Game Culture 04: Reconfiguring Interior and Exterior Lives

In old days, the hearth was the natural center of the home. It provided the only source of heating and lighting when the day turned into evening, and gathered the household in one room, before going to bed. The hearth has in modern times been replaced by the first the radio, then the television. Most living rooms are equipped with a large television screen. But how does the modern hearth reconfigure our lives?

When I grew up, the television was placed in the back of our living room, right in the middle, with chairs and sofas pointing towards it. My sister and I could watch it whenever we liked, though not too loud, and we had to move as soon as my mother or father wanted to see stupid, boring adult-television. There was a hierarchy connected to the television set. Our television did not just provide our family with entertainment, but also a political agenda. And we were not the only family. Today's readings describes how every family adjusts themselves to the television in various ways dependent on their culture.

But what about the game console? Here a strong distinction between two types of people appears: The ones who want to hide technology in the form of their computers or consoles, and the ones who want to showcase it. And those who want to hide it, is mostly my generation's parents, forcing gamers to adapt to the television-living-room setup if they wanted to play console games on the television. I remember lying on the floor, pillows under my chest and arms, in order to be placed comfortably and nearer the television. I also remember the "office", where my sister, father and I would play computer games. It usually ended up with my mother sitting on the couch talking to us, although not being the least interested in computer games.

And that leads me back to the politics of all things. A console is a very social object. It's only for gaming, you have a certain distance to the screen so that onlooker can watch and chat, and you are somewhat more mobile, needing only the small controller which you can hold in many, many position. The computer however is more private. You might be checking confidential e-mails, so you don't just walk in and start looking at the computer screen. You are also situated quite close to the screen, leaving little room for potential onlookers.

There are so many ways that digital objects have reconfigured our homes, both physically and socially. For example I doubt that I will have a living room in my future home. I'll have a game room for entertainment and being social, and a dinning room for eating. And everything in between must fit into one of these rooms. Just as I had to adapt myself to a childhood home with a different political agenda than my own.

Today's readings:

• Turkle, “Computer Games as Evocative Objects”
• Flynn, “Geography of the Digital Hearth”
• Lally, “The Domestic Ecology of Objects”
• Poster, “Everyday (Virtual) Life”

Game Culture 03: Embodied & Material Play

Todays lecture is centered on ideas of how the player relates to technologies in a physical way, by interacting with the virtual world or by manual operation. The modern player is, according to Dovey & Kennedy, Kirkpatrick and Bart, hooked up to electronic devices and technology in a way that makes them question the relation between the body and the mind in the context of interacting with the physical and the virtual world, e.g. playing video games with a controller while being present in a gameworld in the form of an avatar. This two-parted existence of the player, creates a situation of negotiation between the player and the technology.

Kirkpatrick is interested in how this adaption between the users and the technology is expressed by different kinds of technology users. We could distinguish between the two kinds of users: The technology ignorant are the users that are not interested in the physical hardware inside the machine, but needs an in-built, almost invisible system that attends to most their needs. On the other side are the technology masters, who wants to control every bit of hardware in their systems, who adapts the software meticulously to their needs and who proudly showcases their technology to the rest of the world.

Dovey relates how games provides the player with the means to enter the virtual worlds, but also forces the player to adapt himself to e.g. various physical controllers in order to play. He focuses on the player at the computer and the player in the computer. While his observations of the player at the computer are generally universal, I find the idea of the player in the computer hard to relate to all players, as the individual experiences of a player in a virtual world is subjective and much more complex.

It seems that there is indeed a constant adaption going on between user’s and technology. When we get used to a new piece of technology, our neurological connections and shortcuts are affected by this negotiation. The user's experience, perception, and reaction pattern undergoes a gradual transformation, changing aspects of the user's personality. The computer reforms so to speak man in it's image, while man concentrates on building and rebuilding the computer.
But is this transformation really something purely related to virtual worlds? I honestly do not think so. Games are only an example of how humans adapt, and are adapted by, technology in all kinds of forms. Persistent physical contact with a tool or a system will lead to a change in the user’s bodily self-image, as the user invests part of himself in the function as well as the equipment. E.g. a good driver does not drive relative to the white stripes on the road. Instead, the car is an extension of his body. Society changed when fire was “tamed”, and then changed again and again with every new technological advancement that happened.


