CRD701: History and Theory of Communication Technology

de Souza e Silva - From cyber to hybrid
In this article, Dr. Silva defines hybrid spaces by tracing out their historical precedence in other theories of space, and positing them in opposition to (or as an evolution of) our notion of cyberspace. Hybrid spaces are connected, mobile, and social spaces. They connect place to information and information to place; they allow mobility; and they also provide social interfaces to relationsips. Hybrid reality is defined as being a mix of (specifically mobile) social practices that occurs simultaneously in digital and physical spaces. These multiple connections engender an enfolding of contexts or a spatial hybridization of social, informational, and mobile flows.

Farley - Mobile telephone history
It's interesting that Farley identifies the publicness of the mobile phone as one of its defining characteristics (he compares it with earlier forms of mobile telephony from the 1930s, which were private services). I was definitely amused to rad that cellphone providers today are still facing the same troubles--not enough spectrum, too few channels--Bell Labs faced in 1947. I won't bother recapping the history here, but I think if one were to write  a history of the modern cell phone, the switch from circuit-baed to packet-based switching is probably a good place to start, since that signals the primary shift from the mobile as a primarily voice device to an all-around information device.

Mann, Nolan, and Wellman - Sousveillance
Mann's approach to subverting surveillance networks seems akin to Enzensberger's idea that we can reverse the channel of communication (in this case, information) to fight the dominant ideology. However, as Baudrillard's critique of Enzensberger demonstrated, one cannot help but be coopted by the technology itself. Let me elaborate. Taking a cue from Galloway and Thacker's theory of networks from The Exploit, we can understand that the points of resistance to a network are in the connections between the nodes--the relationships established, that is--and in the protocol of the network, the protocol being the mode or rule by which information flows in a network. Exploits of, resistance to, hacks of a network all rely on using the protocol to disrupt the network. In Mann's case, I think the technology used to sousveill is already or certianly becoming part and parcel of the network. The ability to survey each other (e.g., other citizens) is already embedded in our technology and even encouraged through, for example, the New York City MMS-911 initiative, where you can send picture messages of a crime in progress to the police.

Dourish - The infrastructure of experience and the experience of infrastructure
So, in the intro, Dourish asserts that UbiComp is inevitable, so designers had better figure out UbiComp best practices. He suggests the way to do this is to (temporarily) forget about the computer and consider the "practical and cultural" logics of spatial organization. Cool. We're further encouraged to think about how space is organized culturally and to consider how UbiComp will function differently depending on the context (and must be designed differently). They conclude that we need to take an architecutral perspective on new ICTs and the design / use of the informational layers that will be mediated through those ICTs.

I have to admit: the majority of this post focuses on Mann, Nolan, & Wellman's article. Wrote about it first, then realized I had about a thousand words on it by itself: impressive for me.

I have a few thoughts on Mann, Nolan, & Wellman's (2003) discussion of sousveillance. In class discussions, we've touched on the theme of privacy quite a bit. I think David and possibly others have noted that under the constitution we really aren't granted privacy, outside of a sort of related right against "unreasonable" search and seizure. If the authorities have probable cause to expect we're up to no good, they can step in with a warrant (or without one, with the Patriot Act). Mann et al. avoid discussion of the constitution altogether, though, and insist that privacy is a human right, not just from unreasonable search and seizues: "Privacy
is a psychological as well as a social and political requirement. For instance, people
seek control over the degree of anonymity they possess in their relationships
by choosing
what personal information to reveal to another person based upon their relationship
(Ingram 1978). Yet, the asymmetrical nature of surveillance is characteristic
of an unbalanced power relationship" (p. 334).

But why is this true?  While obviously Mann et al. are not aiming to get into a philosophical discussion of the right to privacy--their writing more about a particular study they did related to the topic--many others would argue here. What is the argument for why privacy is required? They claim it is a psychological requirement. Is it? Just showing that people would prefer anonymity, as perhaps Ingram shows, does not mean that it is a necessity. It seems like they're conflating "needs" and "wants."  Would all people suffer psychological meltdowns if their every move was under surveillance? Orson Welles obviously was concerned about surveillance society; however, most of the characters in his novel, if I remember correctly, were sane, though they were also very clueless about what the manipulation they suffered at the hands of the government.  Are Mann et al. forgetting to factor in habituation here: that, as people become used to surveillance, they may forget it is even happening and stop caring about it? This doesn't sound right, as they do discuss how people have just come to accept surveillance as a normal aspect of life, not even questioning the power imbalance involved. Or do they just mean that people perceive the need for privacy?  That is, do they become troubled by surveilance just because of the thought of someone watching them. I mean, privacy gets violated all the time in our lives, and people are still surviving. I guess the biggest problem I have is with the word "requirement." 

Obviously people would prefer to have privacy, and we could argue, as the authors also suggest, that it is a social and politcal requirement, but there's something problematic to me about calling privacy a psychological requirement. And I agree that privacy is a right to a certain extent. I've mentioned this topic of privacy in previous blog posts. You do need to have some control over how information about yourself is used, obviously. Specifically, the issue of privacy is not so much about the information about yourself merely being available: to me, the concern is with how others can use it against you. You never know how something you do or say could be taken out of context and used to make you look foolish; then, this foolish act can be replayed over and over on youtube or something like that.  Or, on a related note, someone could take a particular detail about your beliefs or personality that isn't representative of you and emphasize it, giving it a "presence" over other details that are more representative and more favorable. I'm not quite sure how to define the line between private info and info that should be available to the public, but I'm interested in this concept of privacy as a social and a political right.

A thought related to Mann et al.: there's a pretty recent example of sousveillance worth mentioning (I will be putting a link to the video on the Wiki). My guess is the authors would enjoy this one. There's a guy in St. Louis named Brent Darrow who actually has a mounted digital camera in the back of his car: he claims he installed it after he was assaulted by a police officer a year before the incident I'm bringing up. Last fall, the kid parked in a commuter lot at 2:30 in the morning. He was followed into the lot by a police officer, who then put on his flashers and approached the car, asking the kid to explain himself and asking for his ID and insurance. When the kid insists that he has a legal right to park there and shouldn't be questioned, the cop goes on a Farva-esque power trip; he starts threatening him, even saying he'll arrest the guy and make up charges!  The cop also makes up some reasons why he could stop the guy in first place, claiming the man didn't use a turn signal when pulling into the lot--the video, on the other hand, suggests otherwise. This video and story made the news last year, and the cop was first suspended and then fired. While I get the impression Mr. Darrow was trying to instigate a conflict, nevertheless his story at least suggests citizens may need the right to record those in power, especially considering their ability to abuse such power.

I'm not sure I have a lot to say about Farley's (2005) article on the
history of cell phones. It was informative for me though, as I had no
idea how long we've had this technology or something resembling it
around. I'm trying to think of the first time I knew of someone that
had a cell phone and not having a lot of success...

Dourish & Bell (2007) looks at the relationship between virtual and physical space, arguing that as computer technology has become mobile we have become more aware of that the line between virtual and physical is not so clear: similar to Hayles, who explained how we cannot separate materiality and information, D & B discuss how, for instance, the placement of WiFi routers brings mobile internet users together. Dr. Silva's (2006) article also discusses the interaction between virtual and physical space. She explores hybrid spaces as constructed by mobile communication technologies such as PDAs or cell phones. We've touched on related topics already this semester, discussing where the line between the virtual and the "real" or physical world becomes blurred. We can come back to Silva's discussion of the Matrix. In the film,  the physical and virtual worlds interact with one another, although mobility in the virtual world requires being stationary in the physical world, like how, at least with desktop computer, we must remain stationary when going online (p. 268):
"The absence of movement in the movie can...allude to the way people are used to connecting to cyberspace and virtual reality environments: static interfaces that detach users from the physical world" (2004, p.64). With mobile technologies, however, Silva examines how people now are mobile in both the physical and the virtual worlds with devices like cell phones. Particularly interesting to me are the hybrid space games she mentions: would such games, if popular, end the claims that gaming is bad because it is unhealthy for people physically (gaming instead of exercise), that it keeps people from venturing outside the house?  I guess a lot depends on how popular these hybrid space games become. Before Silva mentioned them on the first day of class, I had never heard of such a game, but I could see it being popular.

Mobile Telephone History by Tom Farley discusses the impact on government bureaucracy and corporate hegemony on technological advancement. I have two points here: First, Farley makes it clear that the FCC held back mobile telephone progress between the 1930s and 1970s. I wish Farley had, however, gone into more detail and explained exactly why the FCC failed to give corporations the freedom and airspace/waves they needed. Second, Farley makes it clear that the domination of a single corporation also stifles technological development. This can be seen most clearly when he says, “The Bell System, serving 80 % of the American population, and custodian of Bell Laboratories, was broken apart. Complete divestiture took place on January 1, 1984. After the breakup new companies, products, and services appeared immediately in all fields of American telecom, as a fresh, competitive spirit swept the country” (27-28). I guess there’s not too much more to say about this that hasn't been said, other than Farley’s history of mobile telephones seems to suggest that both governments and corporations must resist the urge to control resource territory, spatial or physical, or else advancement is delayed, often by decades.

Mann and company:

Regarding Sousveillance: If this article ever had a motto, it would be “if you can’t beat them, then join them, suckers!”

