Overview

This book documents some experiments in “artificial societies”. The primary idea behind the book is being able to *grow* social behavior. The mission is broad and its goal is to model ideas from social science, and see them simulated and played out over time. While the approach that is used subsequently borrows from mathematics and artificial life, the chief ideas originate from social science.

The reasearch behind the book is funded by the 2050 project (run by the Santa Fe Institute, the World Resources Institute, and the Brookings Institution), whose mission is to investigate sustainable global system.

All of the conclusions in the book derive from running variations on a very small, simple simulation. The premise is that there are agents that can move about in a world, that can see a certain distance, and whose goal is to acquire food and not die. Food is dispersed at first around two locations. The means in which food is regrown changes depending on the parameters of the individual simulation. Later on, complicating elements are introduced, such as reproduction, other food types, trade, warfare, social networks, disease spreading, and debt and lending. With the complexity of the emergent behavior, it is easy to forget that the simulation is of a discrete grid that is only 50 by 50 squares.

While a great deal of interesting conclusions can be derived through these simulations, and the rules described are very simple and understandable, I find that not enough time is spent critiquing the underlying foundation of the simulation. The authors mention that vision works in the principal lattice directions, and that diagonal vision is not allowed to bound the agents “rationality”. What happens when vision within a radius is allowed? What happens if agents have a facing and can only view within a field around that facing? Agents can move, hop, to a place that they see, what if they could only move one square at a time? Agents are also capable of collecting all the sugar on a square after their move. What if agents cannot collect all of it at once? What if they have the option of collecting different ammounts? What if multiple agents can inhabit the same square? What if the world is continuous instead of discrete? If any one of these factors changes, what long term implications does that have for the subsequent rules described in the text?

All of these questions leave me wondering if the particular sets of rules that the authors described were carefully chosen for the dynamics that they produce. This is likely to not be the case, but the reasoning behind the low level elements of the simulations is still not addressed (although it has been made open), meaning that it can still be informed by bias. Because the simulations are evocative, there can be associations made between conclusions or elements of this model and the other system that are evoked.

Notes:

The author’s first concern is to approach social science in a radically different way than it is traditionally explored. The viewpoint taken is to explore bottom-up emergent patterns in social systems (as discovered by the simulations) instead of the traditional top-down means of looking at social science. Traditional social science tends to look at the world through a lens looking for one type of information or another. The authors aim for a new kind of social science, wherein macroscopic theories may be tested through generative simulations.

One of the more troubling flaws in the text is the equation of food or “sugar” to wealth. The flaw is troubling because it raises questions as to what, exactly, sugar or wealth is supposed to mean within the context of this simulation. If sugar is food, then agents are moving about to obtain food, creating something of a nomadic-scavenger idea. But if food is also wealth, then it seems like it is something to be hoarded and accumulated. Rarely ever do nomadic people hoard wealth. Wealth is necessary for survival, but in most societies, it is not something found while moving about. Wealth tends to exist to support societies that have grown to a size to no longer permit barter, and currency is currency because it is not used for anything else. It is thus troubling when sugar is called wealth and economical terms are used about its distribution.

Later on when pollution is discussed, the effect of one model of pollution results in an exodus of agents leaving one area to join agents in another area, which cannot support the new population. The lesson learned from this is that “environmental degredation can have serious security implications”. This is a trite revelation. In this case especially, so much is encoded into the model that it is far from realistic. The consequences of the model are nonetheless interpretable and evocative. Interpretation is associative, meaning that we connect real world ideas, rules, and consequences with the effects seen in the model, but whose real world analogue may be very different.

An example of especially arbitrary constants found in the text is a discussion of reproduction, which gives constants describing the lifespan of agents and how and when they can reproduce. The only difference between “male” and “female” agents in this simulation is that the “male” agents can have children on average for 10 turns longer than the “females”. There is no difference between how the males or females raise the children, and there is no gestation period for females. This distiction is the only one present, so why have it at all?

In a manner similar to Wolfram (although predating his book by almost ten years), the authors conclude that simple rules can generate complex behavior, and that changing the rules changes the fundamental ecology of the simulation. This finding is certain, as is the result that long term predictability is difficult. However, the applicability of these findings to other social systems outside of the 50×50 grid is less than compelling. This can be used for illustrating the fallacies in oversimplified models, but that seems to run counter to the authors’ intent.

Overview

Foucault covers the subjects of torture, punishment, discipline, and surveillance in this important book. It tends to work as a history, originating in the 1750s, and covering the matter of punishment until the 1850s or so. Foucault is writing in the 1970s, when the matter of public surveillance was becoming an issue in England, and possibly among other places, so this may have been an influence in his approach. The historical change from 1750 to 1850 is the disappearance of torture and the transition of the object of punishment and discipline from the corporeal body to the soul. Along side this, is the emergence of a technology of discipline and power, which is constructed a self-observing, self-disciplining society.

The most relevant bit in this is the progressive disembodiment of punishment, and the idea of the carcreral society, which to some may be a utopian society, which is totally contained within its frame of ideology. This is very reminiscent of the enclosing capacities of simulation. A simulation limits everything it represents to that which is definable by its model, and a carceral society willfully enforces its ideology through discipline and surveillance. Resistance to a discourse is still a part of that discourse.

Notes

The Body of the Condemned

Pain and spectacle: Over time, these disappear in punishment. The reform moves the body to become out of bounds as the receptor of punishment. Instead, the body becomes something to be constrained, obliged, and prohibited. As evidence of the change of the reform, Malby writes that punishment should strike the soul, not the body. (p. 11)

The aim of the book is to understand soul, judgment, and power. Power occurs in a political economy over the body. The image of the economy is very prevalent through Foucault, its emergence is reflective of the period of mercantilism that has emerged prior to the reform movement. Economy implies a regular system of exchanges, and an uneven distribution of capital. (p. 23)

Common thought of the time: The body is the prison of the soul, which is very reflective of the prevalent dualism of this period of time. Despite the arguable humanity of the new prison system, revolts occur within the modern system, protesting the situation of the prisoners. The new system is reflective of a new technology of power. (p. 31)

The Spectacle of the Scaffold

Torture is a means of inscribing, by pain, the truth of a crime on a criminal. It is by nature spectacular. The issue of truth of a crime becomes significant later. Torture also serves as a ritual, a symbolic means of formalizing the law in the minds of people as a cultural practice. (p. 35)

The power relationship between the condemned and the sovereign: In a society with a sovereign, the state is equated to the body of the king. The criminal is one who attempts to assert an unauthorized power, which is thus a bodily assault on the authority of the king. The punishment deprives the criminal of power, and visibly enforces the power of the sovereign. In the spectacle of torture, the spectators are witnesses and consumers of the event. (p. 54)

Generalized Punishment

Punishment is an expression of the universal will of the state. The reform movement attempts to challenge the use of punishment as vengeance, pushing for punishment without torture. (p. 74)

There is an economy of punishment that reflects an economy of power. At the center of the reform is an attempt to undermine the centrality of the power of the monarch, around whom was spread a “bad economy of power”. The reformers are attempting to establish a right to punish without the authority of the sovereign. (p. 79)

Illegality also forms an economy, and was widely employed as a social practice. This derives from a general non-observance or abeyance of the law. The illegality is a necessary component within the society, but forms an odd paradox when compared to the criminal. Those who practiced illegality with violence or hurt the general population were scandalized, but general illegality (particularly theft) was widely accepted. Around this practice formed a network of glorification and blame. Thus there was a level of obligation and social custom that operated in spite of the law. (p. 83)

Illegality of property was generally exercised by the lower classes in rampant theft. There was also an illegality of rights practiced by the merchant classes. This represents the change in the economy of illegality associated with the rise of capitalism. The rampant illegality essentially resembles social tactics without a strategy to hold it at bay. Punishment reform is a strategy for a new social system. (p. 87)

