Month: January 2005

Inhumane Punishment: No Video Games in Prison

From CNN.
The US state of Missouri has banned all video games in the state’s prisons. Why? Because inmates had been playing violent video games.

In prison, inmates should “pick up skills and abilities that will allow them to go back out into society and be productive citizens,” Blunt said. “Playing video games doesn’t have anything to do with either of those objectives.”

Hmm. I always thought one of the most terrifying aspects of prison was the sheer boredom at such a place. No video games, this is just too inhumane & heartless.

Rwanda Genocide Simulation. Ouch.

Pax Warrior is a new game/simulation where the object is to save as many lives as possible.

Details are scarce and screenshots are few, but it seems you play the role of a UN peacekeeper and have to make decisions about how to do your job.

In a way, it indicates how games about touchy, tragic, and sensitive subjects are catching on. I think it’s good that there are more games about bad things.

BBC writeup here.

Is Nutella Left- or Right-Wing? Is Chess?

Nutella

The International Herald Tribune reports of a current discussion in Italy of whether Nutella (the chocolate spread) is left- or right-wing.

“Only Italians could turn something like this into an ideological question,” said Gigi Padovani, who put the question to a group of students at the Velso Mucci Institute, a technical school for chefs and waiters in this small town in northern Italy.

As the dark creamy treat turns 40, intellectuals throughout the country have been debating what Padovani calls the “cultural, social, artistic and gastronomic phenomenon” that is Nutella.

I often discuss ideology in games with TL, Gonzalo, and my other colleagues. I am always the one saying that ideology is partially a matter of interpretation and that you can’t really determine the ideology of Sim City or the Sims.

The Nutella discussion makes me realize that the problem is that I don’t really think ideologies work. That is, we do have ideologies, but ideologies are simply not able to describe and evaluate the world to the detail that we imagine.
I think that actual ideologies are flawed piles of contradictory beliefs, and that most of the actual world is too complex to be understood (or ruled) by a single ideology.

That is, we may believe ourselves to have a complete, good, and amazingly coherent ideology (left- or right-wing, for example) but in actuality each of us entertains numerous wildy contradictory beliefs a the same time.

Especially when it comes to art (and food), many of the actual determinations (left wing or right wing?) are going to be completely random. There is nothing in Nutella to give it affinity with any particular ideology (left or right).
The Russian composer Shostakovich was denounced as “formalist” (shudder) several times under Stalin. Now, while there certainly was an ideology that all things, art included, had a completely objective and determinable ideology, I think we would be hard pressed to claim any compelling connection between Marxism and being against “formalist” musical compositions.

Returning to games, Hans Petschar has an analysis of the history of chess across different cultures, where the introduction of diagonal movement for the queen and bishops is a “dynamization of space” and reflects European thought. I don’t find this terribly compelling either.

Many games just don’t “really have” an ideology, yet some games do convey messages and beliefs.
When is the ideology we see just a mirror of our expectations, and when is it really there?
How can we tell the difference?

WHAT DO YOU BELIEVE IS TRUE EVEN THOUGH YOU CANNOT PROVE IT?

Every year, John Brockman’s ever-interesting edge.org poses a question to a number of scientists and thinkers.
This year it’s

What do you believe to be true but cannot prove?

Here are a few:

I believe that deceit and self deception play a disproportoinate role in human-generated disasters, including misguided wars, international affairs more generally, the collapse of civilizations, and state affairs, including disastrous social, political and economic policies and miscarriages of justice.

I can’t prove it, but I am pretty sure that people gain a selective advantage from believing in things they can’t prove. I am dead serious about this.

Nature Is Culture. I believe that nature and culture can now be understood as one unified process, not two distinct domains separated by some property of humans such as written or spoken language, consciousness, or ethics.

It’s all good stuff.

Henry Jenkins Lectures in Copenhagen on Friday the 14th of January

Henry Jenkins speaks at the ITU this Friday: “Searching for the Origami Unicorn: The Matrix and Transmedia Storytelling”.
It’s at the IT University, Rued Langgaards Vej 7, Copenhagen S.
16:15-17:30 in auditorium 2.

Jenkins is always a great speaker and cultural thinker, so it should be worth going.