In Sousveillance, Mann, Nolan, and Wellman assert that surveillance creates an unequal power alignment, with the surveillers having power over the surveilled (334). Therefore, they conclude the way to reconstitute the power structure in society is to surveille the big bad surveillers. They state, “reflectionism seeks to increase the equality between surveiller and the person being surveilled (surveillee), including enabling the surveillee to surveil the surveiller” (333). However, they also assert that “there is a digital divide in the unequal access to these technologies by the general public. The proliferation of environmental intelligence, in the form of cameras and microphones observing public spaces, challenges the traditional ability of an individual being able to identify and watch the watchers” (335). On this particular point, I do not agree with the authors given the fact that vast numbers of websites sell “spy cameras” and various surveillance devices. The “digital divide” they point to in this article just is not wide enough for me to think that the average person is ever unable to engage in sousveillance, which they define as “photographing cab drives…government officials… police officers…” (334).

However, something pacifist in me seriously questions the whole approach of “if you can’t beat them, then join them in their surveillance.” I am thinking now of the old Biblical mantra, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you” and “love your enemies” (Matthew 5:43). Taking this mantra literally, I would say that, in its essence, this means don’t act like the people who you think are morons because then you become a moron too. Or put another way, if someone mistreats you, then it is better not to mistreat them back. Of course, engaging in sousveillance may not always mistreat; it is meant to act as a balancing mechanism or as a way to keep authority “in check,” so to speak. Nevertheless, I tend to think that Ghandi had the right approach to the violence in India by responding with non-violence. In the same way, I think the overwhelming amount of surveillance (if one posits it as a “bad thing”) can be better responded to by starting a mass movement that rejects all uses of surveillance. Put another way, being perceived by authority figures as a deviant and a radical person who “fights the man” may not be the most effective rhetorical position. Besides, even if one chooses to use sousveillance it would not negate the effect of the surveillance. As Jacob says, “Even if I watch the watchers, they’re still watching me.”

Silva:

Dr. Silva’s article was very pertinent to my final paper. Essentially, in my paper, I will be arguing that a shift has occurred in our culture in terms of the way we think about computers and that this shift has lessened deterministic concerns and fears. The shift I am referring to can be demonstrated as the difference between 1) moving into an enclosed computer-space/cyberspace where one feels separated from one’s body to 2) taking hold of the computer and moving it out into one’s own space, into the open environment.  Luckily for me, many of Dr. Silva’s quotes demonstrate the shift as it appears in the academic literature. Early on in the article, for example, Dr. Silva talks about computers being embedded in the outdoors as a result of mobile technologies. “Because mobile devices create a more dynamic relationship with the Internet, embedding it in outdoor, everyday activities, we can no longer address the disconnection between physical and digital spaces” (262). Here, one can see the lack of entrapment by cyberspace and the attendant feelings of freedom. Similarly, Dr. Silva recognizes the cultural shift away from metaphors of “entering” and “immersing” oneself in cyberspace. She states, “users do not perceive physical and digital spaces as separate entities and do not have the feeling of "entering" the Internet, or being immersed in digital spaces, as was generally the case when one needed to sit down in front of a computer screen and dial a connection” (263).  And again, as Dr. Silva discusses the impact of mobile technologies, she makes it clear that many people around the world (particularly in Japan) are now using computer technologies less to construct cyber identities and more to “find friends” (264). In fact, while technology becomes increasingly mobile, I believe the internet user’s online travel is becoming increasingly immobile as RSS feeds become popular. The RSS feed, I believe, is another manifestation of the information coming to us, as opposed to us going into it.

I will likely assert in my paper that this concept of a “mixed reality” by Milgram and Colquhoun as well as the concept of “augmented spaces” by Manovich as well as the concept of the “hybrid space” put forward by Silva represent a second phase in the movement out of cyberspace, with the final and third phase being the loss of a need to articulate any boundaries between a cyber-reality/space and a material reality/space at all, the phase that we are, as I will assert, just now entering. Hence, we will see the disappearance of these terms as the distinction between computer and human become less important to us. Additionally, I may argue that the integration of the computer into the body or the body as computer (the use of the skin, for example, as the transmission device), which according to Paul Dorish’s article has been called “ubiquitous computing” and “context-aware computing,” will walk through these same phases: clear boundaries drawn, having the most fear, and as fear dissipates, the boundaries will become less important.

Dourish:

The article by Paul Dourish of the University of California at Irvine was also useful as evidence for my final paper. In that article, he states the following as his working premise: “One particularly interesting issue in this transformation is the move from a concern with virtual spaces to a concern with physical ones. Basically, once computation move off the desktop, computer science suddenly has to be concerned with where they might have gone. Where computer science and human-computer interaction have previously been concerned with disembodied cognition, they must now look more directly at embodied action and bodily encounters between people and technology” (414). This is exactly what my paper will attempt to do—look at the body and its interaction with computer technology.

My final note for this blog will be from a comment about the integration of computing systems that was made Dourish’s article. Doursih states, “Graham and Marvin (2001) have pointed towards a number of trends, including the increasing dependence upon infrastructures for life, increasingly contested forms of interoperation and standardization, and an ever-more complex regulatory environment within which these issues are embedded” (416). In short, if we accept, as Dourish asserts, that mobile computer technology and the human social infrastructure are becoming integrated, then we must also recognize the extent to which we are becoming increasingly dependent upon the infrastructure and, hence, upon the government and corporations. Therefore, to tie this back into my paper topic, I think that our dissolving fear of technology as a result of its mobility (our control over it and the loss of the perception that it controls us) puts us in the exact right position for us to lose more control over ourselves than we may have imagined, intended, or wanted.

Mann, Nolan, and Wellman

First, I have to ask, what is a smart toilet? And how exactly are these used as surveillance? I had to get that off my chest because of how deeply concerned I was reading that such a thing existed!

Moving beyond the surveillance toilets…I was most intrigued by the “neo-panopticon” idea proposed by Bentham. His “system of observation” strikes a chord even today despite advancements in technology because I would argue that the observations are still as thorough and as prevalent as they were in the pre-industrialized society – we may just not know it’s happening. Although Ostrom and Wellman state that “the densely-knit connections and tight boundaries of pre-industrial ‘door-to-door’ communities fostered direct visual observation as a means of control” and were forever changed by the Industrial Revolution when the “societal scale increased beyond the ability for little groups of neighbors to eye one another” (334) I would argue that home owners associations, apartment complexes, etc. are as diligent with their observations as they were when the houses within communities were within reaching distance. On a personal note, it doesn’t take long for a member (who always remains anonymous) of our home owners association to raise concern about someone’s unapproved yard decorations or landscaping choices. We may believe we have our privacy but there is always someone watching!

The concept of sousveillance feels refreshing to me when I find websites/blogs like the one I posted on our Wiki page – HollabackNYC. It’s an obvious empowerment to know that even as I am moving through the most intensely surveyed situation (like the bomb “puffers” at the airport security lines, that I still have the power and ability to “survey” back whether it be with my phone or some other sort of wearable computing sousveillance piece.

Dourish and Bell

Although we may have already talked about the concept of space and place I thought this article made strong points regarding “when computation moves off the desktop [and] we are forced to understand something of the spaces into which it moves, and the practical and cultural logics by which those spaces are organized” (2). As I’ve mentioned often before, I can relate these sorts of concepts directly to the experiences our company has with external employees who are constantly on the move and require access to what would have only previously been available when sitting at their desks. Dourish and Bell hit the nail on the head when stating that “spaces through which we move become visible in terms of their network accessibility and, consequently, in terms of their applied electronic ‘locality’” (3). If I’m sending a consultant to an institution in the remote areas of North Dakota where they have no access to cell towers or internet during the three hour drive from the airport I have no other option but to beg them to take on the task. Those three to four hours of unaccessability are considered “black hours” on their calendars and these sorts of spaces are meant to be avoided at all costs. It is one of thousands of examples just from our firm that highlights Dourish and Bells idea that “structures of space and pervasive computing are mutually, reciprocally coupled to social and cultural practices” (5).

De Souza e Silva

In connection with the cultural concepts of space and computation from Dourish and Bell, Dr. Silva’s article addresses the concept of “hybrid spaces” defined as “mobile spaces, created by the constant movement of users who carry portable devices continuously connected to the Internet and to other users” (262); in addition to a “conceptual space created by the merging of borders between physical and digital spaces, because of the use of mobile technologies as social devices” (265). These types of spaces are so much more relevant to my daily activities over those of identity creation in virtual worlds because of just how common it now is to use mobile technologies to find restaurants, contact friends, get driving directions, buy movie tickets, etc. In fact, it’s hard to remember a time (despite how recently it was) when we didn’t have the technology that has helped to create these hybrid spaces.

I find it interesting and somewhat ironic that we may refer back to this decade as a return to the physical over the virtual when it doesn’t seem that long ago that we were “convinced” that everything was going to be in the virtual. I guess this goes to show the fluctuations we may come to expect from the advancements that technology can provide. It is evidence to me that, as Dr. Silva describes, the “changing of our experience of space means not only interacting in new ways with other people but also redefining the space in which we live” (273).