The new economy of punishment is based on the concept of the social contract. Criminality in that sense is inherently paradoxical: the criminal is both an enemy of and a member of society. This change is an enormous shift from the authority of the sovereign in torture. Thus the criminal is a traitor to the state. (p. 90)

The change in punishment was reflected by an intense level of calculation and determination of the principles of just and correct punishment. (p. 94) The result of this is a new calculated economy of power disguised as mercy. But, the object of power is no longer the body, but the mind or character. (p. 101) Foucault cites Servan on the next page: “A stupid despot may constrain his slaves with iron chains; but a true politician binds them even more strongly by the chain of their own ideas; it is at the stable point of reason that he secures the end of the chain; this link is all the stronger in that we do not know what it is made of and we believe it to be our own work; …” (p. 102-103) ref (Servan, 35)

The Gentle Way in Punishment

Forces, attractions, and values: Follows ideas of compulsion, attraction and repulsion stem from a Newtonain metaphor. Also heavy into this theme of punishment is the idea that the state is a natural phenomenon, and crime is distinctly unnatural. This flies directly in the face of illegality as a common cultural practice. Essentially, it is an ideological strategy to combat an emergent tactic. (p. 104)

In regards to the vision of a “just society”: Law attempts to counter the historical tradition of the affairs of criminals of old being celebrated in culture and tales. A glorification of outlaws and lawbreakers is very prevalent in many cultures. The vision of the just society aims to replace that with a reverence for the austerity of the law, and have a distinct openness in the city. Everywhere within the just city is the influence and inscription of the law. And education is meant to describe and glorify the law as well. This vision paves the way for the carceral society to come. (p. 113)

Docile Bodies

In regards to discipline, Foucault looks at the soldier, which is constructed as a product of molding via discipline. This, again, treats the body as an object of operation, it deconstructs the body into various independent components. The aim is to shape each force of the body: maximize those forces that yield utility, and minimize other forces that the body might be obedient. (p. 137)

Discipline is the methodical mastery over little things. Its aim is to spread central control to every minutia of the body of a subject, while needing to expend a minimal effort to control these bodies. This echoes again the idea of a technology of power: to distribute and maximize optimally. Discipline is in a sense, the antithesis of emergence. Also, discipline resembles the way that people interact with machines and computers, through working with them, they make humans further like machines. These can be connected through Marx and Weizenbaum.

The Means of Correct Training

A precursor to panopticism: Surveilance is a requirement for discipline. The purpose of discipline is to train, but for what? (p. 173)

Discipline is a normalizing process: It punishes and rewards for established social formations, attempts to make even that which is uneven. This is reminiscent of role gratification, performance of a role is met with rewards and gratification, but failure is met with lack of support. Role learning is a disciplinary process. Examination is described here as a ritualized interaction, and involves a presentation of self. A component of discipline is being subject to examination and gaze. (p. 184)

Panopticisim

The chaos of the plague is met with a focused ordering of life: sectioning, visibility, and isolation. The physical corporeality of bodies is mixed with the ideas of sickness and evil. (p. 197)

In the Panopticon: There is a dissociating of the visibility dyad. An automatization and disindividualization of power. Power exists, but and it exists in the minds of subjects, without necessarily a physical presence to enforce that power. Cells are transformed into stages, where actors compelled to constantly be performers. Allows for an individuality of the prisoners, though. (p. 203) Enables a laboratory of power, whereby the authority may conduct experiments and tests, (developing technology and improving efficiency of power) on the distributed system of the panopticon.

Society has changed from that of a spectacle to that of the Panopticon. Life is longer like an amphitheatre, but we are still performers, watching each other. (consistent w Goffman?) Panopticism is a power technology to improve the efficiency of power. (p. 217)

The object of justice transforms from the physical body, and away from the contractual one, but towards a new thing, a “disciplinary body”. This body can be deconstructed into its component parts and each may be operated on and molded, “corrected” independently. (p. 227)

Panoptic society has surveillance, and does not enable individuals access to the information being stored about them. When these are exposed (eg, wiretapping) popular reaction opposes the system and there is outrage. The problem is that, with the dissociation of the gaze, the individual has no ability to understand how he is being seen. More than knowledge is necessary to topple the system, though. Individual is reduced to pieces and surveilled, but has no independent power in understanding how he is dissected, and no understanding of what is found in there. Thus, to successfully resist the pantoptic society, one must have full self knowledge, because that cannot be taken away.

Complete and Austere Institutions

With isolation, the matter of the self and conscience come into play. Prison coerces order and social rules by replacing society at some levels. Those who designed prisons aimed to have the prison serve as a reduced society (a sub-simulation) where the minimal elements of society were still present, but prisoners would be isolated or prohibited from interacting with each other regularly. (p. 239) Prison life is hardly reflective of the outside, though. What happens to self and performance when the subjects are in total isolation? Society hinges on performance and interaction, what happens when one or both are deprived?

The prison offers a substitution of the offender to the delinquent. This allows an individuality, total knowing, and potential reformability to the criminal. A lot of the philosophy justifying prisons is rooted in the correctability of criminals and justification of the law. Also this changes to demand a total knowledge of the subject. (p. 251)

Illegalities and Delinquency

The prison produces and encourages delinquency. It encourages a loyalty amongst prisoners, and promotes the idea of warders as unauthorized to correct, train, or provide guidance. The focus here is the failure of the prison to perform a corrective function. The reason for this failure involves the cultural foundation of illegality. (p. 267)

The Carceral

Foucault opens the final chapter by discussing a colony, which becomes the example of a contained carceral society. The role of instructors, (not educators) in direct development is to impose morals and encourage subjects to be docile and capable. There is a direct reference to Plato’s Repbulic: children in the colony were taught music and gymnastics. The colony also has a circularity: Instructors are subjects as well. This leads to a closedness of the social model. (p. 294)

More on the enclosed and contained nature of the carceral: Like a closed simulation, the carceral society must contain every projection of things within its model. (It must be mathematically complete). What of the simulation outlaw? The utopia encodes the law into society, so in its simulation, the outlaw is an impossibility, fundamentally and intrinsically unexplainable. (p. 301)

The carceral relates very closely to simulation, even in the Baudriallardian sense: Simulacra encloses and defines the carceral society via its isolation of law and ideas. But it id not really law, but ideology. An open question is who is behind it? It may be that no one is, the order of the society falls towards infinite regress. But, in reality, laws are made, and simulations are defined. (p. 308) Foucault’s history is sort of anti-narrative. So, while power exists, Foucault is reluctant to name individuals or events behind the application of power. It makes a disconcerting approach, leaving the reader wondering why or how the state of affairs is the way that it is. An extreme approach is to claim that power is totally self-generating, and indeed, in the carceral society, it is, but there still must be agents behind any change.

Understanding Deleuze

Claire Colebrook writes an overview of Deleuze’s philosophy. Deleuze is in tradition of practical “lively” philosophy. What does it mean for a philosophy to be practical? Colebrook compares Foucault, Freud, and Marx as all practical. Marx’s philosophy is intended to be connected to the world and directly change our understanding with it.

Other, more linguistic philosophers, (eg Wittgenstein) aim to understand language, and use common language. That we will realize that things we say are nonsense. Namely, they pose that theory is in a sense fundamentally disconnected from reality. The comparison here raises the ambiguous question of what does it mean for a philosophy to be practical.

Colebrook poses that Deleuze is a positive thinker: that he saw desire as a positive, constructive force that enables meaning. She seems to lay out a quadrant of some philosophers:

	Negative	Positive
Power	MarxIdeas produce power relations.	FoucaultTheories and actions are modes of power. Concepts are instances of power. The master and slave are conceptually codependent and produce power through each others’ existence.
Desire	FreudDesire is something that occurs outside of a norm. Desire is something that detracts from a person and must be fought against to restore normality.	DeleuzeExistence and identity are created through desire. Desire enables identities and relationships.

