Why I like Bees - Jane McGonigal (2007)*****
A fascinating account of collective intelligence gaming, this sold me on the idea of collective intelligence (in the sense that I really 'got it' for the first time) and went a long way to explaining how you might achieve it. Of course, I Love Bees was also a clever bit of marketing; but I can forgive that in this instance because it felt like the marketing (the game) became more important and more interesting than the product itself! Because I'm not interested in games (I don't even play cards), I'm more interested in thinking about collective intelligence as a means to solve real problems rather than invented ones, or to provide genuinely useful services. I guess Wikipedia is the classic case. And I think there are real possibilities in this area. However, there's also a tendency to over-exagerate the empowering properties of CI. It will always be harder to build CI communities from the grass-roots up than it is for powerful interests to generate them from on top. Also, maybe rather cynically, I can't help thinking that all the work of the busy bees of CI is simply unpaid labour (a point later reinforced for me by Tiziana Terranova).
Ludology meets Narratology - Gonzalez Frasca (1999)**
Frasca tries to unravel the elements of 'narrative' and those of 'game' from 'objects' such as cybertexts and videogames to explore whether or not they produce 'narrative'. The key distinction for him is between 'Ludus' and 'Paidea'. 'Ludus' refers to games which have a distinct set of rules and produce winners and losers, a form of play associated with adults. 'Paidea', on the other hand, is the kind of play associated with children which has diffuse limits and defined space and time but no winners. Ludus comes closest to narrative in that it produces a range of possible courses of action but Frasca argues that this doesn't constitute narrative which is a set of chained actions (ie, there's only one possible ending). He also suggests that narrative has to include other recognisable elements (currently missing from Ludus), such as rich characters: 'human players do not behave like characters'.
At the time of reading this, I went along with it: narratives need authors who decide what the ending should be! I still think authorship is important - but now I also recognise that an author can author many different paths: there doesn't have to be a single ending to produce a narrative. Instead of ascibing too much power to the 'player' as an active participant, maybe we need to think of players embodying roles which are ascribed by authors? Rich, satisfying narratives can be produced along multiple pathways -but it's the author or authors who create these, not the players.
The Long Tail - Chris Anderson ****
This a polemical rather than academic work but argued with vigour (and mostly convincingly) and has been hugely influential. I read it from cover to cover in one weekend -suggesting that it may be a bit lightweight, but also a good read (and brimming with ideas and inspiration). Where I take issue with Anderson is that his enthusiasm sometimes bubbles over into a naive optimism. There's little account of power in all this, certainly not of class: it unquestionly adopts a view that market forces produce progress, to the betterment of all. Well, he is a Yank!
Free Labor: Producing Culture for the Digital Economy - Tiziana Terranova ****
‘computer networks are the material and ideological heart of informated capital’
Terranova’s account of collective intelligence seeks to reinstate a Marxist concept of labour which has been lost in other accounts which tend to stress the empowering and emancipating potential of large information-sharing networks. This ‘immaterial labour’ (a concept borrowed from Italian autonomist Maurizio Lazzarato) is ‘produced collectively but ...selectively compensated’. In contrast to the ‘utopian statements of the cyberlibertarians’ (she particularly likes to ridicule Kevin Kelly), capitalism is alive and well and has its greedy mitts all over the digital economy –benefitting from a pool of unpaid, if willingly given, labour. This paper challenges two tenets of ‘postmodern’ thought: not only that labour disappears but that the commodity takes on and dissolves all meaning. Turning on its head a traditional Marxist concept of reification, Terranova sees commodities becoming more transparent, revealing rather than obscuring the labour that produces and sustains them.
I like the account because I also distrust the ‘cyberdrool of the digerati’ (great phrase!). It offers an account of the digital economy that is rooted in power and class relations that, for me, haven’t changed all that much.
Public Domains - Patricia Zimmerman*
‘provisional materialisations of transitory public spaces’ –just sounds like too much of a fudge for me! Is it a public domain or not and how would you ever know?
The Language of New Media - Lev Manovich**********
Sadly, I've run out of time to write-up more of these reviews from my notes, but I couldn't leave this page without including this book -which has for me been the most engaging and inspirational reading to come out of the course. I break all my own rules in giving this 10 stars out of 5.
I read it from cover to cover, and it's a very full read, so I won't attempt a summary. But, I think what appeals to me about Manovich's work is the sense of a balance being achieved between new media as radically new, and as being a continuation of older forms, languages, and conventions. In other words, it is an evolutionary approach that sees continuities and hybridity instead of a radical shift in paradigm. So, for Manovich (who has a background in film studies, amongst other things), the langauge of cinema persists in computer software, and the design and use of computer interfaces: it is the 'default setting'. At the same time, he's not a luddite and argues forcfully for the truly radical potential of new media to be more fully explored. Indeed, in his spare time he makes utterly mad multi-screen movies which explore 'spatial montage'. It's this balanced position, encompassing radical experimental work, but grounded in history and an understanding of different media traditions, that appears to be largely missing elsewhere. New media is either seen as full of utopian promise, or as leading to fragmentation, incoherence and loss of authorship and reason. Manovich (writing back in 2001) set-out a more fruitful discussion which begins to take its subject matter seriously, on its own terms, by seeking to develop a new aesthetic -the language of new media.