Todays readings:

• Dovey & Kennedy (2006) "Bodies and Machines"
• Simon, Bart (2007) "Geek Chic"
• Kirkpatrick, Graeme (2008) "Controller, Hand, Screen"

Digital Rhetoric 04: Persuasion and strategic communication

Everywhere we go, we are bombarded with information that might persuade to in different ways. Information can be expressed quite explicitly using words (saying "I don't agree with you") or cues (A small shrug, shaking the head silently, folding your arms).

Persuasion is when someone, in a planned manner, tries to alter the opinions of other. This change of mind should be obtained through logical and truthful argumentation and use of information, not through force, lies and misinformation. Argumentation could be a speech, but it could also be a commercial, a poster, a picture etc. The receiver of all this information is called the audience. That's you, reading my text. You are receiving the information that I put up on this blog.

Persuasion takes place between the intention and the audience. The audience will always have to be persuaded, no matter how positive they are towards the intention. It's therefore dreadfully important to consider the type of audience when designing the argumentation.

Benoit:
Benoit talks about 4 different types of audiences and how to deal with them:

Hostile audiences

• Emphasize common ground 
• Call for a fair hearing 
• Refute negative attitude towards you as a speaker 
• Acknowledge past mistakes 
• Express understanding and reassure the audience 
• Neutralize hostile questions 

Apathetic audiences

• Show how audience and real people are affected 
• Establish common ground 
• Surprise the audience with startling information or new behavior 
• Invite audience participation 

Motivated audiences

• Reinforce similarities with the audience 
• Convey respect 
• Use extended narratives 
• Attend to the rhythm of the speech 

Multiple/mixed audiences

• Focus on part of the audience OR 
• Provide unequal attention to the different components in a multiple audience 

Fogg:
Fogg is interested in captology, which is the study of computers as persuasive technologies or how one can use the computer to change the attitudes/behavior of people. He distinguishes between two types of persuasion:

• Macrosuasion, which is the overall persuasion intent of the product (e.g. a change of opinion) and 
• Microsuasion, which can be desgned as dialogue boxes, visual elements, interactions sequences etc. that are designed to lead and help the user at the computer. When trying to persuade an audience, the physical attractiveness of the system changes the social influence over the audience. Take for example the differences between IKEA's help-bot Anna in Nordic countries and USA respectively: 

Similarity and affiliation makes it easier for a user to work with a system/understand information, so the audience in Nordic countries are generally friendlier towards a blonde and blue-eyed Anna, as she represents a typical member of their society. 

Todays readings:

• William Benoit, Pamlea Benoit (2008): "Persuasive messages: The process of influence" 
• B.J. Fogg (2003): "Persuasive technology: Using computers to change what we think and do"

Digital Rhetoric 03: Agencies

Today's lecture is centered on three different approaches to the concept Agency, as presented by Elisabeth Hoff-Clausen, Diane Penrod and José van Dijck. In order to understand agency, an understanding of some other related concepts such as power and personal freedom must be attained as well.

Power is here the importance of the expression of interpersonal and social relations, including the relationship between individuals, groups of individuals and the human social institutions. The opposite of power is the phenomenon of powerlessness, in this context expressed by a lack of freedom. Thus personal Freedom is the generic term for a variety of freedoms and rights, whose purpose is to ensure the individual's integrity and freedom of expression without the risk of being subjected to state regulation and coercion

Hoff-Clausen
Hoff-Clausen describes "Agency" as a theoretical concept attached to the ethos of the speaker/retor, and as closely connected to the acts of speaking. Agency in rhetorics on the Web is mentioned as a condition for individual empowerment, where the WWW becomes a democratizing medium.

"The Agency-concept has stressed that the rhetoric, with its understanding of the interplay between speaker, context and audience are able to theorize and criticize phenomena that in alternative ways is trying to enter the public debate, whether they are actual changes in the social order or actions that for some reason or another can not penetrate the "official" reality, possibly as a consequence of an oppressive rhetoric from the power centers of society"

For example, the unemployed Dane Lau blogged about his absurd experiences with the job activation system, thus creating a lot of attention on the area of activating unemployed Danes.