Overview

It is important to note that A Thousand Plateaus is the second part to Deleuze and Guttari’s “Capitalism and Schizophrenia” pair, the first part being Anti Oedipus. That said, many of the concepts used here are in fact first defined in the first volume.

On Models

Deleuze on models: models are prescriptive. Claims that Western thought is built on radical (single root) model systems, that ascribing to models limit our world view and limits, to subscriber, what is possible.

I would say that the solution in Western *science* or any other constructive movement is to define NEW models, in abundance. This is something that is heavily studied in linguistics, development, etc. New concept/system development does not account for the limitations of ingrained models. In development and education, there is a bit of investigation of concept reformation and development.

What about meta-models? Deleuze attempts to get underneath models (instead of above). Meta models, as might be imagined mathematically, look to define new structures that can turn and encompass others. When models are used in math, science, and programming (models meaning generally varied approaches to representation within a system or framework), they are used in varying applications. Many times scientists, mathematicians, and programmers all try to force more things than can be accounted for into one system, but this is generally recognized as a poor idea.

Frequently, models are defined to address specific problems, and are intended to be used within a specific domain, or from a specific perspective. Change of these may ask for a change in the model being used. Examples are in looking at human behavior, where sociology, anthropology, linguistics, or statistical methods might be used to explain various about human behavior.

On computer code and rhizomes: computer systems are “tree”-like in that they all can be translated (in Chomskian sense) to equivalent computer instructions. They are all founded on some basic underlying models. So, while they may enable interpretation, representation, and thought, in very different ways, they are still executed through the same turing machine. They do enable different means of cognition, but they must be grounded in some fundamental principles.

When applied to programming and simulation, the situation gets trickier. Computer languages, simulations, and representations are all very capable and abstracted. However: programs all must be reduced to machine code and rendered on some form of hardware, eventually. What this reveals is that all things that are simulatable by a computer (or by a formal simulation that satisfies some programmability requirement) are all possible to reduce to one single, ultimate language. This implies that this simulation root underlies all models expressible within a computer.

However, it might be stated that while all simulations share a root of simulatability, they may share roots with other conceptual models and domains, and thus be rhizomes. So, while the execution level of a simulation might be universally translatable, the other levels may not be translated so easily, especially when the representative level is strongly metaphorically coupled to the simulation. A simulation whose execution is tightly bound with its representation is a rhizomic structure, whereas a simulation whose execution and representation are disjoint may be pulled up easily.

On Territorialization

The concept of deterritorialization is coupled with a reterritorialization. To Deleuze and Guattari, individual things have a territory, but when their systems touch upon one another, their respective territories are upset and then reformed. The example given is a wasp touching an orchid: The orchid is upset and disrupted by the wasp by the contact, and correspondingly, the wasp is turned into a part of the orchid’s reproductive system.

The challenge with this model is that it treats the wasp and the orchid as both totally independent systems until they contact one another. Systems are rarely ever totally independent, and do rely on each other. Frequently this may occur via well defined channels, such as the wasp’s fertilization of the orchid, but the notion that systems are structured in connection with each other seems radically opposed to Deleuzian sense. Further, one may scratch the idea of systems as being independent altogether, and understand that any perceived territory of a system is merely a construct or illusion. If we look back far enough, every system can be seen to be composed of multitudes of subsystems. The plant itself is composed of billions of cells which each impinge on each other as part of the plant’s growth. Blossoming in an orchid is a disruption of the plant’s ordinary sympodial pattern. It bears noting that sympodial growth is a from of rhizome. Go figure.

Principles of the Rhizome:

1. connection
2. heterogeneity
3. multiplicity
4. asignifying rupture : independence of models
5. cartography
6. decalcomania

classical linguistics: Language is built on binary differences, furthermore, differences do not *mean* anything. That is, they are arbitrary. Language becomes interesting in its inability to communicate. D&G trying do deny function of representation in knowledge?

Classical representation romanticises the idea of pure meanings, and that before language things were better. Representation aims to point things back to these pure ideas, and thus emphasizes, and is dependent on the notion of lack. Thus, classical representation constantly is a reminder of the lack of pure meanings. But… doesn’t representation project from one system of meanings to another? Why does there have to exist a system of pure meanings? What if I reject the notion of such a thing?

Overview

Sorting Things Out discusses the methods and applications of sorting in a multitude of circumstances. The thesis of the book is that classification is an inherent cognitive process, but serves to create moral and ethical dilemmas when it is built into social systems. Classification is understood as a form of cognition. Classification is especially important to larger systems which could be thought to have cognition of some form. Large scale systems form infrastructure, which is big and ubiquitous and invisible.

Notes

Classification is recognized as a sort of space. With it comes notions such as inherency and intimacy. Significant questions to be pursued are: Where do classes come from? Who makes them? (p. 1)

DSM, the “Diagnostic and Statistical Manual 3” is discussed. This is a handbook of psychiatry classification, which is ubiquitous and used everywhere, but professionals maintain some incredulity regarding it: “Allan Young (1995) makes the complicating observation that psychiatrists increasingly use the language of DSM to communicate with each other and their accounting departments, although hey frequently do not believe in the categories they are using.” This is simulation resignation. Classification is not a direct means of affecting the world, but defines some supersystem on the world with its own rules and logics. These are related to reality, but ultimately describes a simulation of it. (p. 4)

Classification informs the social and moral order via technological infrastructures. “We have a moral and ethical agenda in our querying of these systems. Each standard and each category valorizes some point of view and silences another. This is not inherently a bad thing–indeed it is inescapable. But it is an ethical choice, and as such it is dangerous–not bad, but dangerous.” Especially if classification is framed as a cognitive process, making classification choices directly affects the way we model, interpret, and perceive the world. (p. 5)

Baudrillard reference: We can get lost in simulation, but who constructs or writes it? Simulation is a functional form of classification. (p. 10)

Classification is necessary: implies algorithms for codification and obsures moral questions. When attribution of class is codified, the reasoning and implications of this simplification gets lost and internalized. (p. 24)

Classification acts retroactively: Past is indeterminate. “We are constantly revising our knowledge of the past in light of new developments in the present.” The past redefined and re-interpreted using present logic. Concurrent infrastructures are enforced on old. (p. 40)

Practical politics: Categories formed on what is practical at the time, practical turns to legitimization, and statistical. Focus is on indeterminacy, and indeterminacy within a category. What differences are observed outside a category? what are inside, but ignored? (p. 44)

“Reality is ‘that which resists’ according to Latour’s (1987) Pragmatist-inspired definition. The resistances that designers and users encounter will change the ubiquitous networks of classifications and standards. Although convergence may appear at times to create an inescapable cycle of feedback and verification, the very multiplicity of people things and processes involved mean that they are never locked in for all time.” Compare this with Baudrillard’s definition of reality. (p. 49)

Overview

Baudrillard addresses the semiotic nature of simulation as a system that blurs and dissolves the real. The danger of simulation to Baudrillard is capacity to make the difference between the real and simulation indistinguishable and irrelevant. This sort of simulation is naturally different from software simulation, but still important in the way that we think about ideas and their representations.

Notes

First example: Borges’ map. Accurate and 1:1, so that the map covers the Empire, and frays at the territory’s borders, then becomes tattered in the Empire’s decline, fragments still visible to represent that which was. This is the charm of simulation. The real is produced from miniaturized units, metricized. Reality is made operational- can compare operational with empirical. In simulation, signs replace the real.

