ones of coding “wizardry” or the rapture of the hack

Some of her later works, we know, were designed on the backs of unrolled wrapping paper, or handwritten on legal pads. The table would have been the most obvious surface in the Williams' home large enough to map on, and in most suburban tract houses, especially those of the California ranch style, layouts were such that kitchens gave the optimal domestic observation -- a mother could “work” in a kitchen and still observe the play of her children in another “room” of the home.

Sierra On-Line was one of the longest standing, consistently successful home computer game software companies of the 1980s and 1990s, and that Williams herself was the first female game designer producing solely for the microcomputer market [9]. She was the lead designer of the first adventure games with both monochrome and color graphics (Mystery House and Wizard and the Princess, respectively, both 1980), the largest adventure game ever made during the era (Time Zone, 1982, on six double-sided 5.25” disks), the first “adventurization” of a major motion picture (The Dark Crystal, 1983), the first adventure game with environmental “2.5-D” depth in which you could walk around objects (King's Quest, 1984), the first major graphical computer game with a recognizably human female avatar [10] (King's Quest IV, 1988), and the first game to use live action actors (Phantasmagoria, 1995).

Follow me, then. I will offer three scenes dropped out of time, three objects: a pedestal, a table, a love letter. They will each provide a path for encountering a question: what counts in game history? How do bodies come to count in game history? How do spaces come to count in game history? How do memories come to count in game history? Against each, I will parcel out a reading of Roberta Williams; their assemblage will carve out conditions of infrastructure and historical embeddedness that I could never twine together on a timeline. If this seems a strange tableau, consider: it may be their discontinuity that shapes a constellation new to the historical night.

While many of the most provocative and innovative materialist media theories attempt to productively short circuit the subject-object division by displaying how media are active agents in the world, these efforts often wind up simply rearranging actor-network deck chairs, envisioning histories and theories without corporeal or discursive bodies, histories or theories lost in their own love for the mechanism's indifference to the body (which is to say, what makes the virus interesting to media archaeology is that it chews up your hard drive regardless of your subject position).

Yet the common practice of “adding women on” to game history in a gesture of inclusiveness fails to critically inquire into the ways gender is an infrastructure that profoundly affects who has access to what kinds of historical possibilities at a specific moment in time and space.

Dann fragt Ihr Mikrowellenherd beim Hersteller eines Gefriergerichtes die optimale Zubereitungsweise ab!

Das semantische Netz ist hier flexibler. Konsumenten- und Anbieteragenten können sich durch Rückgriff auf Ontologien verständigen, da diese das Vokabular für den Informationsaustausch zur Verfügung stellen.

Ein besonders wichtiger "Beweis" ist die digitale Unterschrift, ein verschlüsselter Datenblock, der Computern und Agenten die Gewissheit verschafft, dass eine bestimmte Information aus einer zuverlässigen Quelle stammt.

Noch in der Praxis programmiert Lucy mit einem portablen Webbrowser ihren Webagenten.

01.08.2001

In service to the philosophical and theoretical considerations of persuasion, if computer algorithms produce their own machinic contexts, which aren’t as highly unique as human contexts when associating concepts with words, then consideration of the performativity of code—of algorithms—takes root. Within the machinic context, the relationship of language and force binds in an ephemeral state. By ephemeral, I mean giving rise to a context for a written act to occur and with the close of the act, the context of the written act concluding, with the spatial and temporal elements of the context dissipating. Such theoretical ground calls to mind Thomas Rickert’s discussions of khôra. In examining the works for Kristeva, Derrida, and Ulmer, Ricket notes that “chōra transforms our senses of beginning, creation, and invention by placing them concretely within material environments, informational spaces, and affective (or bodily) registers” (252). This view illustrates another way of locating code and algorithms within rhetoric’s sphere as a khôraic being and non-being of what rhetoric encapsulates. While Rickert notes this conversation gives rise to rhetorical invention—for Derrida, rhetoric’s place in invention also calls attention—albeit briefly—to the spatial and temporal dimensions which discourse (and I would add the performativity of computer code) resides.

This isn’t the only way to approach text analysis; historically, humanists have tended to begin instead by first choosing some aspect of text to measure, and then launching an argument about the significance of the thing they measured. I’ve done that myself, and it can work. But social scientists prefer to tackle problems the other way around: first identify a concept that you’re trying to understand, and then try to model it.

One of the main ways computers are changing the textual humanities is by mediating new connections to social science. The statistical models that help sociologists understand social stratification and social change haven’t in the past contributed much to the humanities, because it’s been difficult to connect quantitative models to the richer, looser sort of evidence provided by written documents.

algorithm

Instead, such texts have a purely “material” origin—they can only be described in terms of mathematical properties such as frequency, distribution, degree of entropy, and so on.

