaks in.  Virtual communities barely glance the page, despite a nod towards Howard Rheingold.  So after a squint at massively multiplayer online games, the history of cooperative play, team play, Quake clans, discussion boards, walkthroughs and so on enters the realm of Things Rosen Doesn't Want To Talk About.  See, for example, her desperately retro growl,  that gamers "are committed and aroused. Yet they are physically separated from each other." It's easy to smack that one down, so I'll offer only one response, based on Rosen's rhetoric.  Would Rosen also complain about the distributed, physically isolated Republic of Letters?

The enormous and democratic media productivity of users is similarly invisible in the article.  I imagine Rosen would slam machinime by leading with Red Vs Blue, deeming it sub-Montaigne.  That game players could be anything other than "isolated, childlike," "chubby boy[s]" is not allowed on the "Playgrounds."

And that may bring us to Rosen's ultimate basis for complaint, one grounded in a larger anxiety about digital materials, or culture in general.  There's an old, old conservative fear of cultural behavior changing without appropriate controls (for "appropriate", read "the speaker", or "people the speaker likes").  These games do terrible things in her terrified vision, but perhaps the worst thing is that they don't... teach proper behavior.  They don't instill a keen sense of one's place in society.  They don't teach the penalties of dissidence or rebellion.  Listen to Rosen's William Bennet moment, discussing a fond example from an earlier, nicer, pre-Xbox-and-internet age:

By the beginning of the nineteenth century children were playing games with titles such as “The New Game of Virtue Rewarded and Vice Punished, For the Amusement of Youth of Both Sexes,” where virtues such as Temperance and Honesty were rewarded and Obstinacy and Sloth harshly punished. Games were a structured form of play used to train children in the virtues of a particular society...

So much for the libertarian element of modern conservativism.  Users are using their freedom to make their own choices - how irritating when they choose something one doesn't prefer!    The lesson of Rosen's computer gaming world, should she have a free hand to shape it, would become: obedience.  Behave, little gamers, and get back to work.  Sit up straight, while you're at it. 

But instead of teaching us Hogarthian obedience lessons, computer games often let users pick their own path.  We work through the implications of our choices in gameworlds.  This is not a utopian statement, but a description of the field.  There is a generation of reflection about this, available in both printed and digital formats; I commend that body of critique to Rosen.  But I suspect the problem for her is at least political fear as wilfull ignorance.  As such, "Playgrounds" is an artifact which may connect with some policymakers, and hence may return to public view.

In honor of her evocation of earlier ages, I'll save a last word for this Crothers chap, beloved of Rosen:

Try as hard as we may for perfection, the net result of our labors is an amazing variety of imperfectness. We are surprised at our own versatility in being able to fail in so many different ways.

The alternate Hugo awards

Kim Newman offers a ceremony from an alternative world, where science fiction had its Hugo, but not Gernsback:

Born in 1802, Victor Marie Hugo is little-remembered for his comparatively rare excursions into fiction, though connoisseurs rate highly his 1862 dystopian vision, Les Misérables, in which everyone lives unhappily under the jackboot of the tyrannical Frère Énorme ...

Paul: ... and, of course, for younger readers, there's the enchanting tale of a gypsy girl, her pet goat and a flying alien from another dimension, The Jet-Pack of Notre Dame.
Early Fan Art by Toulouse-Lautrec

Kim: But Hugo's real achievement was his founding, in 1879, of the quarterly periodical Histoires Étonnaments, whose first number modestly bore the legend 'le journal meilleur de fiction-scientifique dans le monde entire' and featured the crude, vigorous adventure writings of Jules Verne, Alexandre Dumas, and Eugene Sue, plus poetry on an f-s theme by Arthur Rimbaud and a cover painting of a brass rocketship, an angry octopus from Saturn and a swooning mademoiselle with a fishbowl on her head by the teenage prodigy, Henri Toulouse-Lautrec...

Getting that Flickr badge

I've installed a cluster of tiny photos on the right menu bar, a/k/a a Flickr badge.  Let's see how this Web 2.0 exercise goes.  It's pretty, and adds a sliver of added personalization.  I'm also enjoying the emergent patterns across images.

How to do it?  Steve spotted this good how-to.  Typepad has also produced a new thing, another list type, which should make this even easier.

China and the APA align on game fear

Worries about computer gaming continue.  We're at the cultural anxiety stage now.  No sign of panic, yet.

China is restricting multiplayer gaming sessions to three hours apiece, according to a story linked from BoingBoing.  And it's going to be software as well as policy, this October:

"This timing mechanism can prevent young people from becoming addicted to online games," Xiaowei Kou, the deputy director of the general administration of press and publication (GAPP), said during a press conference in Beijing.

Meanwhile, the American Psychological Association recommends that game companies cut down on violence.  Representations of violence, that is.

Solitary Mobility vs. Mobile Sociality

A good post, Solitary Mobility vs. Mobile Sociality, distinguishes different forms of mobile technology over at Lifeblog.  The author points out the variety of social tools at the hands of cell phone users.  I'd throw playlist sharing into the balance, but the basic point is very useful.