Farley

Just a brief note on the Farley article regarding the history of mobile telephony. It was incredible to learn just how long the concept of mobile phones has been in existence especially when I look back to the 80’s and early 90’s and see how archaic the technology looked as recently as then. Farley provides insight in to the struggles the technology faced in terms of advancement when he states how “self-examination was a wrenching but necessary process that for many companies would go on for years” (27). It seems as though that without the urgent drive of competition that many companies may or may not have forced themselves to push for change or address where they needed to go next strategically.

de Souza e Silva -- Cyber to Hybrid

de Souza e Silva (2006) asks how "mobile technologies reconfigure our perceptions of space via users who are always potentially connected to the Internet and to other users?" (p. 3). Clearly, anyone with an itchy cell phone thumb and a partner who values undivided attention can attest to some of the difficulties raised by this question. We can also observe the unique situation of occupying two places at once--a hybrid space that fosters co-presence among adherents of new mobile technologies. What I seem to take away from de Souza e Silva's article is the reinforcement of a theme I've been wrestling with all semester: just because we can use a technology, should we? I know this sounds a bit strange coming from an admitted technophile, but perhaps the issue didn't become salient enough until the pieces on mobile media.

de Souza e Silva writes that "the emergence of portable communication technologies has contributed to the possibility of being always connected to digital spaces, literally "carrying" the Internet wherever we go" (2006, p. 3). This ubiquitous connectivity--what Peter Morville calls ambient findability--seems always to be discussed as a possibility in the most positive sense of the word, and while I certainly paint myself as a technophile who bookends his day by checking e-mail, I also value the ability to shut the valve on the information flow and have a legitimate excuse for not responding immediately to an e-mail as I usually do ("sorry; I was away for the day on a trip to the mountains with my wife". Phones built for the mobile Web strip me of that safety net, and that alone may be the only thing stopping me from hopping on the 3G network bandwidth/wagon (aside from the aforementioned undivided-attention-liking wife)

Farley - Mobile Telephone History

Farley's piece on the history of the mobile phone (should have been titled: "From Zack Morris to BlackBerry" offers an anchoring sense of the progression of telephony, especially for me. I used to work at the telephone company in my small home town, and part of my job was curating (read: cleaning) the telephone museum, so I recognized a great deal of the materials that Farley discussed, but, more importantly, I recognized the importance of preserving the histories of "new" and "emerging" technologies to remind us of what it used to be like before gadgets like mobile phones reached the level of ubiquity that they have today. I also thought it was ironic to read that advances in mobile telephony took off so quickly here and so slowly outside the U.S. (p. 23), yet today it's quite the opposite: Scandinavia and Japan in particular are far ahead of us in stretching the boundaries of mobile capabilities. Can we leapfrog again one day past our competitors? With a president who is addicted to his BlackBerry, yes we can.

Mann, Nolan, and Wellman - Sousveillance

MNW seem intent on bringing about a radical army of "below watchers" to invert the fishbowl, as it were, and turn the surveillance back on the surveillers. Reading this, I was struck by how similar it sounds to the culture jamming movement, a group of people and organizations (AdBusters, for example) who got fed up with the ever-presence and intrusive nature of advertising to the point of hijacking billboards and other spaces to create their own counter-messages back to Corporate America. Like MNW's sousveillance, though, the movement fails to take off with greater enthusiasm because most people are complacent enough to accept the facts that they will always be bombarded with ads and with monitoring technologies. In fact, both could be thought of as belonging to an amorphous and often-nefarious "Big Brother" that exists somewhere over our heads, making decisions that impact our lives in ways we can't control. Sousveillance and culture jamming are illusions of reclaiming some shred of that power. Little tidbits of stories in which a regular Average Joe uses citizen-surveillance to throw off the shackles of power abuse (like the one Zach posted) are little better than fairy tales to feed outrages citizens their dose of Kool-Aid. "You're being watched, but look what other people have done about it! You can too!" The idea that we can somehow "enhance the ability of people to collect data about their surveillance [and then] neutralize surveillance" is  bullshit on any real level. Regaining power on any legitimate scale through sousveillance (or culture jamming) is a myth, and in fact worse than fairy tales; at least people accept fairy tales as fantasy and not possibility. The best we can hope for is to raise awareness, and that is, at best, not much more than a fantastic possibility for change in and of itself.

Dourish and Bell -- Infrastructure of Experience

For reasons unknown to myself, the nagging issue for me throughout D&B's piece on ubiquitous computing was not what these "hundreds of thousands of devices distributed through a physical environment" will look like or how they'll operate (p. 2), but whether the "low power demands" of each will be a realistic claim when magnified to the sheer quantity they seem to describe. It's not often this semester that I've considered energy demands alongside the discussions of new technologies, and I certainly didn't expect to do so in the week on mobile media. But while we devote ourselves to hours of studying hybrid games and mobile devices, perhaps we should also be conscious of the significant and fundamental changes in infrastructure and daily life theses developing technologies will bring. D&B's focus on "social infrastructures" is certainly an interesting angle to take on this issue, but I'll be interested to see more on the cultural impact of insufficient physical infrastructures that need to accompany the better-than-Moore's-law pace of rapidly developing mobile technologies (see AT&T's 3G network outages when the iPhone 2nd gen was released, for example).

Farley's article reminds me of Lessig's The Future of Ideas; they discuss the history of spectrum and its allocation, monopolies, and innovation. As Jordan points out, government regulation often stunts market growth by allowing conditions that give rise to monopolies—which discourage disruptive technologies, like mobile phones. The article reminds us that although we may think the US is a leader of technological innovation, we often lag behind. And I wonder how this has impacted and will continue to impact the US's standing as a technological innovation leader in the global marketplace. One of Friedman's points in The World is Flat (whatever you might think of the book) is that the US needs to encourage innovation and entrepreneurism to maintain its competitive and comparative advantages in a global market. As mobile technologies become more important, it seems that we are at a disadvantage.

Jacob's rant sums up my feelings about Mann, Nolan, and Wellman's "Sousveillance." The idea of sousveillance is good, this article is not. There is a difference between surveilling the surveillers and accosting employees who happen to be working that day. Similarly, MNW's point about "deferral to authority" is a good one. Deferral to authority has been the defense of violent evil doers, and often is the reason good people do bad things (see Zimbardo's The Lucifer Effect). But, I do not see how their article helps to uncover or disrupt this aspect of our society and culture.

Dourish and Bell (DB) discuss space as an infrastructure through which we experience the world. I like their discussion of how different citizens experience the same place differently. I was reminded of how Jordan and I struggled to navigate the streets of downtown Raleigh because we knew neither street names nor landmarks, i.e., bars. So, we were left to wander with Jordan lamenting, or demanding, that all city streets should be named by numbers and avenues/streets. Doing so would allow anyone to quickly find their way in an unfamiliar city. But, what would be lost?  DB write, "The naming of streets in an infrastructure for encountering and experiencing the city in terms of regions, paths, and flows—street naming defines patterns of sameness and difference that critically define what you see when you look around you" (p. 4). How do street names define and express a city?

DB state that pervasive computing can facilitate communal activities: "In focusing on the practical organization of space, we want to draw attention to a mutually constitutive relationship between collective understandings of spaces and the practices and activities that people carry out in them" (p. 5). However, they also realize that pervasive computing could be an impediment to the local organization of interaction (p. 6). For example, they discuss how art is both a public and private experience: "Art is experienced, critically, not in isolation, but in a space that is moved through and that is occupied simultaneously by others, both companions and strangers. That the experience of art is often a private phenomenon, it is conducted in a public space" (p. 8). As pervasive computing becomes more…pervasive, how will that affect our experience public space? It seems that if most people are occupied by their mobile technologies, they may be moving through the same space, but having completely different experiences—much like how people view and understand art. Then again, how this different from how people have always experienced public space?

DB note that mobile technologies, by breaking the barriers between public/private and physical/virtual spaces, rupture existing social protocols: "The problem with technologies that erase these boundaries then is not simply that they fail, themselves, to recognize socially relevant distinctions, but that they undermine the mechanisms by which members of society can demonstrate, to each other, their sensitivity to these nuances" (p. 13). Cell phones are not annoying, but they allow people to be annoying in new ways. Recall Jonathan Franzen, who I included in my presentation, said that he found nothing more offensive than someone who says, “I love you” on their cell phone in a public space. No cell phone signs and spaces become a way to help determine social protocols. As Goffman might say, we do not yet have fully written social scripts for cell phone usage.

Dr. Silva's hybrid spaces raises many of the same issues as DB, especially with the idea of enfolded space—which, as Jacob notes, can boggle the mind, or mindbottling. I also like Dr. Silva's point that interfaces change social interaction: "Every shift in the meaning of an interface requires the re-conceptualization of the type of social relationships and spaces it mediates" (p. 3). We can see this with different mobile phone interfaces. Although I do not have a RAZR, I have heard that their interface is terrible, affecting how users use it to interact with others. The iPhone made it easier and, let’s be honest, cooler, hipper, awesomer to access the mobile web, though I wonder how much of that had to do with the packaged data plan. If you have to pay for it, you may as well use it. Which raises another question: will the general population in the US only really start to adopt and use the mobile internet and location-based games if data plans as opposed to minutes become standard?

Silva notes that the mobile internet and mobile networks help users to find people in public places (p. 20). But as more people begin to use these features, it seems these technologies and applications will become even better ways to avoid people. Jordan says, and I am sure he is not alone, that he uses Facebook to communicate with certain people, yet avoiding face-to-face interaction. So, I guess I wonder if there will be a backlash to all this connectivity. Or will everyone be both surveillers and sousveillers, and at the same time? Soursveillance?