“Even military psychology retreats from Cartesian clarities and hesitates to draw the distinction between true and false, between the ‘produced’ symptom and the authentic symptom. ‘If he acts crazy so well, then he must be mad.'” (p. 7) Indefinity of simulation erodes the difference between real and unreal. Baudrillard describes the predicament of iconoclasts who fear the existence of icons which suggest that God is and always has been a simulacrum.

Representation is tied to the idea of exchange. Simulation is exchange between its own space of ideas, an “uninterrupted circuit” (p. 11). Progression of simulation: Reflection, Perversion, Negation, Pure simulacrum.

Attempts to catalogue and preserve reduces subjects to simulacra, inherently destroys them as real. (p. 16) Compare with preservation as narrative, telling the story of what happened so it will be remembered and not forgotten. Narrative does not simulate?

Baudrillard discusses Watergate, no difference between facts and denoument. Claim of Watergate is that it was a scandal, events involved become of little importance. Compare with notion of cultural drama.

“We are in a logic of simulation which has nothing to do with a logic of facts and an order of reasons. Simulation is characterized by a precession of the model, of all models around the merest fact–the models come first, and their obital (like the bomb) circulation constitutes the genuine magnetic field of events. Facts no longer have any trajectory of their own, they arise at the single intersection of the models; a single fact may even be engendered by all the models at once.” (pp. 31-32)

In society, the real is determined from the image. Simulation makes it impossible to isolate or prove the real. Acts are indistinguishable from simulations, example of a holdup, these are dramas, performances, rituals, archetypes. Archetypical holdup, what a holdup is. *this is not a new phenomenon. Rather, difference between image relates to experience, phenomenon, subjectivity vs objectivity. (p. 41)

Challenge to chorus of simulation is visceral- Freudian, the discourse of desire. Desire is a defense against confusion, is reality/power. (p. 42) Power is indicated only by resemblance, signs and figures of power: “Power, too, for some time now produces nothing but signs of its resemblance. And at the same time, another figure of power comes into play: that of a collective demand for signs of power–a holy union which forms around the disappearance of power.” (p. 45)

Real is transformed into hyperreal, there is vaguery between truth and falsehood even within an image, consider the falsehood and perversion of reality TV. (p. 50)

Foucault connection: Disciplinary society, surveillance -> deterrence. Real punishment confused with model, forms pressure to conform to model. (p. 53)

Simulation arises in non-distinction of active and passive. This is the effective difference between code and its execution (p. 58). Pinnacle of hyperreality, atomic simulation. Our lives are unknown values within this system, our existences are dependent on the non-outcome of this event. Cannot plan, accept its inherent reality.

The second of Baudrillard’s essays is on the orders of simulacra. These are divided into: The counterfeit (renaissance), the productive (industrial), the simulation (modern). This relates to Levy’s orders of society and history. The dominant theme here is value. (p. 83)

Seduction of sim is to remake the world as a simulation. Redefine the world in terms of simulation. (Connect here w feminist theory, who defines the simulation? What does the simulation value?) Simulation, like concrete, is deathless, synthetic. May only be determined from the real by subtlety and nuance. “There once lived in the Ardennes an old cook, to whom the molding of buildings out of cakes and the science of plastic patisserie had given the ambition to take up the creation of the world where God had left it, in its natural phase, so as to eliminate its organic spontaneity and substitute for it a single, unique and polymorphous matter: Reinforced Concrete: concrete furniture, chairs, drawers, concrete sewing machines, and outside in the courtyard, an entire orchestra, including violins, of concrete–all concrete! Concrete trees with real leaves printed into them, a hog made out of reinforced concrete, but with a real hog’s skull inside, concrete sheep covered with real wool. Camille Renault had finally found the original substance from which different things can only be distinguished by ‘realistic’ nuance: the hog’s skull, leaves of the tree–but this was doubtless only a concession of the demiurge to his visitors … for it was with an adorable smile that this 80-year-old god received visitors to his creation. He sought no argument with divine creation; he was remaking it only to render it more intelligible.” (pp. 90-91)

The equivalence of produced objects, in function and value is an underpinning of simulation (p. 97). DNA is the underpinning of the mathematical future of simulation, blurring the line between operation and definition, doing and being, subject and model (p. 109)

Orders of sim in summary: 1) Deconstruction of real into details. 2) Endlessly reflected vision; duplication in detail. 3) Properly serialized form, syntagmatic dimension abolished, bodies erased via resemblance. 4) Digitization, hyperreal, compulsive repitition. “The very definition of the real becomes that of which it is possible to give an equivalent reproduction” In key with rationalistic justification that everything is formally reproducible, already reproduced. (pp. 144-146)

Overview

Baudrillard analyzes the role of the object in modern consumer culture. He weaves Freudian and Saussurian (semiotic and psychological) analysis into a Marxist explanation of the commodity in society. Baudrillard looks at advertising, functionality, collection: the various social constructs that have evolved around objects which have come to represent much more than mere utility. Some of the original ideas were relating object dependence to works like The Sims.

Notes

The system of objects is a system of meanings. Modern objects are rooted in their technology, the technological qualities of objects are essential, whereas in the psychological and sociological sphere, the things that happen to the object are inessential. The technology is bound and inextricable from the object, making it a concrete unit. Production yields equivalence of objects. Software takes this to a natural extreme. Consider the psychological or sociological relation to objects, namely referencing George Mead, wherein objects are things that have been enacted. (p. 5-6)

On form and function in objects: In some cases, form is totally functionless, but rather, it operates as a sign. But… the sign is the function: it evokes an imaginary ideal function, beyond the limited real one. This is allegorical form, which does no more than to signify the idea of the function. Specifically, Baudrillard is talking about tail fins in cars, which serve no practical purpose whatsoever, but their form evokes idealized fastness. (p. 59) An interesting tangent: Considering functionalism and software or games. Software aspires to functionalism like physical objects do (Consider Norman, DoET and Emotional Design). What about games? Play has [ostensibly] no function, save pure indulgence. They probably are equated with entertainment like TV and film? Consider games as Objects of Products? (p. 64)

On collecting: The purpose of objects is to be put to use or to be possessed. A practical object like a utensil or a refrigerator is put to use in some fashion. The object’s materiality is less important than its function, as such it is equivalent to all other objects of its kind. A collected object is abstracted from its use, and becomes a thing that is possessed. Possession is thus a source of anxiety over the ambiguity of the uniqueness of an object. Compare with Geertz on the metaphysical ambiguity of life and the role of religion therein! The collection is a means to overcome the ambiguity of uniqueness. (p. 86) Collection transforms “having” into “being”: The object becomes an extension of the self. To have sequestered a prized object is to be castrated. (p. 98)

Automation and personalization: An automated objec is anthropomorphized by its supposed self-direction. But with object identification, this leads to self-functionalization, seeing oneself as an automated object, reducing the self to mere function. Compare here w Weizenbaum. Again, this is independent of AI or science as an ideology, but a property and effect of production. It also requires several steps to come around. (p. 112)

Choice causes us to participate in the culture value system. This is not freedom, but an imposed structure. Choice relates to AI and class dynamics. The idea of “personalization” is an ideological concept in order to integrate people effectively. (p. 141) The model of an object is just the idea of the model. It is the “generic image manufactured through the imaginary assumption of all relevant differences” Differences and choice: Self individuation is based on serial distinctions. “Personalization and integration go strictly hand in hand. That is the miracle of the system.” (p. 144)

Advertising and the pleasure principle: Gratification and frustration. Compare with sociological roles/acts and their models as objects. (In role-performance theory, roles are chosen according to gratifications). What are the advertisements of roles? Surely roles are advertised somehow, are portrayed as good or idealized to us in different ways (portrayals and depictions). “We must not forget that the image serves in this way to avoid reality and create frustration, for not only thus can we grasp how it is that the reality principle omitted from the image nevertheless effectively re-emerges therein as the continual repression of desire (as the spectacularization, blocking and dashing of that desire, and, ultimately, its regressive and visible transference onto an object).” (p. 177)

Consumption is an active process; objects are not the objects of consumption, rather, consumption is of meaning and signs by means of the objects. Traditional, functional objects were not arbitrary, but modern objects [as signs] are. Signs are necessarily arbitrary, and by objects operating as signs, they must be arbitrary as well. The nature of signs depends on difference. Compare with analogy, allegory? (p. 200)

Overview

Chandler summarizes the theory of semiotics from a multitude of backgrounds and perspectives. The book reviews the history of semiotics and the various models of sign systems, how they have been applied to analysis of speech and language, and how these have changed over time. The text serves to emphasize some of the moral and cognitive qualities that semiotics has in that interpretation of the world can shape the world.