Yet the intimacies that developed within and among these groups – erotic, economic, affective, familial, political etc. – did not always align with colonial modes of being and were often positioned as perverse, excessive, and subversive. Analyzing the various iterations of these intimate relations functions as a method of reckoning with the Caribbean’s ongoing legacy as the laboratory of modernity and global capitalism.

What counts as a digital humanities project?

vor allem von den digitalen Sprach- und Literaturwissenschaften dominiert worden

Fachsystematiken

Desituated storylines of Anthropos-centered relations need to be challenged if are we to offer situated humans a place within, rather than above, other earth creatures, in acknowledgment of specific modes of agency: a vital task for environmental thought and practice, across the social sciences and humanities, but also for exceeding collective imaginations.

But in the spirit of staging matters of fact, scientific things, as matters of care, it seems to be a more fertile option to attempt an articulation of different horizons of practice and modes of relating to soil through their potential to transform human–soil relations.

A care approach needs to look not only at how soils and other resources produce output or provide services to humans but also at how humans are specifically obliged, how they are providing.

Yet foodweb models also affect relations to soil for how they turn humans into full participant »members« of the soil community rather than merely consumers of its produce or beneficiaries of its services.

These developments are not disconnected from worries about the capacities of soil to continue to provide services (a range of calculations are deployed to value the services of biota) or from a notion that accounts for soil fertility according to its ability to provide yield.

That this has not been an obvious move is attested by ecologists who claim for a change in soil’s definitions

productionist and service logic

A feminist approach to more than human care would at the very least open a speculative interrogation: Cui bono?21 service for whom? as a question that reveals the limitations of a service approach to transform human–soil relations while it remains based on conceiving naturecultural entities as resources for human consumption, thus interrogating an understanding of soils that posits them as either functions or services to »human well-being«

Capitalo-centered

In the utilitarian-care vision, worn-out soils must be »put back to work« through soil engineering technologies

Worster’s account of the living conditions of farmers who outlived the destruction of successive dust bowls to see the return of intensified agriculture and successful grand-scale farming are also stories of discontent, debt, and anxiety, echoing farmer experiences worldwide living under the pressures of production.

These developments confirm a consistent trend in modern management of soils to move from maintenance – for instance, by leaving parts of the land at times in a fallow state – to the maximization, and one could say preemptive buildup, of soil nutrient capacity beyond the renewal pace of soil ecosystems.

We’re Treating Soil Like Dirt.

productionism

»Soils have become a matter of concern and care not just for what they provide for humans but for ensuring the subsistence of soil communities more broadly.«

Ragnarök’s spaces

I find it useful in this context to occasionally remind myself that I cannot read everything and that it would not be good for me to try. Better, perhaps, to read fewer things well. As is often the case, acknowledging and embracing our limitations can be freeing.

When I do read something that is intellectually demanding, I find my mind wandering from the page after only a few moments. I assume that by now this is just how most people feel about reading and that some may not even know that there is any other way.

Of course, the value of this use of RI in games has been convincingly demonstrated by the success of several MMORPG (Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game) titles, of which Everquest (Verant, 1999), Ultima On-line (Origin, 1997) and World of Warcraft (Blizzard, 2004) are now classic examples. It is important to recognise that these games have a clear lineage back through text-only online MUDs (multi-user dungeon), and then back to non digitally mediated, face-to-face roleplaying games, where RI systems were/are the norm for example: Dungeons & Dragons (Gygax and Andersen, 1974).

Both the producers and the consumers of games expect each version to be audio-visually bigger, richer, smoother, and so forth (Magal in Valve, 2004 p.63).

However, this “more powerful representation” only remains more powerful until the human eye sees something more sophisticatedly rendered (Darley, 2000, p.28). The games Myst and realMyst demonstrate this effect particularly well, since the two titles are actually the same gameplay/narrative/world

The success of the earliest, crudest forms of Myst and Doom reveals the truth that all forms of audio-visual rendering, including text and photographic images, depend on a sensationally sophisticated technique of finally smoothing out all of their technical limitations. That technique is, of course, the individual human’s capacity to fully rendering it in their own imaginations (Miller, 1997)

Some industry observers characterised Myst’s non violent, story based puzzle solving adventures as “an antiquated style of gaming"

However, in what is possibly Myst’s greatest aesthetic achievement, the creators of Myst used the original designed intention of CD technology (to stream audio files) to overcome this visual stillness (Fargo, 2003; Miller, 2002). The visual gaps are filled in with a continuous soundscape

A good illustration of the increase in computer capacity between 1993 and 2008 (and the resulting sophistication of the audio-visual rendering) is that the original demo for Doom is only 2.3 Megabyte. The 2004 remake of Doom, titled Doom 3, has a downloadable demo of 460 Megabytes. Another measure of the difference is that Doom contained only 54,000 lines of code, while Doom 3 has 785,000 (Kent, 2004).