In her article "From Cyber to Hybrid" de Souza e Silva discusses hybrid space as connective, mobile, and social. In discussing the connective nature she points out that users of phones with constant connections to the internet "do not perceive physical and digital spaces as separate entities and do not have the feeling of "entering" the Internet, or being immersed in digital spaces, as was generally the case when one needed to sit down in front of a computer screen and dial a connection" (de Souza e Silva, 2006, p. 263). This is an interesting point to me especially when thinking about hybrid spaces as places that carry meaning and some type of boundary or demarcation. Also, in the past critics of virtual space experience often used the "go outside, get some daylight" rebuttals to declarations about the capabilities of virtual experiences. However, when considering hybrid spaces there is physical experience in the actual world concurrent with possible virtual world interactions. Therefore, far from offering the isolating possibilities of the virtual world, the concept of hybrid space seems to promise an amplification of the virtual experience by virtue of it taking place in the physical realm, simultaneously with other activities. By association with the physical or actual, the activities of hybrid space seem to garner physical space legitimacy with virtual space potential. Also, the discussion of the use of mobile technology to double presence did not strike me as much as the idea of mobile technology to enact what Meyrowitz (2001) had called "the imagined elsewhere." In other words, it is not my ability to talk or text with my sister in Boston that makes me feel myself as doubled by being there, but my ability to conceive of her context as making her feel present in Raleigh. In other words, I rarely think of mobile technology as doubling me, whereas I do think about it as doubling other people to me. Finally, I was interested in the discussion of the game Mogi, where virtual creatures can be "caught" in hybrid space and uploaded to cell phones, however, many of the creatures would only "go out" at certain times of the day or night therefore bringing together the virtual and physical space along the added dimension of time (de Souza e Silva, 2006, p. 271). Time is an interesting concept in terms of multi-player spaces because so much of game play and/or communication ends up being asynchronous in a purely virtual context, because it has to do with access. However, with hybrid space, the added verisimilitude of time and timing comes back into play more meaningfully. Therefore, while boundaries might become complicated by the introduction of hybrid spaces, there is also a reintegrating sense in "living out" virtual activities in real-time, physical environments.

Farley (2005) introduces the history of mobile technology following WWII. Among this was not just the history of the rise of mobile technology in the United States but the associated process of development, struggle, and competition to maintain marketshare with the Japanese. Also, this history was entertaining to me as my mother owned one of the earlier cell phones in 1989. I can't remember who made it, but it looked very much like the oversized model on the left (p. 30). Therefore, this article made me nostalgic in ways about the oversized phone I eventually had as a junior in undergrad, (because I was a very late adapter,) and even beyond the technology, nostalgic for the mobile phone practices I had in the early 2000s. For instance, not so much due to its unwieldy size as to the whole concept of mobile technology as strange to me, I used to leave my cell phone in the top drawer of my desk in my dorm apartment. Although I carry a cell phone with me now, I still physically turn it off (rather than to silent) when I am in classes, at the movies, etc. While reading about the Nokia 9000 Communicator I was definitely struck by the idea that today's and the next generation of cell phone users (i.e. ten year olds?) will grow up without any concept of cell phone use as necessarily separate from internet use or im-ing (in the form of texting). Much as we've talked about different countries "leapfrogging" or failing to see a division because most computing is done via mobile technologies versus computers, I am still wary of the idea that a significant portion of shopping, emailing, website updating, and navigation will take place via my phone. However, when Farley (2005) references some countries hitting over 100% penetration, with some people possessing multiple mobile phones, I have to admit that the discussion of the history and process for creating a wireless infrastructure is important given the demand for service. (Can you imagine in the 1970s being on a five-ten year waiting list for a phone!)

Mann, Nolan & Wellman (2003) write about the term "sousveillance," which they use to discuss inverse surveillance or reversing the gaze. Initially, the construction of this word bothers me slightly. While sur = above or over, and veillance= the act of seeing, surveillance can be broken down to something like overseeing, watching with its associated overtones of power constructs. However, sous as under or underseeing has a different connotation either below the radar or out of the scope of being watched. Therefore, in the first paragraph I am unsure why Mann et al did not just go with something like counterveillance. This is seemingly a point Mann et al (2003) makes for themselves in noting "We call this inverse panopticon “sousveillance” from the French words for “sous” (below) and “veiller” to watch"(p. 332). However, (I'm belaboring the point, perhaps,) I still do not understand the framework of underwatching or watching from below, watching up? Also, if refectionist tactics are transgressive using the tools of the system, is sousveillance the modern-day example of the graffiti and subversion of the system that Baudrillard calls for? Also, I am very familiar with the power shift of "the male gaze" or the power of the gaze as it relates to film, and I believe that when people are looking (peeping) at the killer either in Rear Window, Disturbia, or Peter Straub's Ghost Story and the killer suddenly looks back right into the eyes of the viewer/reader as voyeur, it can be terrifying. However, there seems to be a much different dynamic at play here. I confess I agree with Jacob that I don't see the effectiveness in photographing police officers approaching my house, shop keepers, or cab drivers. Also, what are the legal concerns involved in wearing data-gathering devices?  However, my main concern with this article is that it neglects some of the bottom-up complexity that Dr. Packer covered in his article about automobility and surveillance, and that is that far from a power framework forcing surveillance upon us, this is a condition we willingly accept and call for in a society controlled by fear and capitalism. For instance, in Packer's example of a black box for cars, if people elect to have them in order to lower car insurance rates, pretty soon that method of surveillance will be accepted and integrated into our normal driving/living/being surveyed practices, but it isn't because we have a governmental Big Brother installing them in our cars while we sleep-- we are complicit.


Finally, Dourish and Bell (2007) discuss ubiquitous or pervasive computing which acted as "a 'third age' of computing, following the eras of the mainframe and the desktop personal computer," and that describes how every user will have access through multiple computers throughout his or her daily experience and "spread throughout the environment"(p.1). One of the most interesting sections within this article, to me, was the description of how the use of a computer-based recording system in doctor-patient relations would not just change the interaction, but could even affect the rhythm of the patient's responses such that he or she would wait until the physician pressed the enter button to speak again (Dourish & Bell, 2007, p. 6). This was a particularly striking example to me because it illustrated not only the patient's change in experience, not receiving the gaze of the physician or gaze-cues, but also that the patient would adapt to speaking practices in line with the computing needs so quickly. Finally, Dourish and Bell (2007) present Smail's Imaginary Cartographies in which the three competing location systems of medieval times are explained as neighborhoods, landmarks,and "islands." I thought this section was important especially as we talked about navigation through space either based on locations/roads or landmarks in our earlier discussion of space versus place. However, in a way the navigation by roads is also then tied up in our experience of roads as landmarks and organizing logics of roadways versus highways (even numbers go East and West, odd numbers North and South,etc). Although I think about navigation often, because I have no innate sense of direction, I had never thought about it from the reverse point of view of locational practices instead as intimately tied to navigation. This ultimately made me think about the Borges story, "The Library of Babel." In conclusion, I was surprised by many of the findings of people's experience of place and relation to pervasive computing (particularly the ilkone 8000, which supports spiritual practices,) however, as our experience in occupying and moving through space becomes more tied to infrastructures this kind of study becomes more important. I wonder too though, going back to the debate about whether to rely on GPS if the pervasive computing available through mobile devices also allows us to act more algorithmically. If people are breaking up via text message, will there be a time when instead of just sending the text it is standard practice to first google the top 10 most effective break-up text messages and then send one? In what feels like a hyper-information age are we relying more and more on our ability to look up and check up on what other people did in a similar situation and is this impacting our survival instincts/ability to mentally enact scenarios?

In our examination of 20th century technologies, we paid a great deal of attention to how transportation affected media. Paperback books, for instance, increased in popularity because people needed something to read while traveling by rail. Books obviously pre-date trains, but the medium adapted to satisfy the emerging need for easily portable literature. This week’s focus goes beyond transportation and another earlier topic, mobility, to study mobile media.

Farley (2005) chronicles the development of the mobile telephone. Although companies planted seeds in 1946, it took decades for them to bear any fruit. I still remember the novelty of the cordless phone, which I remember thinking had all the features you would need since you could still talk on the phone while you were outside in the yard. In the early to mid 1990s, some of the farmers in my community bought cell phones so they could communicate while they were working in the fields. I used a cell phone for the first time in 1997, while working my first radio job. It looked pretty much like the bag phone Farley shows in the article (p. 30). I would take the phone with me when I would go out for remote broadcasts so I could communicate any problems back to the station, essentially using it for the same purpose as the farmers.

In week 3, Kellerman (2006) asserted a societal impact of wirelessness is the perception of personal virtual mobility and expression as democratic rights (p. 101). Using the computer no longer means sitting at a desktop machine; cellular telephones are really microcomputers keeping users in constant contact. As access becomes ubiquitous across the world, the media that provide information and facilitate communication need to adapt. After mainframes and PCs come a third age, one of ubiquitous computing. According to Dourish and Bell (2007), “ubiquitous computing suggests that each user will be served by tens or hundreds of computational devices, located not simply on the desktop but spread throughout the environment. In ubiquitous computing, then, the site of interaction with computation is the everyday world, whose fabric and contents have been augmented with computational capacities, and whose meaning might also shift with these new technology interventions and augmentations” (p. 1).

At one of the Subway locations in Garner there is a sign asking customers not to use their cell phones while in line because it is rude. I joked with the sandwich artist about the difficulty of communicating with someone while he or she was had another, invisible conversation partner. Dourish and Bell touch on this issue as well, writing “Certainly, the rise of ‘cell-phone-free zones’ in public spaces, or cell site dampeners deployed in places such as churches and restaurants suggests emerging norms about the appropriateness of access to information in difference spaces; norms that may, of course, be acknowledged and enforced socially rather than technologically” (p. 12). I have wondered more than once if the FCC’s ban on cell phone use on airplanes is really because of potential interference between the cockpit and ground control. It is annoying enough when someone will not turn off the overhead reading light; I cannot image the ensuing mayhem if someone chatted incessantly on a cell phone for five hours. It would be enough to make even the most docile person violent.