Penrod
Penrod uses fan-communities as a point of origin for his understanding of Agency as a ludic democracy among media users. Fan-fiction and a fan-videos uploaded to YouTube are all examples of agency activities that emphasize creativity, the subject's ability to express himself and criticize, as well as the formation of groups and communities around different themes. Central in Penrod's writings is how the users in a fan-community are both users and participants. Together with other users, they generate new knowledge and information, that is optic correct rather than political correct (Meaning that the fans create their own reality when they expand the universe of e.g. Star Wars).

Van Dijck 
Opposite Hoff-Clausen and Penrod is van Dijck, who claims that what we perceive as agency is an illusion. Instead of personal freedom, the media users are being controlled by the system. Communities are not sub-cultures, instead they are brand-communities, where the user is exploited in order to promote the medium.
It is for example the users that create, edit, criticize and discus all content on Wikipedia, so the site does not have to use money or labor on it themselves.

Todays readings:

• Hoff-Clausen, Elisabeth (2008) "Online Ethos" chap. 2
• van Dijck, José (2009) "Users like you? Theorizing agency in user-generated content"
• Penrod, Diane (2010) "Writing and rhetoric for a ludic democracy: Youtube, fandom and participatory pleasure"

Digital Rhetoric 02: The Message in the Medium

Today's lecture went into the overall evolution of the computer, and the different ways we can store and extract information from it.

The computer was planned as far back as the 1812, where Charles Babbage, after the failing of his difference engine, came up with the concept of "The Analytical Engine", a machine that (in theory) would replace human labour with that of a machine. This was the first idea of splitting up work tasks, such as complicated calculations, into smaller bits and distributing the labour between specialised units. And thus, the idea of mass-production began. Later, Ada Lovelace would write the first algorithm for the analytical engine, succesfully becomming the first computer programmer in history.

 

Today the computer is used not only for calculations and labor - it is a crucial part of our social lives when it comes to music, pictures, friends and various forms of play and games.
(More stuff will come, as soon as I find my notes)


Todays readings:

• Baron, Naomi (2008) "Always on: Language in an online and mobile world"
• Brügger, Niels (2002) "Therotical reflections in media and media" 
• Meyrowitz, Joshua (1997) "Tre paradigmer i medieforskningen" 
• Boyd, Danah (2011) "Social network sites and networked public: affordances, dynamics and implications" 
• Hoff-Clausen, Elisabeth (2008) "Online ethos" chap. 1

Game Culture 02: Assemblage, Actors, and Politics

In today's lecture we had a large discussion about the doing and sayings of the social determinists and the technological determinists, in the shape of Langdon Winner and Bruno Latour respectively. A crucial thing about discussing games in the context of these jolly fellows, is to view them as technologies, alongside fridges, cars and doors. It all comes down to that computer games are a part of our culture, and within our culture, the social is deeply interwoven with technology. How the social relates to technology however, is a larger discussion.

Langdon Winner:
Winner states that machines, structures and systems (technologies) can embody specific forms of power and authority, and that technical things have political qualities.

"In controversies about technology and society, there is no idea more provocative than the notion that technical things have political qualities. At issue is the claim that the machines, structures, and systems of modern material culture can be accurately judged not only for their contributions of  efficiency and productivity, not merely for their positive and negative environmental side effects, but also for the ways in which they can embody specific forms of power and authority. Since ideas of this kind have a persistent and  troubling presence in discussions about the meaning of technology, they deserve explicit attention."

In his theory, 2 models of technology can be made:

1. Ordering technology (The flexible version), where technology controls us and decides how we go about with our daily lives. I.e. how we get to work (by car or subway)
2. Inherent technology, where a certain hierarchy is needed in order to make everything work. I.e. a bomb need a hierarchy of "the right people" to have the detonator. Otherwise everyone might have a detonator and be able to push the red button.