The cause of the difference between the audio-visual aesthetic of Myst and Doom is a pragmatic one, imposed by a limitation in technology. Doom did not have cartoon style characters due to a lack of imagination or technical skill on the part of the designers at id Software. Myst did not have still images because Cyan’s designers were limited in their vision and ambition. Both companies solved the enormous technical limitations of the early 1990s in order to make their virtual worlds manifest as best was possible at the time (Halifax, 2002) (Miller, 2002).

And yet, while it is important to reroot mythologies that have been deracinated from their original ecosystems, reclaiming their forgotten earth-based wisdom, we cannot return to the folk traditions of our distant ancestors. We can, instead, reclaim mythtelling as a way of asking our more-than-human network of allies for more feral suggestions on how to dismantle the dominant paradigms driving climate collapse.

Mycorrhizal fungi map the relationships in a forest just as myths map the specific relationships of a community rooted in place. SOPHIE STRAND

Insgesamt ist das Spiel extrem nah an den Filmen gebaut, was allein anhand der Bildsequenzen deutlich wird, allerdings sind die Level ungleich verteilt: Der Spielteil zum ersten Film besteht aus zwölf Leveln, der zweite und dritte haben je nur acht Level, die aber besonders im dritten Teil viel kürzer als die des ersten wirken, weshalb man spätestens ab Spielteil drei die Filme kennen muss, um der Handlung noch richtig folgen zu können. Außerdem wurden viele, auch für die Handlung zentrale, Filmszenen nicht in das Spiel aufgenommen, sodass sich die Spielhandlung, wie sie oben zum grundlegenden Verständnis vorgestellt ist, nur mit Vorwissen aus den Filmen rekonstruieren lässt.

IV – Ideologische Mythen in Darkwood:

Spielmechanik

Das Audio-Visuelle Setting

We are really inspired by old sci-fi Russian writers like the Strugatsku brother, who wrote ‘Roadside Picnic,’ which became ‘STALKER and David Lynch movies,”

Mit einem Flammenwerfer gelingt es dem Fremden, das Böse zu besiegen, auch wenn er dabei selbst umkommt, gemeinsam mit den meisten überlebenden Dorfbewohner*innen.

II – Produktanalyse:

I – Produktionsanalyse:

There was always a notebook next to us for this, and we took screenshots whenever possible. These notebooks resembled diaries in a way.

“Don’t you think dreams and the internet are similar?”

Kon parodies the “boy genius” recklessness of Silicon Valley disruptors in the character of Dr. Kōsaku Tokita, the DC Mini’s inventor, whose excessive weight and childlike obsession with toys underscore his shrugging off of moral responsibility for his invention.

In a move that prefigures the dizzying consequences of social media avatars and deepfakes, Mima finds that the “real Mima” of the internet has become realer to Mima than herself.

On the internet, Mima learns, illusions can become real, or at least can become indistinguishable from reality.

Mima’s stalker, who goes by Mimania (or Memania), creates a website called MimasRoom.com where he details his obsession by posing as Mima on the internet.

Similar concerns — about invasion and irradiation — have accompanied other new technologies, from electricity to radio to, not long ago, 4G. The electromagnetic spectrum, in its material ambiguity, lends itself to multiple imaginaries and applications. To regulators and carriers, it’s real estate to be parceled up and sold; it’s territory to be fought for. To technoenthusiasts, it’s an ethereal realm of possibility and opportunity. To others, it’s a commons. As Greta Byrum suggested to me, public airwaves are like public lands, and we have to ask who should benefit from their use. To still others, it’s the Wild West: With cars, pacemakers, and mobile payment apps all linked through the ether, some worry (as this New Yorker article details) that the 5G world presents new opportunities to shady entrepreneurs, hackers, and cyberterrorists. And to some members of the public, electromagnetic waves are an invasive, penetrating, irradiating force, blasting us with the data of billions of connected objects.

The Chinese government has created infrastructures and incentives to expedite 5G innovation and to deploy Chinese gear (and the web services that run on it) around the world, particularly as part of their Belt and Road Initiative.

5G, we see here, is not just an issue of connectivity and convenience. It’s also about landscape, real estate, aesthetics, public resources, energy, equity, and governance.

This helps explain why the carriers are so eager for us to share their vision for a better tomorrow

the advent of 5G will allow entrepreneurs to create new technologies and products that we don’t even know we need yet

The new network has also been framed as a critical infrastructure for the “smart city.”

intellectual property theft

It claims to know the public through an algorithmic assessment of their complete traces

For instance, one substantial revision occurred in May 2010 when Twitter announced it was removing Justin Bieber from the Trending Topics list.

Twitter has repeatedly stated that their Trends algorithm is not a simple measure of volume

Most importantly, we have not fully recognized how these algorithms attempt to produce representations of the wants or concerns of the public, and as such, run into the classic problem of political representation: who claims to know the mind of the public, and how do they claim to know it?