“Because mobile devices create a more dynamic relationship with the Internet, embedding it in outdoor, everyday activities, we can no longer address the disconnection between physical and digital spaces,” writes de Souza e Silva (2006, p. 262). She introduces the notion of a hybrid space where the virtual and physical come together. Without a doubt, “Multiuser environments, constructed metaphorically as public social places, have attracted many people willing to socialize with others outside their situated geographical boundaries” (de Souza e Silva, pp. 269-270). Now a user’s mobile device enables interaction with his or her physical environment, allowing him or her to better socialize within and even with the geographic boundaries. Hybrid-reality games like Botfighters and Mogi turn a city into a giant game board (p. 266). The mobility of media allows game players to visualize the city in new, different ways. Dourish and Bell remind us transportation systems also affect our sense of geography. “When first visiting London and traveling on the Underground, one's experience of the city is of a series of islands connected by Tube stops until one day one walks down the street, realizes that some of those stops were only a couple of blocks apart, and starts to experience the city as a continuous phenomenon” (p. 5).

Until reading Mann, Nolan and Wellman (2003), I never considered an auto-flush toilet as a surveillance device. Add this to the list of surveillance I regularly encounter in my office (which has cameras in the studio, library and hallway), at traffic lights, store parking lots and the pharmacy (where I need to show my ID and sign for over-the-counter pseudoephedrine). I have an added level of surveillance in that not only does Gmail read all my emails, but as a state employee all my emails are considered public documents and can therefore be subject to a Freedom of Information Act request. This causes me to sometimes self-censor or opt to communicate verbally rather than by an email – especially in regards to keeping information private via the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act. I know some professors who will not give out any grade information via email, or only communicate to the student’s official university email.

Luckily for me, today I picked up a copy of Technician for the first time ever. On the front page was a discussion of something that pertains to our discussion of space, particularly the discussion of Infrastructure. In their article on infrastructure, Dourish and Bell comes to three conclusions. I want to discuss the first one and relate it to NC State’s campus. Their first conclusion, the one they say is most important, is that space is organized not just physically, but culturally as well. WE can see that here on our campus with the Freedom of Expression (FOE) tunnel. The FOE tunnel cannot be understood in purely physical terms. Sure it’s a tunnel we walk through to get places on campus, but it’s much more than that. At some point, students made the decision to transform the tunnel into a forum for cultural expression. We can’t understand how the infrastructure of this particular tunnel works without understanding how it works in the University culture.

We can also see in the paper today, how different communities try to define space. After Obama was elected, 4 students wrote hate speech on the walls of the FOE tunnel. They made racists comments and made threats. Now, those students face possible disciplinary action, and the front page of the Technician  features a quote from the NC NAACP leader saying, “Hate speech is not free speech.” Uh….. yeah it is. The threats are a different story, but our cultural understanding of how a FOE space works tends to define it as a place where you can express unpopular opinions. Hate speech is undoubtedly awful, but refusing to allow people to express themselves even when they’re being hateful, especially in an FOE tunnel, sets a dangerous precedent. Basically, it interferes with our cultural understanding of that space. Believe me, I’m resisting the urge to rant for a thousand words about someone getting in trouble because of a message in the FOE tunnel.

Moving on, both Dr. Silva and Dourish and Bell discuss how new technologies don’t obliterate space, they make us reencounter our physical spaces. I wrote in an earlier post that I though the interaction between physicality and technology was more interesting than discussions of Second Life or other programs that let the user divorce himself/herself from physical space. No matter how hard we try, we cannot become virtual.
    
Throughout the semester, our readings have been building to this week’s set of articles. We have read about materiality and networks, mobility, space, hackers, etc. A common theme was that the idea that new technologies will obliterate space is a myth. We still operate in space, and as Silva discusses, the new technologies change that space. We touched on this vein when we discusses GPS and getting lost. GPS changes our understanding of travelling by, in a way, digitizing space. A GPS system contains a digital map of the physical world, and as we travel and the system speaks to us, it is overlaying it’s digital world on our physical space.

The move toward hybrid spaces will only become more pronounced in the coming years. Social networks such as Facebook have shown that people want to connect and stay connected with other people, at least online.   It will be interesting to see what the shift away from the virtual and back to the physical will mean for new social networks. What if we have phones that allow us to see exactly where our facebook friends are on a google map? Do we want that physical connection? Silva talks about ubiquitous computer which leads to a kind of constant connection, but would we want a constant physical connection?

However you answer those questions, it’s an interesting area of study. For me, one of the appeals of our new technologies is that they allow me to divorce from physical contact. I like being able to call people rather than meet them face to face, and I like being able to text them even more than I like being able to call people. I’m not a hermit, so that’s obviously not always true, but I wouldn’t be on facebook if it meant my facebook friends could find me in the physical world. I often use facebook as a replacement for physicality, messaging someone to say hi instead of meeting them for lunch. The move from virtual to physical really is a paradigm shift.

Sousveillance…uh…awesome. As we move to the hybrid reality Dr. Silva discusses, we only become easier and easier to watch. Phones with GPS mean phones that are constantly connected to a network that can watch where the phone moves. Someday, corporations and government won’t have to watch us anymore. We will provide them with all the information they need.

So how do we combat this? Do we combat this? Everyone in this class (even David!!!) uses gmail, which we all know actively follows our correspondence. We don’t care though. So do we care about being watched in the physical world? Probably not, though we should. Is sousveillance useful to combat surveillance? I don’t know, though it may be the best bet we have. Also, it makes for one hell of a research design. Imagine how cool that study was to plan. Matt and Kati, you should take your students, put computers, cameras, and screens on them, and send them into the ghettos of DC or the bodegas in the Bronx to see how people react in underprivileged areas to sousveillance. I don’t think it would be hard to get IRB approval for that. And your students will love you. I promise.

“Sousveillance Across Socioeconomic Divides: A Bronx Bodega Case Study”… who’s with me?

Finally, the history of the cell phone. I think the most interesting part of this history (pretty much all the histories we’ve read) are when the market runs face-first into governmental regulation. Cell phone (and TV and Radio) frequencies were heavily regulated by the FCC, which stunted competition and made groups trying to compete go through interminable bureaucracy. As heavy governmental regulation often does, it also led to monopolies.

What happened to Japan? I remember when Japan was the efficient economy that was going to crush the U.S. Well, it never happened, and Japan has seen a much longer period of economic downturn than we have. Hmmmmmm… China is the new Japan. It has a good ring to it.

 
   

 

First, I want to do a more traditional blog post about Silva, Farley, and Dourish. The post ends with my technological plea. I think you’ll agree it reflects the view of technology I’ve shared with you all throughout the semester. Then I would like to end my 701 blogging with a rant about sousveillance. It will be my only rant of the semester, and I’m not sure how that happened.

Silva, Farley and Dourish

 According to Farley, on August 15, 1996, the first Internet capable phone was manufactured by Nokia. Then, in October of 2000 the first camera phone entered the market in Japan and was capable of sending and receiving images via email. In the years since these developments, the amount of data sent and received via mobile devices has grown exponentially. At the present time nearly the entire Internet is available on a few higher end mobile phones. We can access and download music and video and use GPS-based applications. It’s almost difficult to imagine what might be next. As Farley says, “the desire for people to communicate, and for business to cater to that need, insures an imaginative and successful future for the mobile” (p. 34). He doesn’t posit any guesses about the future and neither will I. Instead, I plan to focus on the transformation of our physical spaces by the influence of the mobile device.

 Dourish and Bell state that ubiquitous computing involves individual users being served by “tens or hundreds of computational devices … spread throughout the environment.” This is not likely to occur with desktop computing, leaving us with mobile devices as the deliverers of ubiquity in computing. The use of mobile devices, according to Silva, creates a hybrid space. She says that “hybrid spaces merge the physical and the digital in a social environment created by the mobility of users connected via mobile technology devices” (p. 263). The hybrid space transforms our physical landscape. Dourish and Bell argue that our cultural actions help to form our landscapes. “The very organization of space … is experienced through a range of cultural lenses” (p. 10) and ubiquitous computing works to create and sustain our infrastructure.

 This is all very well and good. However, I wonder what the effects of these changes in our physical spaces are.  If, as Dourish and Bell indicate, we are becoming increasingly dependent upon our infrastructures, what does that mean for us as a society? Dourish and Bell claim that infrastructures are a “manifestation of cultural practice and can be scrutinized as such” (p. 3). If our infrastructures/physical spaces are being created/re-created by our use of mobile technologies, what does it mean to scrutinize them? If we critically examine the structure of space, we are in turn critically examining our use of technology. This is a bit of self-reflection that we may want to engage in, and did to a certain extent during our discussion of space.

 We are becoming increasingly dependent upon our infrastructure and therefore upon the technology that creates it, in this case mobile devices. So, our physical spaces are hybrid spaces. In such spaces, Silva argues that we do not perceive differences between the physical and the digital. They are not created by the technology themselves, but by the social use of the technology. Mobile devices are in constant use in public spaces, therefore creating hybrid spaces. My question is, does each user inhabit his or her own individual hybrid space? Silva states that hybrid spaces are mobile spaces, which are “networked social spaces defined by the use of portable interfaces as the nodes of the network” (p. 266). Nodes are still a part of the network, and the entire network defines the space. Therefore, if I am in a train station with 100 other people and we are all using a mobile device, then are we all existing in the same hybrid space? I don’t believe that we are. I think we develop our own individual spaces. Once again, the difference between space and place becomes an issue: we each have our own hybrid space within the larger place. Is the entire network of nodes, then, a hybrid place instead?