Winner is a representative of the movement of technological determinism. According to him, we are enforced by technology to do something, dependent on how that technology is designed. Technology is going forward, with little care about us as humans. The force of history makes us discover new technology, but our role in the advancement of technology is small; it's advancement is inevitable. Thus, the technologies we have now, is the best technology that we can get at the present time.

A large critique of this view is that there is a lot of really bad technology, that is not the best that we can get. There is also a lot of very good technology, that never gets the opportunity to break through.

Bruno Latour:
Latour sees technology as human delegation. Non-humans replaces us in some kind of labor, to be our extended minds and limbs. He talks a lot about the missing masses that is tying us all together. The missing mass, he claims, is technology. It is a human condition, that helps us create the world alongside us. And we are not just humans. We take on the role of the technological artifact as well, and reinscribe the technological back into the social (We become the safety belt for our kids, when it is faulty). Humans and non-human actors are equally shaping history.

A critique of social determinism can be exemplified by the vast amount of new mobile phones with new improvements and new features every year. If technology is really only controlled by our social lives and needs, then why do new phones with technology that exceeds that of our needs, keep being developed?

So in all, there are two movements placing social and technology in different places with regards to their convergence.

1. Social Determinism: Technology is an extension of human actors. It is nothing but a tool, as they do as they are told. Technology is thus replacing human labor.
2. Technological Determinism: Technology is unpredictable and sometimes does surprising things that we cannot foresee. Thus, technology is not just an extension of human actors, but must be seen as an actor in itself (non-human actors).

Todays readings:

• Bruno Latour: ‘‘Where Are the Missing Masses? The Sociology of a Few Mundane Artifacts’’ (1992)
• Langdon Winner, “Do Artifacts Have Politics?" (1980)
• Giddings, “Playing with Non-Humans: Digital Games as Techno-Cultural form" (2005)

Game Culture 01: Introduction

What is culture?
Culture can be found in whatever constitutes a group. A country, an organization, a society. What distinguishes the different groups from one another, are the building blocks that they are made of, such as behaviors, habits, practices, objects, institutions, standards, taboos, valuesand norms that are shared by all the members of the group. As culture more or less is everywhere one might look, the area has been studied since forever ago. One large "problem" however with studying culture is, that the person studying culture, be it contemporary or retroactively, will always be a part of a culture himself, be it the same or a different culture. This cultural background influences how people put meaning into objects or symbols (incoding) but also how they understand and processes information from objects and symbols (decoding). Anyone studying culture will thus always be influenced by hos own culture's building blocks.

Two attempts of analyzing and creating social theories on contemporary culture will be highlighted in the following; The Frankfurt School and the Birmingham School.

The Frankfurt School
"Go home, watch an episode of Lost, forget your sorrows and slave-life and meet at work at 7 the next day" - mass-culture keeps you occupiedThe Frankfurt School has its roots in marxism, and is especially engaged in the use of mass culture in western culture as a formulaic, standardized and industrialized tool that dulls people and moves focus from their boring, repetitive lives to the wonderful world of e.g. Jersey Shore and Idols. Mass culture thereby "keeps the machinery going" and makes people, who would want to go up against the system, occupied with mass-produced crap.
Critique: Critique of the school's theories states that the theory is too general. Especially, it does not concern itself with the many counter-demonstrative sub-cultures that might appear within a culture.

When writing this, the wonderful and fantastic world of Bollywood immediately popped into my mind. I remember being told, while travelling in India, that some of the highly dramatic movies of Bollywood cinema served as a mean for the poor to escape from their earthly sorrows.

The Birmingham School
"You must have an education, you have to work during the day from 9-17, the teacher knows better than the student..." - Power structuresInstead of speaking of one, large mass of fairly identical people, the Birmingham School concentrates on the values of the dominant culture and its power structures. These structures are ideas of family, religion, education etc. The power structures associated with these ideas, are holding us down. But from this suppression, resistance will always rise in the form of sub-cultures that re-invent and re-appropriate ideas, symbols, theories and everyday things.
Critique: Critics of the Birmingham school states that the power of sub-cultures' resistance is overstated, and points out that resistance can be absorbed by culture as well. As an example you can get t-shirts with anarchy symbols almost everywhere, and several chains exists that tries to mass-produce punk, vintage and other sub-cultures.