Notes

Chandler first defines a sign as something that stands for something else. “Semiotics involves the study of not only what we refer to as ‘signs’ in everyday speech, but of anything which ‘stands for’ something else.” Semiotics works to analyze signs in context of a sign system, such as a medium or genre. (p. 2)

Semiotics appears as a rival to “content analysis”, which often resorted to qualitative means. (This mirrors development in sociology from statisical sociology to symbolic). It addresses latent and connotative meanings (as opposed to ostensible textual meanings, then again, textual meaning often derives from metaphorical/semiotic attribution…) “While content analysis involves a quantitative approach to the analysis of the manifest ‘content’ of media texts, semiotics seeks to analyse texts as structured wholes and investigates latent, connotative meanings.” (p. 8)

Semiotics uncovers ideology: moral implications of signs. “Contemporary social semiotics has moved beyond the sctructuralist focus on signifying systems as languages, seeking to explore the use of signs in specific social situations. Modern semiotic theory is often allied to a Marxist approach which stresses the role of ideology.” Saussure separates Langue-Language from Parole-Speech. Differences between system/usage structure/event, code/message, all emphasized in classic structuralist dichotomy. (p. 12)

Study of semiotics denaturalizes signs and makes them visible where normally transparent. Especially relevant in simulation… “Through the study of semiotics, we become aware that these signs and codes are normally transparent and disguise our task in ‘reading’ them.” (p. 15)

Critique of traditional model (Saussure): both signifier and signified are abstract, form rather than substance (speech and idea). Material need arises in sign system… (p. 18) Separation of sign systems. Saussure’s system was structural and relational, not referential. Value of sign is determined by other signs within the system. This descends into Baudrillard’s simulation. (p. 22)

Signs are arbitrary. “The arbitrariness of the sign is a radical concept because it establishes the autonomy of language in relation to reality. The Saussurean model, with its emphasis on internal structures within a sign system, can be seen as supporting the notion that language does not ‘reflect’ reality but rather constructs it.” Heayv Baudrillard connection here, also tradition in AI, gives way to closed disembodied systems. (p.28)

Another model of semiotics, the Piercian model (Charles Sanders Pierce): Has emphasis on process, rather than structure. Divides three part model of signs: Representamen (form sign takes), Interpretant (sense of sign, cognitive value), Object (to which the sign refers). Notion is that interpretant is a sign in eye of interpreter, so the semiotic reflection experiences endless regressesion. Any interpretation may be reinterpreted. Method later adopted by poststructuralists. (p. 33)

Types of relations of signs. Signs relate to each other and reality in a variety of ways. These seem to be from Saussure, but Chandler explains them more here. Symbolic: sign is arbitrary or conventional, relationship must be learned. Iconic: sign resembles object, but generally superficially or exaggeratedly (part stands for whole). Indexical: sign is directly connected in some way, but may be interpreted (readings on thermometer). Can extend: Symbol-AI, Icon/Symbol-Sim/Games, Index-?? (p. 36-37)

Reality is created by the representable. But who represents? What media? Resembles Levy: we affect the world via thought. “A radical response to realists is that things do not exist independently of the sign-systems that we use; reality is created by the media which seem simply to represent it.” (p. 57)

Platonic philosophical idealism: sign of object is Ideal, an Essential object. Saussure can be interpreted towards this perspective. Variations of perspectives: idealist, realist, constructionist. (p. 59)

Film theorist Andre Bazin describes the ‘reproductive fallacy’ of representation. Namely, exact reproduction cannot be made of an object (a text, specifically). Namely this bears on adaptation or translation in representation. Symbology comes into play for psychological or emotional realism in observation of a text (like a tv show), where it may seem true to life. Note that 1) text reproduction is interesting with mechanical reproduction, and 2) reproduction complex on personal level. This is a very extendible thread here… (p. 63)

Analysis of Magritte painting. “The Treachery of Images”: ‘Ceci n’est pas une pipe’. Process becomes one of defamiliarization. Compare with the analysis of simulation. (p. 65)

Chandler specifically uses the term ‘transparency’ in application to language. Modern language makes invisible the abstraction and arbitration of signs and denotative nature of language (speech acts) in reference to real world. Consider relation of transparency to realism. Realism necessarily implies representation, (much like immersion), and realism cannot really work if it is meant to be transparent. A work may not be real but also transparently refer to something, right? Presence of image implies absence of referent. (p. 73)

Explicit Baudrillard ref here. Signs point beyond themselves and form simulacra in their own system. (p.76)

Chandler defins two axes of understanding: Syntagm and Paradigm. Relates to meaning and media, and the neutrality of the medium. These axes define characteristics of relations of signs. “Paradigmnatic relations can thus be seen as ‘contrastive'”, ie, differences between shapes, colors, between like concepts of a kind. A syntagm is a chain of meaning. “A sentence is a syntagm of words”. There are large units of syntagms composed of smaller units. Maybe not linear chain, but order? (p. 81)

Syntagmatic relationships tend to be…. conceptual, spatial, or sequential. Narrative is especially dependent on this characteristic of sequence. Syntagms can be montage and conceptual flows, but do not need to be narrative explicitly. But is this the case, given concepts and understanding of narratives, is something sequential not a narrative in some degree? Goodman 1990, and Easthope 1990 split structural conventions into “masculine” and “feminine”, masculine structures are “‘tight’, orderly and logical… defensive structures”. It is unclear what feminine structures are, although it is interesting to see the emphasis on gender in reasoning, especially with its attribution to modes of thought. (p. 84-85)

Overview of narrative form from semiotic perspective: “Narratives help to make the strange familiar. They provide structure, predictibility, and coherence. In this respect they are similar to schemas for familiar events in everyday life. Turning experience into narratives seems to be a fundamental feature of the human drive to make meaning.” (p. 90) Narrative is natural the way that language is natural, in that it is familiar and transparent. It is, however, like language and semiotics, deep with room for extra meanings, moral, epistemic, and ontological choices. Consider and compare with Foucault’s “ruptures”: discontinuities, disjunctions in structures and sequence.

