Week 4: Manovich, Castells, Kellerman, Mayrowitz
A few thoughts on our readings for this week.
Manovich (2001), as always, provides a nice overview of a selected topic. In our readings for this week, we picked up where we left off in the Forms chapter: his discussion of navigable space. Particularly interesting to me was his exploration of why we seem so entralled with transversing navigable spaces. He discusses the navigable spaces of video games, arguing that at least for many genres, such as adventure games, strategy games, and RPGs, the genre's conventions do not necessitate navigable spaces. Navigable space, he contends, has a sort of universal appeal and is a form that existed before computers.
Why do I bring this up? Perhaps this explains the success of an early series of games on Playstation known as Namco Museum. Each volume in Namco Museum contained a few popular games Namco put out in the 80s. The first volume, which I remember playing years ago, had games such as Pacman, Galaga, and Pole Position. These classic games became reaccessible to old fans of the games and made them accessible for perhaps the first time to younger gamers. At the same time, there were only seven games in the collection (according to Wikipedia), and as I recall, several of them were not especially popular or great. Plus, why spend time on these dated games when you have a Playstation? Why was I so interested in Namco Museum, then? Perhaps because you access the classic games through a navigable virtual space: a museum. Each game has its own exhibit you walk around. Here, in addition to playing the coin-op classic, you can check out other displays containing "artifacts" such as the artwork and marketing materials for the game. They could have just provided all of this data in database form; however, I remember enjoying just walking around the museum and taking in the scenery, so to speak. Namco, through the use of a virtual museum, were able to resell a couple low-tech games to users.
Moving on, Castells (2000) examines the "space of flows' in in new industrial spaces after detailing the economic activities of a new technological society. What sticks out to me from his chapter is a topic Kellerman (2006) also addresses: how telecommunications influences the amount of work done at home versus the workplace, what Castells refers to as the "individualization of working arrangements" (cited in Kellerman, p. 141). The boundaries between work and home life become increasingly blurred since the technology we use for leisure is the same technology was use at the office, as Kellerman notes in his "Technologies" chapter (2006). Castells notes the number of "substitutors" (people working exclusively at home) is still small, though many people are now "supplementers," taking a great deal of their work home with them. Working in the humanities makes us especially susceptible to this blurring of the boundaries between home and work; most of us don't need a "lab" to do our work. We just need to come in to teach, go to class, and attend the occasional meetings. We can do any sort of preparation for these three activites anywhere (we can even work on them in public on our laptops). I do a great deal of my work at home; however, I find I need to go to the library or the office to get a lot of work done. Like many others, I try to fight this merging of home and work, though I often lose this battle! I want to leave work at work. This is perhaps why the number of supplementers remains so high; working from the comforts of home sounds great on the surface, but the need for a separate space work could help explain why there are not many substitutors (cabin fever could be another cause, of course).
Finally, Kellerman and Meyrowitz both touch on themes I elaborated on in my last blogpost. They both discuss how new physical and virtual mobilities can promote dissociation from a place we reside in, leading to what Ralph describes as the inauthenticity of places (cited in Kellerman, p. 136). I discussed previously how--if I choose to do so--I could effectively resist acclimating to my new environment by using available technologies to socialize with my old friends. I could even use online gaming to "hang out" with them on the weekends. I could get XM radio to avoid listening to Raleigh radio. I could the internet to do a great deal of my shopping (though, as Castells notes, e-commerce acts as a supplement to, not a substitute for, shopping locally). At the same time, Meyrowitz offers a different perspective, arguing that new mobilities may actually improve our connection to a new locality. Technology affords us so many ways to stay in touch with the old scene that our distance from the old location is no longer a factor in our decisions on where to move. We can now relocate to places we are interested in moving to. I would note, though, that Meyrowitz is only right if we are relocating because we want to. For instance, in academia it is very likely that you will end up taking a job in a location you're not too thrilled about. Nevertheless, new technology allows find others in the same town similar to us in personality and interests.