 Another question that I have involves a passive node. What if I have a mobile device, but I’m not using it? Am I a part of the hybrid space? Silva describes the game Botfighters. If  am not involved or even aware of the game, yet I am standing next to people involved in zapping one another with their text message rays, am I in their space? This question of presence is intriguing to me. Silva mentions Hayles’s notion of enfolded space: “there is a context that is created by the spatial proximity of people and inside it another context that is created by the cell phone” (p. 269). Silva also points out that users of mobile devices will consider others who are engaging in conversation with them via a mobile device are “considered by others to be present” (p. 269). So, it seems that, using the idea of the hybrid space, it is possible to be present in one location and not present in the same location but at the same time present in a different location. My mind boggles.

 In the end, though, I’m pretty sure that I don’t really want my physical landscape to be determined by my use of technology. Dourish and Bell state that “the spaces through which we move become visible in terms of their network accessibility” (p. 3). I simply don’t think this is true. I do not view a place in terms of whether or not it has wireless access or cellular signal. If I need or want to be in a location, I’m going to go there regardless. I do not choose or view my surroundings based on connectivity. I do not need to be constantly connected. Is it nice to have the Internet everywhere? Sometimes, sure. But sometimes I want to exist in a single place; I don’t want to be fragmented. I don’t want to be part of some text message ray gun wielding crazy world. Please, just let me leave the Internet at home and leave me out of your befuddling enfolded spaces.

Mann, Nolan, and Wellman

Maybe it’s because I’m not Canadian so I couldn’t relate to what these authors were talking about, but I’m not sure I understand the point of their article. They begin by providing a number of quotes discussing the ubiquity of surveillance. I have to agree with the idea that surveillance is needlessly abundant. I was even kind of intrigued by their description of sousveillance: the “offering [of] panoptic technologies to help [us] observe those in authority” (p. 332). This is an interesting idea, although it’s not very new. 20/20 has been doing hidden camera exposes for years. They go on to say that sousveillance can help to “mirror and confront bureaucratic organizations” (p. 333) and provide people with the ability to use the organization’s own tools against them. “Sousveillance focuses on enhancing the ability of people to access and collect data about their surveillance and to neutralize surveillance” (p. 333). The authors point out the Rodney King video as an example of sousveillance. But, then, the wheels come off of their paper.

 The authors claim that sousveillance brings “into question the very act of surveillance itself” (p. 337). Oh, really? How exactly does it do that? Because I take a picture of a shop owner, he’s going to think twice about installing a security camera? Seriously. Even if I watch the watchers, they’re still watching me. Other than a great 20/20 episode, what exactly have I accomplished? Not very much. And the authors accomplish even less with their sousveillance.

 How exactly is walking around with a camera and a projector sousveillance? I’m not watching any watchers. And how did they expect people to react? People were confused by the fool walking around with a projector strapped to his chest. The hidden camera made the “performance” disconcerting? Who called it disconcerting? The people you mentioned seemed amused and (once again) confused, not uncomfortable. The point is we’re used to getting our picture taken. Did the “researchers” in this article stop to think about why security personnel approached them? Maybe it was the giant Flavor Flav-esque camera dome on a chain or the LCD display on your back that drew attention, not the possibility of picture taking. Stores don’t want you doing things to distract customers from the merchandise, they’re going to ask you to leave and take your projector with you.

 Then the sousveiller herself thought that people were thinking “if I wanted to take a camera into a store, they would hassle me like that too?” People probably weren’t thinking that – they were probably thinking of how foolish you looked. And they wouldn’t hassle them with a camera unless it was gigantic and strapped to their head and they made lame excuses about not controlling it or that it was somehow implanted into their skull. Sousveillers that gave those excuses were understandably left alone: people usually try to avoid those who are insane.

 I didn’t realize how angry this article made me until I just realized how much I have written/ranted about it. But what this article illustrates is not that sousveillance is any sort of effective empowerment tool, but that people with ridiculously large cameras and computers strapped to their bodies draw attention to themselves.

"You can learn more about a person in an hour of play than in a year of conversation." -- Plato

I'd like to start by balancing out what is sure to become a nerd manifesto by speaking to the educational possibilities of games mentioned in passing by Nielsen et al. (2008), specifically Diplomacy. My undergraduate academic adviser and history professor was an avid researcher and advocate of strategic simulation-as-pedagogy, and to better illustrate the principles learned during the Great War, we spent a full 3 weeks playing Diplomacy as a class. My roommate and I were thrilled, as we spent our free time playing Sid Meier's Civilization and Microsoft's Age of Empires II. It took us--playing as Sweden--less than 3 class periods to take over the known world, mostly by convincing lesser interested parties to go along with our schemes. Later, in a course about the American Civil War, we proved quite convincingly that the South would win every time, and still later, in a May term class devoted to historical simulation, we accurately depicted the lessons of the Vietnam War by playing a game called "VietCong Dodgeball." I bring up these analog examples not to boast (well, mostly) but to illustrate Nielsen et al.'s point: the history of gaming does matter, and the manual RPG and tabletop games of my seemingly misspent youth were in fact sophisticated rhetorical exchanges, exercises in inventio and persuasion that positioned me serendipitously for research and coursework in this program and for people like me to impact culture in profound ways.

Reading Nielsen et al.'s history of gaming also made me think of how, like Jason and Zach, I feel disconnected to the gamer's culture I once recognized ontologically. I play occasionally now, but I'm certainly no longer a "gamer." Labels matter to this subculture; all it took for me to go from l33t to n00b was a thesis and a wedding. I find it striking that the public is quick to deride the archetypal "loser in the basement" gamer as operating on the fringes of "accepted" culture, yet as an in-group, they largely ignore this assumption by replacing it with one of their own: people want to be like them, masters of a virtual world, wielding untold power and subjugating others to their will. I'm on the fringes of both, as a passable norm but a closet nerd, a daywalker who still feels the pull (I'm even downloading WoW updates while I write--please don't tell my wife). I think this desire for in-group recognition also plays to Nielsen et al.'s mention of the intertextuality of LucasFilm titles like Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, which "rewarded fans for their loyalty" (p. 74). Leroy Jenkins works on a much deeper level for the dank-basement dwellers, and it becomes an object of meta-intertextuality when discussed in-game.

This metatextuality extends well beyond the borders of nerdery. Indeed, I found it odd that Nielsen et al. claim that "it is curious that MMOGs have been mostly confined to their region of origin" (p. 93). I think this ignores a rather substantial phenomenon in online gaming of "players" who aren't in it for the play. I'm thinking here of play-for-pay users--the well-known Chinese gold farmers, for example--who play an integral yet ugly role in gaming culture and who serve, in a way, to propogate the ideal of Western subjugation of the virtual developing world.

I will say little as to how Liestol (2003) impacts this subjugaming other than that she explores the "lady in distress" motivator from an unusual angle. Where she seems most salient to me, my conversation here, and indeed my experience with gaming is that "the safety and regulation of everyday life creates a desire and need to participate in an activity that involves adventure and dangerous challenges" (p. 346), which she attributes to Dahl (1984). I see this as an interesting intersection for further observation about the seemingly diverging role of technology: the more sedentary and unchallenged our lives become through modern convenience, the more natural it will be for us to seek out increasingly "adventurous and dangerous challenges." Liestol may provide a rather uninspiring account of Duke Nukem and an odd insistence on the Boy Scouts, but she does graciously follow those up with a brief one-off about the possible impetus for violence in video games.

This point leads me conveniently into Jenkins (2006), who I had hoped would not resurface again after reading last week's pieces on (or ostensibly on) Web 2.0. The key line of this piece should have been the slightly-longer-than-bumper-sticker rallying cry for gaming advocates everywhere: "Constitutional status has historically rested on a medium's highest potential, not its worst excess" (p. 209). Jenkins redeemed himself for me throughout this argument, especially in his critique of retired West Point instructor David Grossman's attempts to align first-person shooters with intensive military training, a "Microsoft Kill Simulator" of sorts. "Grossman assumes almost no conscious cognitive activity on the part of the gamers, who have all of the self-consciousness of Pavlov's dogs" (p. 211). Jenkins' treatment of the highly influential work of James Paul Gee also circles back nicely to my ruminations at the beginning of this post: games offer us critical learning opportunities, whether those moments are recognized explicitly by the user or not. To this I would add that the greatest moments of personal growth are in games that challenge our comfort levels in the most significant ways, say in the violence aesthetic carried through to excess.

The reaction to video game violence that Jenkins explores is echoed in another chamber by Turkle (2003); she suggests that the backlash to inappropriate gaming content is rooted in a more general uneasiness and ambivalence toward computing technology. And this uneasiness, to borrow language from above, does not translate to younger generations who perceive computers "not [as] a new technology but a fact of life" (p. 500). Much like Liestol, this short quip sheds light on a new argumentative dimension of the anti-gaming advocates' position. Could it be that aversion to violent video games--nay, video games as a whole--stems not from morality but from generational envy? Youth culture appears to internalize the complexities necessary to operate within gaming culture, and these are complexities that become, well, more complex as we age. If video games empower users, as this week's authors (and I) would argue, is the urge to purge them from the child's life really a deeper reflection of fear? Fear both of the technology and of the possibility that technological know-how will be the route to power in the future, and without it the Luddites will fade into the smoothly rendered background? But of course, the more general audience would not accept the imposition of heavy restrictions on video game content on those grounds alone, so the morality issue must be raised instead as a more effective avenue of persuasion. Does anyone really believe that Hillary Clinton even made it to Don Salvatore Leone's treacherous ambush in Grand Theft Auto III before condemning it for "stealing our children's innocence?"