Analysis of Vladimir Propp’s Morphology of the Folktale. Flows into structuralist semiotician “Algirdas Greimas” who proposed a grammar for any known narrative structure. (in 1938, 1987) Split up narratives into three syntagmatic categories: Performanciels, contractuels, disjuntionnels. These are defined by binary oppositions called “actants”: subject-object, sender-receiver, helper-opponent. Jonathan Culler criticizes Greimas’ methodology (1975). (p. 95-96)

One feature of sign structures is the naturalization of binary opposition, a “us and them” mentality. Paradigmatic distinctions lead to matters of difference and dyadism. These are naturalized in their usage so it is hard to imagine conception without that distinction. Self is defined in terms of negation of other. Relates to Lacanian mirror stage, etc. (p. 104)

Discussion of figurative language. Literal and figurative blend. Eventually tropes appear in semiotic model (figurative becomes literal definition). According to some (Lakoff, Jakobson) metaphor integral to our understanding of meaning in everyday life. Compare w Foucault’s lingistic determinism, that tropes determine what can be known in an age. (p. 124-126)

Types of ‘master’ tropes: Metaphor, Metonymy, Synechdoche, Irony. Consider difference between literal, ironic, lie. Meanings are doubled in semiotic frame… (p. 135-136)

Analysis of codes in society: Codes are domains and partitions and frameworks of interaction and discourse. These define procuedural, functional boundaries. Define cultures and domains. Jameson: Perception is interpretation. There are social codes, textual codes, and interpretive codes. Codes may be applied towards the world, medium or genre, or modality (which is which). (p. 148-150)

In social codes, social determination occurs via codes: consider determinism in simulation, based on codes and grammar. Social differentiation is over-determined by codes. Codes may be verbal, physical, presentational (dress, conduct), etc. Compare w Goffman, treat sociological behaviors as codified? (p. 154)

“Realism involves an instrumental view of the medium as a neutral means for representing reality. The signified is foregrounded at the expense of the signifier.” (p. 161)

Discussion of speech and meaning transmission, models of discourse. Consider instead variation of process, what happens in communication? Empirically what changes other than the transmission of ideas? What does the transmission of ideas DO? (p. 177)

“As an approach to communication which focuses on meaning and interpretation, semiotics challenges the reductive transmission model. Signs do not just ‘convey’ meanings, but constitute a medium in which meanings are constructed. Semiotics helps us to realize that meaning is not just passively absorbed, but arises only in the active process of interpretation. Even within the structuralist paradigm, someone has to relate signs to each other and to the codes within which they make sense.” (p. 217)

Overview:

This book covers roleplaying as a social system. Of particular concern in this are the social interactions between players, and the relationships between person, player, and character. There are a great deal of essays and varying studies of gaming groups. A number of authors connect Erving Goffman’s notions of performance and frame analysis to understand the layers of interaction present in the games.

Notes:

Introduction:

The editors introduce the idea that roleplaying is a form of simulation. Fantasy roleplaying is based on social situations that do not actually exist. This idea suggests that roleplaying can be used by players to explore ideas and identities in a safe environment, without consequences to actions performed in game.

Also mentioned is the connection to ludology. The study of games in this context is separated into three main areas of study: social reality, identity, and experience. Social reality is something that derives from Berger and Luckman (1966) and argues that common interpretation of reality is socially constructed. Social construction applies to game worlds, but also the culture of gaming itself. The breakdown of topics into these categories does not emphasize the fictional aspect of gaming, specifically the imaginary worlds that are created through the roleplaying. For more on this, see Mackay.

Also worth investigation: James Gee: “What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy.” (2003)

Dennis D. Waskul: The Role-Playing Game and the Game of Role-Playing

This interesting essay connects RPGs with Goffman and Huizinga. The connection is social construction of reality and performance. The essay specifically is using Goffman’s 1961 “Encounters”. Establishment of identity and play seems reflective of Goffman’s work on Frame Analysis, as well. Waskul also discusses Fine’s ethnography of roleplaying groups. The intention of this essay is to understand better the relationship between players characters and extend this to the relationship between individuals and their social roles in reality.

Over the course of gaming, there are several distinct sides to the players: Person, Player, and Persona. Normally these are managed as distinct and separate frames, and they are kept separate with a great deal of discipline and rigor. However, this is not always the case, many occasions these boundaries blur or rupture. The conflict occurs in negotiating the various aspects of self from other, and becoming the other. This idea derives from Herbert Mead (1934).

Waskul describes an interesting episode where one of the players in a game was experiencing guilt because he was not used to playing a character with a particular alignment. The character was doing things that were in character, but this was at odds with the player’s own ethics, and this was creating a sense of unease. So gradually, the player would act out of the alignment and this created a feeling of guilt.

“Because he ended up role-playing in ways that were out of moral alignment for his persona, ‘he’ felt guilty. The irony is that fantasy personas are purely fictional and thus cannot ‘feel’ guilt any more than the player who plays them. Does the persona have a ‘guilt complex’ or is the player merely guilty about how he has played him? Clearly the answer is an ambiguous both but neither; his persona has a ‘guilt complex’ and the player feels guilty about how he has played him — the guilt is real and exists in two simultaneous frames of reality.” (p. 32)

Realness and the porous nature of imaginary constructions are anchored together. Waskul gives examples of how with families created through anonymous sperm donors, the idea of fatherhood is constructed and made more real through the fragmentary descriptions given by the donors. Another example is with actors in theatrical performances, where the characters in the performance are created not only by the actors, but by the audience suspending its disbelief. The social construction of reality is something grounded in the tradition of symbolic sociology. Roleplaying is a game of self and fictional identity.

Sean Q. Hendricks: Incorporating Discourse Strategies in Tabletop Fantasy Role-Playing Gaming

This paper discusses the way in which the participants in an RPG use discourse to construct the game world and simultaneously separate in-game activity from out of game activity. The underlying idea here is the idea that the participants maintain a single shared vision. The definition Hendricks uses derives from several authors, notably Fine, Goffman, and Lakoff and Johnson. The ideas developed seem to hinge most strongly on Goffman’s notion of framing and keying. That idea is that cues exist around the discourse (keys) that enables the frame wherein the underlying game takes place. The two frames that exist in roleplaying are the frame of the game itself, and the fantasy wherin the story takes place.

This logical separation makes a lot of sense for roleplaying, but it can also be extended beyond that, to other occasions, such as electronic games. These are notably different in that the game and story are fully developed artifacts in electronic games: they are not co-constructed, so the fantasy aspect in electronic games must be presented to the player, and the player can only view it. There is an oppositional nature inherent in that, even when in tabletop gaming the GM is responsible for developing the world. In tabletop, the world does not exist without the involvement, and witness of the players.

On discourse strategies: when players enter and exit the frame of the game, there is a period of transition wherein the players come to get used to their characters, and essentially come to inhabit them. This connects to many traditions present in improv.

Discourse in games tends to fall under two primary categories: description and action. Actions consistent with goals have the effect in games of unifying: they connect the player to the character. Description does the opposite, it asks the player to visualize a world where the character is present, but this makes distinct the difference between player and character. This is common knowledge in GMing practice: a gamemaster should end a first game session with a battle to make the players feel invested and connected with their characters through a common goal: don’t let the character die! Again, this emphasizes the difference between tabletop and electronic games. Electronic games can not do anything but describe, and their representation of worlds might be characterized as opening a window, but that still emphasizes that the player is on the other side. It is difficult to have games where the player and character are acting with mutual and synchronous goals.

Discussing language: In discourse in tabletop games (and also in MMOGs), language becomes a hybrid of in-world language, colloquial or regular language, and meta language. This must also be accomodated in other adaptation targets, where in-world ideas are represented with different media affordances.

Michelle Nephew: Playing with Identity

This essay discusses unconscious desire and sublimation in roleplaying games. Nephew uses a Freudian psychology in the tradition of Larua Mulvey, to analyze a particular roleplaying group’s positions towards masculinity and morality. Aspects of roleplaying have been studied by Keith Hurley in terms of therapy and learning to adopt and work with roles. Developmental psychology has used the idea of role-taking towards social function. Accustoming oneself to a role is a form of “systematic desenitization”, that can be used in therapy.

Nephew’s finding is that roleplaying enables players to act out their subconscious desires safely through their character’s actions. Characters can be used to explore latent desires that would not be socially acceptable, but these fantasies can be enacted in a social setting through roleplay. “In this chapter I develop the argument that role-playing’s use as a medical therapy underscores the supposition that during an RPG session a player’s character acts as a latent aspect of himself, played out publicly; the role-playing game is a text shaped by unconscious desire.”

