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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@dingstweets
codingconduct.cc
Cheers!