Claus Pias: A Media Archaeology of Computer Games

claus Piasa media archaeology of computer gamesSebastian DeterdingMAGIC Lab, Rochester Institute of TechnologyDiGRA 2013, Atlanta, August 28, 2013

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claus pias

* 1967

Professor, media theory and history; director, Center for Digital Cultures, Leuphana University Lüneburg

Dissertation at Bauhaus University Weimar under Joseph Vogl

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michel foucaultArchaeology of Knowledge

marshall mcluhanMedium Theory

friedrich kittler(War) media technologies as conditions of possibility for historical forms of knowing

media history, made in germany

an archaeology of cybernetics

• Cybernetics/simulation/computation is the episteme of our age, computers are its media-technical condition of possibility

• Information processing is the main object, output, boundary, starting point of knowing today

• Information processing = cosm0s = thinking = meaning: a soul-less, body-less machine

• As cybernetics waned as a philosophy in the 1970s, it became naturalised as CS

• Cybernetics must ignore the analog and materiality4

an archaeology of cybernetics

• McLuhan understood media as extensions of man

• Cybernetics understands computers as »human-extended machines« (Licklider): flattens thinking/acting, man/machine, mind/matter

• Computer games exemplify the cybernetic conditions of possibility of knowing

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2002 2011

computer spiel welten

• Why are computer games (the way they are)?

• What are the historical (discursive, technical) conditions of possibility for computer games to emerge?

• How do they in turn condition the forms of knowing possible in and with computer games?

• 3 discursive fields and cases show the homology of computer games and cybernetics: action/SAGE, adventure/Internet, simulation/war games

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actionAttentive time-critical selection of optimal actions

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action

• Time-critical choice of predefined actions: Taylorist scientific management

• Machine-tracking of human action in numbers: experimental psychology, WWI Army Mental Tests

• Training and control of users: behaviorism

• Real-time interaction with GUI invisibilizing rules: Computerisation of flight simulation training

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adventureReasoned decision-critical choice of optimal routes

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arpanet

colossal cave

adventure

• World as mapping of node relations: relational databases

• History as routing through and changing of nodes: graph theory as used in telephone routing algorithms

• Decision-making as memory-less result of current node state

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simulationPatient configuration-critical choice of optimal possible set

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simulation

• Numerical modelling of decision-making: mathematic game theory

• Translation of reality into probability distributions: WWII operations research

• Model-based exploration of possible futures: war games

• Object-oriented programming: SIMULA

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why care?

»You are all just replicating the cybernetic episteme of our age.

What are your blind spots and limits of knowing?«

historicizing proceduralism

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sebastian@codingconduct.cc

@dingstweets

codingconduct.cc

Cheers!