So I return to where I began, at the intersection of rhetorical action and gameplay, and it appears that I'm out of lives to continue. Game over.

Nielsen, Smith, and Tosca - History
There's an interesting distinction between pont-and-click versus text interfaces for story/adventure games. The authors mention that players were frustrated with finding the "right synonyms" for words, which is the problem that point-and-click solved. Because the primary purpose of the game was to move through the narrative, then the players felt hindered by the interface. I wonder if there would be a way to sell a story game based on the "fun" of having to guess the right word. That could be a game as well, right? There are games where the purpose is word-guessing, and that makes those games fun. So, part of what makes a game fun is the way that it is framed. Anything that doesn't further that frame or contribtue to it detracts from the fun of the game. I guess a simplistic way to put this is: what am I doing and how is the interface helping or hindering me?

I'd just like to complain that one of the greatest games ever -- Arena -- received absolutely no mention here. I thought Arena was huge. Now, mark my words, I never beat it (so long and tough), but I did have some friends make it all the way through.

Late in this chapter, the authors notice that many MMORPGs have remained confined to their area of origin. I find this to be an interesting contrast to Jenkins' theory of pop cosmopolitanism. Why haven't or don't these games make it across borders? This point becomes even more significant, given the fact that these games--with their emphasis on connectivity, collaboration, and communication--also provide a medium for intercutlural comomunication.

Turkle - Video games and computer holding power
I really lked Turkle's take that a successful video game player achieves a "meeting of the minds" with the program(mer). This rings true, and the programmer (designer) also strives for a meeting of the minds with the player. A good game programmer understands player's expectations and plays to those. A good player understands how a programmer might go about designing a game. Therefore, both parties are hinging a mutual meeting of expectations through/in the medium of the video game.

Turkle ruminates on the extent to which players will become designers of their own games. Players already have the abillity to mod their games, so what does it mean to design your own game? The ability to design one's own game is another level of interactivity. You are interacting with the game in a whole new way--as a designer, rather than a player. Therefore, if we think of video games as a meeting-of-minds, desigining your own game lets you take on that other role of the designer, much as you might take on a role in a game. What kind of games would you design? "Good" games? "Evil" games? Indeed, the medium of video games seems to be one of the last places where users have limited content creation ability. Nowadays we can much more easily use technology to compose (and I use "compose" intentionally here)--to compose print, music, film, web pages, blogs, and I'd venture to argue that video games are next. I couldn't find this article (read: I couldn't find it on my first or second google search and didn't feel like dedicating more time), but I recall a report I read about this interface someone had designed that would allow elementary students to create their own video games. It was like super object-oriented programming, I guess. It sounded really cool, so I can envision a future not far off where we'll all have access to an easy-to-use interface for the creation of our own video games. I'm sure they won't be as robust as commercial video games, but then again neither are those other popularized, easy-to-use forms of media.

Liestol - Computer games and the ludic structure of interpretation
Just reading Liestol's description (or, the preiconographical level of understanding) almost made me forget what made Duke fun in the first place. Really, that description does such poor justice to the game experience. And that--right there--is part of a point I hope to get to: that a game is an experience, the way seeing a live theatre show is an experience altogether different from reading a play. Anyway, returning to Liestol's description, I think some of the rhetorical questions he poses are ludicrous. For example, in referring to the bikini-clad pole dancers, he asks, "Is there an alliance between the owmen and the unearthly monsters?" While I want to give him the benefit of the doubt here--that he's playing his own joke on us--his previous question makes me interpret his writing here literally, rather than sarcastically-metaphorically, to which I reply: never once when playing this game in high school did I ever think to ask that question. I fully recognized the game as a satire of itself. Alternately, given my more mature and critical eye, I might today suggest that there is an alliance between the women and the unearthly monsters, and the monsters represent the typical strip-show  today, I might suggest that the alliance between the women.

Liestol starts getting to some interesting stuff in the "retrospect" section, but I'm not totally sold on why the hermeneutics of video games differ from those of other media. Liestol tries to frame the argument for this difference around the subject-position of the media consumer, but I don't think the argument here is strong enough to warrant a clear distinction between the subject-position of an art critic and the subject-position of a game critic. Liestol writes that you can get kicked out of a video game (and, so a critic's subject position is less stable), and implies that you can't get kicked out of a painting, but I'm not sure about that. I feel pretty kicked out when I look at Magritte.

Jenkins - The war between effects and meanings
Part of the war Jenkins describes can also be understood as a war between literalness and metpahor. To what extend are we willing to ascribe literalness to metaphorical actions (withiin a videogame). Jenkins' argument is that an effects-perspective of videogames is adopted by critics, whereas meanings-based perspectives are adopted by people who critically examine videogames, because a discussion of meaning necessarily involves critical examination of the artifact. I like how Jenkins concludes his argument. He suggests that teaching video game composition can make students more critical consumers of videogames. This idea also ties into our own class discussions about the relationship between theory and application.

In chapter four of Understanding Video Games, Neilson states, “the cultural position that games occupy today is difficult to understand without a sense of how games were initially conceived” (52). Neilson then points out that games “let us experiment with chance and probability…  allow us to simulate things that we cannot (or do not wish to) see happen in real life” (49).  To validate Neilson’s observations here, I have a confession to make: I used to play role-playing games. Vampire, circa 1995, was my game of choice. Looking back on this experience, I know I did it because it engaged my imagination, and I had a weird longing to imagine things “we cannot (or do not wish to) see happen.” So on this count, Neilson is correct. But I also remember my mother, who, like many parents, believed that the these role-playing games were “morbid and unhealthy” (48). As a teenager, though, I had decided otherwise. And so I played them with joy and, subsequently, confirmed the fact that games hold special cultural positions. The cultural position that Vampire held for me can be encapsulated in another confession that I should now make: I played games specifically to reject my mother. Through them, I asserted my independence. So on this count, Neilson is again correct, and so is Liestol.

Liestol concludes that the action game, Duke Nukem reflects ancient myths about dragonslayers and serves to uphold modern-day male myths, including the myth that manhood requires that “we exclude all feminine attributes” and that men “alone can get the job done in rugged solitude and by sparing no ammo” (345). In fact, Liestol concludes that the narrative of Duke Nukem represents the slaying of the mother, the exterminating of maternal control so that men can achieve their manhood. She wonders whether these myths resonate today because “the modern city lacked the necessary challenges that would make boys into strong, independent, and brave men” (345). Nonetheless, she asserts that the narrative in Duke Nuken represents the “nightmarish vision of an ‘independent woman’… threatening the autonomous masculine hero” (347).  She then finally proceeds to tie this observation with the fact that 89% of boys grow up in a household run exclusively by the mother, and Leistol suggests that “boys may seek father replacements in macho heroes” (348) and that the game may serve a psychologically soothing purpose.

On the one hand, I tend to think that Liedtol’s conclusion goes too far, i.e. most boys probably do not connect Duke Nukem to a need for a father-figure, although the connection makes sense in the halls of academe. On the other hand, I do think that macho video games can serve as one way for boys to reject the mothering mother figure. As a boy who grew up in a household run only by good ol' mom, I know, first hand, that certain video games were seen as disgusting by my mother and that she would never play them; consequently, this made playing them all the more exciting, and I was able to assert my independence from her by continuing to play them. Although my singular experience is not enough to extend the claim that games serve this purpose to all other boys, I do see the validity in Liestol’s suggestion that macho video games serve a psychological purpose for boys in mother-led households.

Sherry Turkle makes similar observations by showing that video games serve cultural roles for us and that “video games have become a part of the cultural landscape” (33). Turkle's article shows how people understand video games as reflecting themselves or part of their lives. Two things struck me about this article: 1) I noticed that Turkle recognizes “the youth” as the ones obsessed with video games and that she claims that video games have created a generation divide” (500). To some extent, this is still true, I suppose, but since we have lived with computer games for a few generations now, I know that adults are embracing the games as a way to escape, much like David the lawyer, who at the end of the article states, “the better I do at a game, the better I feel.” Turkle is quick to note that David “wants reassurance that he can handle things. The games are his test” (513).  And as I watch my friend's fifty-year-old father play Wii Golf and feel a sense of satisfaction and reassurment in his golf skills, I know Turkle's observation there was true and apt. But my point here is that video games may now be bridging the generations. 2) People seem to believe, even today, that their intelligence is shown/demonstrated through the computer video game, and they do not, necessarily, believe that they are reflecting the personality/thinking of the computer. At the end of the article, Turkle states, “David likes video games when they can serve as the perfect mirror, as a measure of who he is” (513). However, when one considers the database, as Manovich has done in The Language of New Media, then one remembers that the computer game is transcoding its internal logic, the movement of its algorithm, onto the player so that the player, when successfully completing the game, has learned how the algorithm works. Therefore, it is fair to reverse the observation—that computer games do not always reveal so much about our own intelligence, but rather they can also reveal to us our lack of intelligence, in that we must mimic the computer and become like it in order to feel intelligent.