Part of this assessment is absolutely true, but the character’s behavior in a game does not need to be necessarily subconscious: Therapy requires a sort of conscious roleplay, and Sherry Turkle would argue that these games allow for an experimentation of identity, where the player may “try-out” roles to incorporate into their own identity. It has been my experience that players who are less-aware of their character’s motivations are generally much less mature, either as players or as people.

Nephew spends more time focusing on the D&D alignment system, expressing that the appeal of such a system reflects the desire for a world where moral dilemmas are much simpler, and can easily be made into black and white. Additionally, in a game with this system, the label of “good” can give a moral blank check to a player, allowing them to commit atrocities and have this be excused through the work of the alignment system.

Additionally, Nephew finds that the standard misogynist portrayal of female characters in fantasy are also used in roleplaying games. Performance and gender relate to the scopophilic desire to objectify others. Playing a female character is not “experiencing as” so much as “posessing”. There are also attempts to defeminize characters, in order to take away the feminine elements that are so objectionable.

Nephew’s research is extremely valuable, and her findings address trends of distressing misogyny that are extremely prevalent through fantasy, gaming, and the geek culture from which roleplaying emerged. However, I am finding myself very defensive, as, while these problems belong to the larger culture of gaming, this does not imply that all gaming must ascribe to these values. In Turkle’s studies of chatroom culture, she found that gender play was about experimentation and not posession. In the age of Second Life and visual representations of characters, the posessive scopophilic desire becomes more pronounced. Roleplaying exists in between these extremes.

Notes

Chapter 1. Narrative, Media and Modes

Opening in Avatars, we see her discuss the birth of narratology, through an issue of the French journal Communications in 1966. It contained articles by Roland Barthes, Claude Bremond, Gerard Genette, and others. This point marked the understanding of narrative as something that transcends medium, and universal across culture.

Subsequently, with the influence of Gerard Genette, narratology became more focused on written literary fiction. Ryan is attempting to argue for the trancendence of narrative, as transmedial and transdiciplinary. She argues that a core of meaning is transferred whole, but how it is rendered may change and be actualized differently. The idea of this core implies the existence of certain essences in narratives.

This viewpoint is countered by a some narratologists, and this derives from the position that defines narrative as speech act or language based. This is represented by Prince, Genette, and Chatman. This discounts many modes of narration, and is also reflected by Aarseth in his quest paper noting that Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture merely scores the battle of 1812, rather than telling its story. Ryan notes that some narratologists use a metaphorical model, where films or plays or overtures are metaphorically referencing speech acts. Advocates of this are Christian Metz, Seymour Chatman, Fancois Jost, and Andre Gaudrault.

Another counterexample to this is what Ryan calls radical media relativism. This is the idea that works are totally different across media, and that adaptations nave no strong relation to their source material. (Strong in this sense evokes a mathematical strongness in definition.) This idea is grounded in semoitics, and implies that the signifier cannot be separated from the signified. This approach misses the effects of remediation, where practices and terminology are borrowed from one media discipline to another. This approach also is one that, in an extreme form, would argue that works are essentially untranslatable. When the idea of audience or affect comes to play, this trend could go down the path of rigid structuralism, or utter alienation of experience with postmodernism.

Ryan looks to define a broad concept of narrative to encompass transmedial narratives, but to keep it focused enough that everything does not turn into a narrative. She adopts the definition defined by H. Porter Abbott: “Story is an event or sequence of events (the action), and narrative discourse is those events as represented.” Narrative is orthogonal to the story then: The narrative is the “textual” story, while story is the “virtual” narrative.

Story is representational, but it is encoded in mental images, not material signs. Narrative has the capacity to evoke stories to the mind. Ryan further sees the narrative capacity of a work as a scalar, rather than binary value. On this, Ryan expands a bullet point definition:

1. Spatial dimension:
   Narrative must be about a world populated by individuated existents.
2. Temporal dimension:
   This world must be situated in time and undergo significant transformations.
3. The transformations must be caused by nonhabitual physical events.
4. Mental dimension:
   Some of the participants in the events must be intelligent agents who have a mental life and react emotionally to the states of the world.
5. Some of the events must be purposeful actions by these agents, motivated by identifiable goals and plans.
6. Formal and pragmatic dimension:
   The sequence of events must form a unified causal chain and lead to closure.
7. The occurrence of at least some of the events must be asserted as fact for the story world.
8. The story must communicate something meaningful to the recipient.

This set of points constructs a formal, but curiously focused definition of narrative. Many texts could be construed as satisfying some of the points and not others. (For example, recipes, stories about the Big Bang, etc) The effect of this is to understand narrative as a category with multiple dimensions and open to varying perspectives.

Ryan looks to define modes of narration. She does this by exploring a number of characteristics, or dimensions, that narratives can have or perform:

• External/Internal. This is explicit textualization, as opposed to internal imagery.
• Fictional/Nonfictional.
• Representational/Simulative. Representative illustrates consequences in a world formally, while simulation is seen as more abstract and algorithmic.
• Diegetic/Mimetic. In representation, diegetic narration is declarative, while mimetic is reproductive of the source material, eg, drama, cinema.
• Autotelic/Utilitarian. Utilitarian uses the story for a purpose, such as illustrating morals, etcetera.
• Autonomous/Illustrative. Autonomous stories stand as new and independent examples, while illustrative stories are retellings, or rely on the audience’s knowledge of the plot, such as in illustrations or myths.
• Scripted/Emergent. Scripted is the reliance on the text. Emergent narratives permit significant variance from that script, such as in live performance and improvisation.
• Receptive/Participatory. This defines the role of the audience in the story. A participatory narrative is one in which the audience gives feedback to the story itself.
• Determinate/Indeterminate. This is determinance in interpretation. A determinate narrative is explicit and does not open up interpretation. Indeterminate has sufficient ambiguity (Lady or the Tiger).
• Retrospective/Simultaneous/Prospective. This is the temporality of a story. A live news feed is a simultaneous narrative.
• Literal/Metaphorical. Metaphorical narratives relate abstract concepts as agents within a story.

Understanding the transmedial nature of narrative requires an understanding of media itself. Perspectives on media tend to depend heavily on the perceiver’s role with it. Media can be considered channels of communication, or a material or substance for expression. Ryan notes that the first type are conduits, while the second are languages. However, due to the nature of affordances and embedded value systems, media can more broadly be understood as both conduit and language.

Writing and narrative developed and were made complex and refined with the inventions of technologies and the emergence of theories. Walter Ong traces the emergence of narrative writing. Since Aristotle, drama represented a very deliberate and focused rise and fall of tension. With print, novels emerged, and took on new directions of complexity and meaning. Novels gave rise to both an extension of Aristotelian theory (novels with carefully developed tension and plot arcs), as well as an introspection and inward looking at characters. With high modernism, the focus becomes so introspective, that narrative action becomes nearly impossible. New media enables further developments, it but remains to be seen on what those will be.

Ryan outlines some bullet points on qualities of media from the perspective of transmedial narratology:

1. Spatiotemporal extension.
2. Kinetic properties.
3. Number of semiotic channels. (kinetic, temporal, tactile, visual, etc)
4. Priority of sensory channels.

Chapter 5. Toward an Interactive Narratology

Ryan attempts to return to the application of narrative to cybertext. To do this, she looks at the properties of digital systems and interactive texts.

• Interactive and reactive. (Responsiveness to the user)
• Volatile signs and variable display. (Visual representation of changing information)
• Multiple sensory and semiotic channels.
• Networking capability.

Interactivity is the most important point in Ryan’s view, and is necessary to justify that a digital text be digital (otherwise it could be transcribed and represented nondigitally). Chris Crawford has championed interactivity and placed it as absolutely grounded in user choice.

I would actually caution this, as there are other means of telling stories nondigitally that are interactive, the most notable of these being tabletop roleplaying.

