Developing the Technological Imagination

1. Developing the Technological Imagination Today: Technoculture & Gaming http://staff.washington.edu/schenold/chid370

2. Developing the Technological Imagination Looking Back, Looking Forward -Re-thinking Memory: Somatic, Germinal, Tertiary-Technology as Process of Exteriorization, Encapsulation-Innovation & Politics of Memory: Lessig & Free Culture Technology Matters Panel Planning-Paper Idea Sharing-Course Evaluations- http://staff.washington.edu/schenold/chid370

3. Developing the Technological Imagination The Higinbotham Revolution The Gamer Generation -1970s-2010s: arcades & Atari to PCs, consoles, smartphones -ESA: avg. gamer 34yo, gaming for 12yrs* -Recall Jesse Schell’s “gamepocalypse,” games are everywhere, game logic applied to every field, industry -Jane McGonigal: a “parallel education” of “virtuoso players” (10k hours) -Recall Steven Johnson: games as the next frontier “dataspace” http://staff.washington.edu/schenold/chid370

4. Developing the Technological Imagination Recall Kelly: The Epic Tech, Language “Language is a trick that allows the mind to question itself; a magic mirror that reveals to the mind what the mind thinks; a handle that turns a mind into a tool” (26) The New Trick: DIGITAL GAMES -a new empathy technology -a new form of expressive media* -Recall Stiegler: a new form of tertiary memory (Mem 3.0) http://staff.washington.edu/schenold/chid370

5. Developing the Technological Imagination The Continuum of Expressive Media A few monuments: Codex & Digital Game http://staff.washington.edu/schenold/chid370

6. Developing the Technological Imagination From Organized Representation to Playable Simulation Visual Expressive Media Ecology -poems, novels, essays, tv shows, films, photos, texts, twitter posts, facebook profiles, wikipedia entries, blogs, vlogs, etc., etc., and games and interactive media. Recall McLuhan: Hot and Cold Media Games as interesting paradox: they can extend ALL perceptual / sense-data modes in “high-definition” (~hot), but requires both non-trivial imaginative and physical “participation” or “synthesis” by the user (~cold). http://staff.washington.edu/schenold/chid370

7. Developing the Technological Imagination Games and Popculture & Technoculture The “Digital Generation” is Increasingly a Gamer Generation -New Media Economies are TIME economies, and people choose increasingly to spend their time in game environments -New Media Culture is increasingly informed by game aesthetics http://staff.washington.edu/schenold/chid370

8. Developing the Technological Imagination Gaming “Literacy”: An Epic Fail? How Come We Can’t Understand Games? (1982-2008) Recall Manovich: we can only “see” and fully understand a media form when we move beyond it, not while it is our environment http://staff.washington.edu/schenold/chid370

9. Developing the Technological Imagination Modulate: Life -> Play -> Game-> Purposive Experience Games as a New Modulation of Experience -of self, mind, community, ideas, emotions, etc. -problems: a) seeing our environment, b) entrenched values* Beyond Walter Ong: Secondary Literacy? Orality (speech, performance) Literacy (writing, textualization, print, photography) Secondary Orality (electronic media: radio, TV, early-Web)---Recall YochaiBenkler, “network info economy”--- Secondary “Literacy” (~computational media, digital games, simulations, “Web 2.0+”) http://staff.washington.edu/schenold/chid370

10. Developing the Technological Imagination The Birth Pangs of Acculturation A Slow Process of Cultural Legitimization -ex. “that novel changed my life!” (film, song, … game?) -we lack a tradition & community history -perennial errors, problems, debates: applying old frameworks: games as “interactive”… stories & films abstraction: “the video game medium” (lolz) ambiguity of “play”: explaining self-regulation, purposiveness waiting for the “Shakespeare’s Hamlet” of video games Recall Virilio & Kittler: new technologies create new violence, catastrophe, cultural demands along with the new possibilities http://staff.washington.edu/schenold/chid370

11. Developing the Technological Imagination “Reading” Games & Critical-Cultural Value Some Ongoing Discussions (Example)-Games as “Art” (Rohrer, Mateas & Stern) -Cultural value of gameplay/game tech (Jenkins, Galloway, Wark) -Games as argument, persuasion (Bogost) -“Serious Games” (CSP @ UW Bothell)* -“Critical Gaming” (CGP @ UW Seattle) Historical Demand: if this is THE mediaof the future, how do we . . . . . understand it, teach/learn with it, use it to improve well-being, social justice, community, democracy, etc. http://staff.washington.edu/schenold/chid370

12. Technological Apartheid Fallout 2 – Vaults of Hope What did the Vaults save? The vaults were built out of a hope to save something, presumably humanity – the species and the idea. However, what remains in the wastes and its cities and what is to be done in them represents a view of that which CAN survive the post-apocalypse. What is the significance of technology in the wastes? -what types of vault-tech are present? other types? -what attitudes does the game promote toward technology?

13. Technological Apartheid Fallout 2 – The Martial Technocracy, 1 Vault City

14. Technological Apartheid Fallout 2 – Affecting Moral Consequence

15. Procedural Literacy Vigilance 1.0 – Frame & Procedure Frame: Morality Procedure: Surveillance

16. Procedural Literacy CIV4 – Spatialized Culture, 1

17. Procedural Literacy CIV4 – Spatialized Culture, 2