In “The War Between Effects and Meanings,” Jenkins argues that we should think of violent video games in terms of meanings and not effects, In other words, he suggests that video games should not be understood strictly as teaching tools where the player robotically “learns” to mimic the actions of the game since such a behaviorist model rules out the selective memory of the player, the reasons why he/she is playing, and the experiences that the player brings to the game from the material world. As a result, Jenkins derides David Grossman’s (a West Point instructor) point of view and says, “Grossman’s model only works if we assume that players are not capable of rational thought”. On the other hand, Jenkins asserts that games can be powerful teaching tools. They help players “find better solutions to obstacles and challenges” (212). Jenkins suggests, using Kurt Squire’s research, that game players set their own goals, make connections, explore environments, and learn decision-making in a context and do not just robotically repeat actions. Consequently, Jenkins suggests that the same is true for players playing violent video games. Jenkins states that we need to not focus so much on the literal view of the game but “understand learning in a more active, meaning-driven sense” (216).

Jenkins’ main points here are well stated and well taken. However, since Jenkins admits that “not all gamers think deeply about their play experiences,” I wondered how Jenkins would respond to the contention that teenagers with certain lower mental capacities—those who might tend to see the world very literally—understand violent video games not in terms of social play or meaning-making but in literal terms, more like military training. Of course, Jenkins defends violent video games by asserting that certain violent video games tell us stories about violence and “can, in effect, remove some of its sting and help us understand acts that shatter our normal frames of meaning” (216). However, this statement, too, assumes that all people understand video games as meaning-makers or as narratives that teach deeper themes not present in a “literal reading.” In short, I am testing the bounds of Jenkins’ argument here and wondering how far his meaning-making argument would go for our culture at large, which tends to believe that children are very literal in their interpretations of the world and that some children, those with certain types of brain functioning, might not “get” what Jenkins is selling. Consequently, I wanted to see Jenkins address this issue head-on. He could have offered some perspective on how violent video games, even if they are being understood literally, might not be so bad. He could have tied his opening argument—teenagers bring their past experiences to the games in order to decide how they will interact with them—to the contention that some/all children simply do not see the world in many dimensions and are not capable of grasping the game as a meaning-maker.

Unfortunately, my freshman year I lived on a hall will all dudes, though the rest of the dorm was co-ed. Fortunately, we had video games (this explains so much). By the second week, just about everyone on the hall had Counter-Strike and playing became a nightly ritual. And I assure you the only thing more satisfying than killing my hall mates was hearing their cursing shouts and yelps echoing down the hall. We spent almost as much time talking about our death matches afterwards as we did playing, usually over some cheap Chinese food (though I did not order any, for I do not eat, especially after 11pm. Think Gremlins.) Collective violence brought us together, and I stayed good friends with most of my fellow Counter-Strikers for the next four years. However, after that first year, most of us never played Counter-Strike again. And since then, I have not played video games regularly. Tear.

Jenkins, citing Talmadge Wright, refers to this social aspect of gaming as meta-gaming wherein two games take place simultaneously: "one, the explicit conflict and combat on the screen, the other, the implicit cooperation and comradeship between the players. Two players may be fighting to death on-screen and growing closer as friends off-screen" (214). This certainly applies to my freshman experience, and it reinforces Jenkins' point that how violence is perceived depends upon what the gaming audience and individual gamers brings to the game. In a social setting among friends, a violent game can be a bounding experience.

But what about the lone gamers, either social outcasts or those who seek isolation? How does game violence affect them? Here, I am thinking of how Grossman's brutalization, classical conditioning, operant conditioning, and role modeling might apply more to the lone gamer than a group of gamers. For example, one guy on my freshman hall rarely came out of his room, and yet he always joined our Counter-Strike games the moment we started playing. Because I lived next to him, I could hear him playing well into the night. Whenever someone did catch a glimpse inside his room, it was always gloomily lit. My friends and I often joked that he was plotting our demise.

Liestol, Turkle, and even Jenkins, albeit a bit reluctantly, admits that games require the gamers complete attention. Liestol writes, "Duke, however is merely a potential he-man, as it is the player who empowers him an gives the role life….If we are successful in realizing Duke's potential then perhaps we will have attained the same caliber on the same par—at least in the game’s fictional world" (330, 332). Turkle writes that with video games "reflection has given way to domination" (500). And later, "Video games are something you do, something you do to your head, a world that you enter, and, to a certain extent, they are something you 'become'" (501). I would assume that the effects of this intense attention, the becoming of the he-man are more salient for the isolated gamer than for a MMORPG. Turkle only interviews gamers who played alone (technical limitations?). Even though gamers enter fully in the worlds of MMORPGs, they still have that social component that allows meta-gaming.

It seems that if we really want to get gamers to reflect upon video games and violence, we should bring violent games into the classroom. My fourth grade class played “Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego”, great for geography, but what if we had played Mortal Kombat (I’m not sure the timeline matches up here, but you get the idea)? Jenkins suggests using specifically educational games in the classroom. This seems to defeat the purpose because as Zach pointed out and I would concur, we would just go home and play violent games, most unreflectively. In this case, what has using video games added to pedagogy and the questioning of violence?

Liestol could have been an interviewee of Turkle. Turkle discusses how gamers learn how to learn: "Working out your game strategy involves a process of deciphering the logic of the game, of understanding the intent of the game’s designer, of achieving a ‘meeting of the minds’ with the program" (502). By recording her thoughts on playing Duke Nukem, Liestol makes explicit how she learns to play by the game's rules. In passage redolent of Hayles and Lupton, Turkle suggests that all video game action occurs in a "space where the physical machine and physical player do not exist" (502). This seems to be especially true for today's games. NST note how Pac-Man had to be limited to a pie wedge. Mario had to wear a hat because hair was too difficult to program. These were technical limitations. But with today's processors, games, like Gears of War, are becoming incredibly detailed and nuanced and with game physics that match real-world physics. Does such a game create an even more abstract space in which gamers lose themselves? Liestol notes that even though she dies, she knows she has another chance. Are games going to reach the point of such immersion that when a character dies, a gamer might just die, too?

I think, then, that the problem with Grand Theft Auto's violence is not that it is more violent than any other game, but that the violence seems arbitrary and unjustified. Fairy tales are also violent and told to little children, but that violence is justified. Cinderella’s stepsisters have their eyes poked out, and we smile with satisfaction because they got what we they deserved. All is right in that world. Jenkins and NST both point out Grand Theft Auto has an open-architecture allowing the player unprecedented use of objects in the game world (NST, 90). The uncertainty of an openly violent city does not provide justification for violence and reflects a world much too much like our own.

Given our discussion in 702, does Jenkins too easily separate effects from meaning? If style is substance, then effects are meaning.

As I read Nielsen, Smith and Tosca’s (2008) history of video games, I reminisced about playing with my brothers on our Atari, Commodore 64, Nintendo and then Super Nintendo. Although the Commodore 64 was technically a computer, my family used it only to play games – thus treating it the same as the Atari or Nintendo console. For me, console gaming was a social experience; we would gather around the television and take turns playing. That communal element is missing from PC gaming. When I am playing a game on my computer, it is just the game and me. However, if my roommate is playing a game on our Play Station 2, it involves the game, my roommate as the gamer and me as spectator.

Turkle (1984) makes no distinction between console and PC, calling all video games a window into our intimate relationship with the computer (p. 501). Although it was interesting to read her perspective on computers and gaming, I did not really take a lot from the chapter. What I most enjoyed was little Jarish’s endorsement of open source software, feeling cheated when games are in cartridges so he cannot access the underlying program (pp. 504-505). He probably works for Red Hat now.

“Are computer games just another textual variant ready to be subsumed under the ever-developing and -expanding vocabulary of textual analysis?” asks Liestøl (2003, p. 328). She argues for looking beyond traditional narrative structure, but then spends the bulk of the chapter in descriptive analysis. Liestøl is easily able to separate herself as gamer from the game play, even though Duke Nukem is a first-person shooter game. She easily reconciles her destructive behavior as the title character with the urgent need to destroy the Alien Queen and save the city of Los Angeles, writing, “There is no possibility of retreat in the final episode…. We are denied the experience of freedom and autonomy until the revolt against the omnipotent mother monster and her offspring is successfully completed” (p. 343).

In 2002, U.S. District Judge Stephen N. Limbaugh Sr. sternly declared video games have no meaning and thus do not constitute speech. Wagner James Au from Salon.com called Limbaugh’s decision “wrong, stupid and dangerous.” I probably would have egged his house. Our hero Jenkins (2006) was one of more than 30 international media scholars who signed an amicus brief that helped overturn Limbaugh’s ruling. This put him in a bit of a pickle, as Jenkins describes: “I was arguing that games could be important resources for teaching science and history, yet I was also arguing that games did not ‘teach’ children to kill” (pp. 208-209). If I can learn European history and geography from playing Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego, can I learn how to shoot from Duck Hunt? Or am I just learning how to negotiate a text through repetition?

Nielsen, Smith and Tosca cite 1976’s Death Race as “the end of innocence for arcade games” (p. 55). Despite having the original name Pedestrian, the developers insisted the stick-people relentlessly run down were gremlins instead of humans.  Would it matter if they were gremlins, nuns, Nazis, zombies, kittens or police officers? Liestøl easily managed to denounce the women of Duke Nukem as worthless background noise, distractions from the mission (p. 334). Does this just prove violent texts lead to a society desensitized to violence?

Ultimately, focusing too much on violent content overshadows legitimate video game analysis and critique, which is part of the point Jenkins tries to make. He cites the Web-based game Tropical America, in which “the player assumes the role of the sole survivor of a 1981 massacre in El Salvador, attempting to investigate what happened to this village and why. In the process, you explore some five hundred years of the history of the colonization of Latin America, examining issues of racial genocide, cultural dominance, and the erasure of history” (p. 220). While this is an atypical example, it shows that video games can have the same literary, artistic, political and scientific value as any other medium.