(via Smartmobs)

Gorgeous Star Diaries

Metafilter is sometimes generous, as with this thread on bibliophilic art projects.  Paula created and Flickrized this book art tribute to Lem, along with other imaginary book projects. Follow the links from the discussion thread for more book-fetish goodness.

Web 2.0, a quick refresher.

Web 2.0, a quick refresher.  These notes are in progress.  Of course.
  Web 2.0 marks a shift from the Web model where we focus on single documents and their accumulation into sites.  Instead we dwell in: microcontent, services, and moving with pieces across multiple sites.
  Some concepts usually attached to Web 2.0: stigmergy.   The web as a place for building stuff.   Sharing content, and socialization stemming from that.  Open source, or something close to it, like open content, shareable APIs, RSS, and open standards.
  The usual examples and suspects: blogs, wikis, Flickr, del.icio.us, 43things, YASNs, podcasting, vlogging, RSS.  Open APIs and projects therefrom, like Google Maps' (check out this Flash version).
  I'd add a few other Web 2.0 suspects and sources to this now standard mix: mobile devices making and using microcontent (cell phones, PDAs, iPods, still cameras, video recorders, DVD players, etc).  Alternate reality games, which only exists insofar as their content is broken up, shoved around, and discussed across a bunch of fora.  Discussion boards, to the degree that content pieces are addressable (can I link to your post?) and open to external services (can I blog your post?).  Dynamic Web design, to some extent, and Web pages drawing on multiple content pieces, like linking to someone else's banner, sucking down updated content into a frame, ad services (although see below).

About that Web 1.0/2.0 break: it would be good for someone to write about Web 2.0 antecedents.  As noted above, some Web 1.0-ish page design actually uses 2.0 approaches, like microcontent drawn in from other sources, services to push updated items, and so on.

Schools, Web 2.0, and the specter of desire

I was thinking about Arnaud's  application of his Web 2.0 criteria to del.icio.us. It's a bracing and elegant approach.  We can join in celebrating the parts which meet his criteria, but note the glimpse of the near future in what does not:

• Data Outside - NO, there is no service to either import or subscribe to bookmark feeds. This would be useful;
• Single Identity - NO;
• MicroWeb - NO, the service does not integrate with other services;
• Wild MicroContent - NO;

Where does this connect with education?  If your head isn't full of Web 2.0ismo, go to my next post.
  Historically we've seen the established practices of edublogging by students, teams, classes, teachers as instructors, teachers as researchers, and multiblog seminars.  Politically Gardner and Will remind us to pay attention to continuous demographic shifts, as they push what are students bring to the table in their behavior, and what skills instructors need to catch up to, er, communicate with them.
  John Pederson gives us a glimpse into the complexity of the intersection between our two domains.  The new platforms and practices open up terrains for desire:

I spent 3 hours last night thinking about http://www.43things.com, only applying it specifically to education. Or a school. Or a region. Or something. It’s so simple. “I want to learn x”. Pretty soon, 10 other people are interested. “I’m interested in teaching x”.

  Yes, I do intend to evoke critical theory's desire school - but in a moment.  For now, note what a break this passage is for most considerations of technology in schools.  It's not about storing and delivering documents, obtaining and protecting content, reproducing the class and department structures, restoring the Ozymandian authority of the pedagogue, driving students back to books, adding a human dimension to the chilly mechanical, regaining their attention, or fighting for brand and relevance.  Pederson's rumination casts us back to some of the desires which knitted learners and teachers together in the first place, and still draw us into the same space. Listen to the fluidity of that swarm of desires, and think about how the Web 2.0 platform easily enables them to embody and proliferate.
  Such desires are productive, constructive.  We don't enter the classroom and await for Freire-free content to pour into our heads; instead we post, comment, search, and agglutinate into clusters aimed at getting knowledge.  We publish our thoughts and findings in venues more finely grained, rapidly responsive, and far more broadly accessible than the scholarly paper or presentation, from wikis in process to sequences of archived blog entries.  The open, social nature of the new Web means this experience is shareable, and hence replicable, and also driven by desire - I can point to a multiblog, multicampus discussion, then add to it in another entry, garnering feedback from still other audiences., a thing not at all possible with face-to-face classrooms or BlackBoard.
  Does this sound familiar?  Yes, it echoes many dreams for instructional technology from the Web, and the net before that.  This post deliberately echoes many liberatory strands of thought about learning, hence my Freire note earlier, and my emphasis on production (as construction, hint hint).  What's different is the combination of new architectures, practices, and existing examples.
  On that critical theory echo: I'm thinking Deleuze and Guattari, rather than Lacan.  Desire mobilizes materials involved in learning, building social machines.  And this is where we return to politics, and dangers, as these machines support and block desires... such as the massive eductional machines within which we now work.  This is a clear avenue for important work on technology, learning, and critical theory.
  And I probably don't need to do more than gesture towards well-known larger problematics of surveillance, copyright.  But I want be impatient about the discussion so far, and to throw open the real possibilities of Web 2.0 for the .edu world.

And back to today's child minding -