Interactive narratology requires the modes of simulation, emergence, and participation. Ryan uses some diagrams to illustrate the graphs of plot in non-interactive narratives (p. 101), and then graphs of some interactive forms (p. 103). Notable forms are: network (the classical hypertext), sea-anemone (or tree), vector with side branches (resembling console RPGs), and track switching.

Ryan notes that a diagram that permits return to previous nodes counters the temporal nature of narrative. This aspect leads to problems, though, since nodes could be considered as temporal, and may not need to be seen as absolute. A hypertext fiction that treated each node as an occurrence of the node seems problematic. Further, this treatment of stories as composed of nodes betrays the simulative power of computation. It moves the story from a world to a dot.

Ryan sees to classify several forms of interactivity through the binary pairs internal/external, exploratory/ontological, which were adapted originally by Aarseth’s typology of user functions. Ryan’s approach aims to categorize the user’s relationship to the world. Internal interactivity occurs when a user controls or identifies with an avatar, and external modes place the user detached and outside the world. Exploratory modes are focused on navigation and exploration of a plot, whereas ontological allows the user to change the outcome of the story. It is not exactly clear how the term ontological comes to serve this purpose here.

There’s a note here in the scanned pdf, that describes Ryan as saying that narrative is incompatible with full participation. However, in the actual body of the text, the argument is more subtle. “The Aristotelian plot of interpersonal conflict leading to a climax and resolution does not lend itself easily to active participation because its strength lies in a precise control of emotional response that prevents most forms of user initiative.” (p. 113) This can be interpreted as caution against traditional Aristotelian dramatic structures. Conventional narratives and interactive experiences by far do not need to rely on these dramatic structures anyway, and it’s probably for the best that they don’t. Aristotle is certainly not the have-all and be-all of narrative, so the exclusion of Aristotle is not the end of the world.

Simulations, and specifically the variety of god-games that Ryan looks at (Simcity, Simlife, Caesar, The Sims, Civilization, Babyz, etc), are listed as External/Ontological. These are narratives in the sense that user actions produce coherent development in the system. Players are powerful, but not omnipotent, in that they must abide by the rules of the game world. These straddle an interesting perspective on narrative in their detached external nature, these games are rather systems of objects.

The really rich category of games is that of Internal/Ontological, and most games with direct player agency fall in this category. There is a wide, huge spectrum of these, and it is problematic to attempt to speak of them with any categorical generality. Ryan does note of them (I would say a subcategory of them): “Generally modeled after the nondigital role-playing games Dungeons and Dragons, worlds of this type almost invariably implement the archetypal pattern of the quest, as described by Joseph Campbell and Vladimir Propp.” (p. 117) Aarseth has made his claims against narratology in understanding of quests, though. But seeing quests as an adaptation of tabletop games can yield more subtle variation.

A final note occurs on the idea of the “ultimate narrative experience”. Ryan works to debunk the idea that becoming a character in a world is the supreme form of narrative (essentially, the holodeck phenomenon). However, in reading of literary fiction, we are divided between identification and external observation. “We simulate mentally the inner life of these characters, we transport ourselves in imagination into their mind, but we remain at the same time conscious of being external witnesses.” (p. 124-125) Ryan also raises a very fascinating question: Would a user rather identify with Hamlet, Emma Bovary, Gregor Samsa, Oedipus, Anna Karenina, or instead Alice in Wonderland, Harry Potter, or Sherlock Holmes? “If we pick a character from the second list, this means that we prefer identifying with a rather flat but active character whose participation in the plot is not a matter of emotional relation to other characters but a matter of exploring a world, solving problems, performing actions, and competing against enemies.” (p. 125) This is largely the space that games occupy. These types of narratives are largely favored, and relate to the role internality/externality of the user/reader/player within the game or narrative.

I don’t think this means that narratives with characters with strong internal roles are impossible to adapt, but it does introduce a new set of challenges about experience, and what it means to read and recreate and simulate a world, mentally or otherwise.

Overview

Lakoff and Johnson use metaphor as a means for cognition. Use of metaphor involves adoption of certain cognitive models associated with the models of what is being compared. They argue against the philosophical objective and subjective truths, and instead push to look for an embodied and situated means of truth that operates in accordance to our understanding.

Ultimately, the authors aim to dethrone objective reasoning as viable for understanding the world. Rather, a metaphorical view of statements is more tenable. The authors do not go so far as Rumelheart in On Metaphor and claim that there is no such thing as literal meaning, (although Lakoff did attend that conference before the publication of this book), rather they allow for it in certain situations, such as mathematics. A contemporary alternative would also be programming. While they spend a great deal of time in criticizing Noam Chomsky, their criticism is that Chomsky’s purely formal languages do not relate to the real world.

We can play on this a little bit, conjecturing that objective analysis may be sufficient within a mathematical domain, but in order to apply that knowledge, we must relate it to the real world, which requires metaphor.

Notes

Metaphor is pervasive in thought and action: “The concepts that govern our thought are not just matters of the intellect. They also govern our everyday functioning, down to the most mundane details. Our concepts structure what we perceive, how we get around in the world, and how we relate to other people. Our conceptual system thus plays a central role in defining our everyday realities. If we are right in suggesting that our conceptual system is largely metaphorical, then the way we thinks what we experience, and what we do every day is very much a matter of metaphor.”

Metaphor is a vehicle for exposing our conceptual system. “The essence of metaphor is understanding and experiencing one kind of thing in terms of another.”

The dilemma that arises here is a matter of reflection and infinite regress. If we are to believe our embodiment advocates, what happens at the lowest level is somatic perception.

Lakoff and Johnson use everyday, conventional examples to uncover common meanings: Argument is war, time is money, etc.

A common metaphorical concept is the conduit metaphor: “The speaker puts ideas (objects) into words (containers) and sends them (along a conduit) to a bearer who takes the idea/objects out of the word/containers.” This follows through to relate to communication and information theory very closely. Conduit metaphors are meta-metaphors, which describe language as a conduit.

Lakoff and Johnson make an interesting point about the experience of metaphor, though, which ties things back into phenomenology: “In actuality we feel that no metaphor can ever be comprehended or even adequately represented independently of its experiential basis.” This implies an operation of common experiential interaction that applies to both pairs of concepts being compared.

Oppositional binary metaphors are laid out in terms of up and down. Analogical metaphors occur when two pairs of metaphors relate to the same binary base: “more is better” is coherent with “more is up” and “good is up”. These types of underlying metaphors are culturally embedded.

Ontological metaphors anthropomorphize concepts or equate them to other types of entities. “He broke down” works with “The mind is a machine”.

On truth: Metaphor has a function of categorization. Furthermore, it prioritizes certain categories over others.

For truth to exist, there is needed an experiential gestalt with several categories: (p. 167) Participants, Parts, Stages, Causation, Purpose. This is detailed in the example of “John fired the gun at Harry”

We understand truths in the relation to prototypical examples via categories: perceptual, motor, functional, and purpose. These can vary, of course, but the low level perceptions and prototypes are the foundations of how this metaphorical extension and contextual knowledge may be developed.

Direct Immediate Understanding: Entity structure, orientational structure, dimensions of experience, experiential gestalts, background, highlighting, interactional properties, prototypes. These means of breaking down experience apply to both direct understanding and indirect understanding. Truth is based on understanding: “We understand a statement as being true in a given situation when our understanding of the statement fits our understanding of the situation closely enough for our purposes.”

Both objectivism and subjectivism are myths. Objectivism leads to disembodiment of meaning, and implies that humans are not necessary for there to be truth or language. “Objectivism permits ontological relativity without human understanding.” Meaning is composed from other meanings. This standpoint resembles very closely GOFAI. Metaphor undercuts the objectivist myth.