Gloss on Multiculturalism in World of Warcraft
Ed Finn
June 30, 2010
P:nth-child(6)
Douglas’ argument operates in interesting tension with Jill Walker’s essay on the nature of quests in World of Warcraft. Walker argues that “a game is a network of fragments, most of which are not necessary to experience the game fully, and yet which cumulate into a rich experience of a storied world.” In other words, Douglas identifies an immovable cultural concept in WoW, hard-coded racial specificity, in a universe that otherwise depends on fluid and adaptive experience. Douglas’ argument operates in interesting tension with Jill Walker’s essay on the nature of quests in World of Warcraft.… continue
Gloss on Multiculturalism in World of Warcraft
Andrew Burchiel
June 4, 2010
P:nth-child(1)
World of Warcraft, or WoW, is a massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG), a genre of computer role-playing games in which a very large number of players interact with one another within a virtual game world. The game’s community website can be found here: WoW Community Site and its wiki here: WoW Community Site World of Warcraft, or WoW, is a massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG), a genre of computer role-playing games in which a very large number of players interact with one another within a virtual game world. The game’s community website can be found here: W… continue
Gloss on Playing with Rules
Andrew Burchiel
April 30, 2010
P:nth-child(20)
From Gaming the System:”Working both centrifugally and centripetally from the relations of production of The Cultural Logic of Computation itself (not least in its status as a “tenure book”), Golumbia seats the female or feminized operators of a domestic workforce democratized by war’s exigency at the controls of the computer as world-war machine, suggestively linking the feminized technocratic class of the intellectuals to the subjugation-within-subjugation of the human computer under masculinist technocratic administration.” From Gaming the System:”Working both centrifugally and centripetall… continue
Gloss on Playing with Rules
Andrew Burchiel
April 30, 2010
P:nth-child(5)
From Gaming the System: “Without a doubt, McGurl’s comparatively steady poise is an asset, in so far as in its best pages, the work of The Program Era invites a response remote from the customary conflict mode, with its irresistibly predictable autocritical “problematizations.” But as we have noted, that, perhaps, is only one way of marking, in its contradistinctive change, in both of these undeductibly appraisable works, the danger of ending by merely, as it were, gaming the System: the custom Golumbia marks as a “style of authority,” and for which his final example is Bill Gates and S From G… continue
Gloss on Playing with Rules
Andrew Burchiel
April 30, 2010
P:nth-child(3)
From Gaming the System: “Such dubiety is conspicuous in Golumbia’s inventive critique of Chomsky, which, far from accepting that Chomsky has any place on the left at all, near or far, banishes him unceremoniously to the right of The Cultural Logic of Computation’s epistemo-political fold. From Gaming the System: “Such dubiety is conspicuous in Golumbia’s inventive critique of Chomsky, which, far from accepting that Chomsky has any place on the left at all, near or far, banishes him unceremoniously to the right of The Cultural Logic of Computation’s epistemo-political fold. Chomsky as “citation… continue
Gloss on Playing with Rules
Andrew Burchiel
April 30, 2010
P:nth-child(1)
Throughout this riposte, Golumbia directly quotes and responds to assertions made by Brian Lennon in his book review of Golumbia’s The Cultural Logic of Computation and Mark McGurl’s The Program Era: Postwar Fiction and the Rise of Creative Writing. Lennon’s review can be accessed here: Gaming the System as well as via the “Riposte To” link above. Additionally, longer quotes that provide a bit more context are also provided in the glosses below. Throughout this riposte, Golumbia directly quotes and responds to assertions made by Brian Lennon in his book review of Golumbia’s The Cultural Logic… continue
Gloss on A [S]creed for Digital Fiction
Ed Finn
March 18, 2010
P:nth-child(24)
Linus may be right, but sometimes all the eyeballs look the wrong way. Part of what makes networks so interesting is the ways in which they break, reroute, and disperse information (and not just link and gather it). So much digital literature, and its criticism, addresses the points at which the network breaks: transient texts, unreproducible experiences, and art at the margins. I’m confident your work will revel in these challenges, combating ‘digital Maoism’ and the seductive power of networks that shunt us only to safe, well-traveled places.
Gloss on Between Play and Politics: Dysfunctionality in Digital Art
Dave Ciccoricco
March 18, 2010
P:nth-child(4)
This example is particularly striking for its dual subversion: not only is the rogue image burned on top of some unsuspecting tourist’s memory of this sign, but because both images consist of text, this is also a political statement in the linguistic sense (as well as – in this case – a language-driven work of digital art that participates in a nuanced, multivalent act of ‘tagging’).
Gloss on Glass Houses: A Reply to Loren Glass’s “Getting With the Program”
Joe Amato
February 14, 2010
P:nth-child(1)
Lennon’s panoramic review-essay might have been more lucid — despite its obvious commitment to theoretical divagation as right and proper method — so part of the problem here might be less Glass’s casual invocation of Bourdieu (and I’m tired of hearing Bourdieu’s name myself) than (in this case) understandable, if unproductive, misreading (of irony etc). Perhaps, then, a cooler rhetoric would incite more productive polemic? But Lennon’s response to Glass is at any rate unambiguous on most counts. I only wish the discussion would start in what seems to be emerging as the vital precincts of de… continue
Gloss on Ebooks, Libraries, and Feelies
Rob Swigart
February 14, 2010
P:nth-child(1)
I once had a few of my books in Softbook, the first (and now abandoned) e-reader. No reader has yet arrived that has completely satisfied my desire for the book experience. At the same time, as a designer of electronic literature, the ability to link, with sound, color and motion, would be a necessary part of the delivery. The forthcoming Apple iPad might be the platform to do for reading what iTunes did for music (and books on tape, for that matter). If the New York Times can format for it, and all user control (font size, for instance, or orientation), this could be the breakthrough. If not… continue