On games as drills for banal tasks. From my "Persuasive Games" column at Gamasutra.
When we talk about the unique power of video games, we often cite their ability to engage us in thorny challenges, to envelop our attention and commitment, to overwhelm our senses and intellects as we strive to master physical trials of a battle or work out the optimal strategy for an economy. Usually we’re right when we think this, no… read more
Part 2: What Kind of Videogame?
In part 1 of this series, I introduced the idea of a metaphysics videogame and described why such a thing might be a good idea for philosophy. That was the easy part. In this post I’m going to explore what such a game might look like, in the abstract. The idea is not to suggest only the most viable approach,… read more
Like a high-speed film of a horse running
Graham Harman has been posting a series of enlightening thoughts on writing as he races toward a book deadline, taking only two months from start to finish. The book in question has a word limit (a character limit, really) because it is destined for immediate translation, and the translation has to be done on a budget. The whole series is… read more
Behold this wonderful endorsement on the old Hackett edition of Hegel’s Introduction to the Philosophy of History: It suggests an amusing party game for philosophers (or academics of all kinds): devise the most subtly derisive quip possible for a given book. (thanks to Mark Nelson)
Part 1: Why a Videogame?
A brief history. Back in the late summer of 2006, a few months after the publication of Unit Operations, I exchanged a few emails with Graham Harman, whose book Tool-Being I had cited in the early pages of mine. We talked about a few things, including Leibniz, Badiou, Heidegger, Meillassoux, D.W. Griffith, and McLuhan. Sometime in early 2007, over a… read more
A response to Levi Bryant
In a lengthy comment on my pragmatic speculative realism post, philosopher Levi Bryant asks what issues in technology and media studies prompted my interest in object-oriented ontology. I’d like to try to answer the question for the benefit of readers finding their way here from sources in philosophy rather than game studies. In some ways, I think I was doing… read more
The Things in The Waters of March
Earlier I mentioned my interest in creative artifacts that do speculative realist work, as well as my tempered fondness for the lurid lists of objects that litter Graham Harman’s work. The other day another example fell into my lap as I was listening to the Seriously Sinatra channel on satellite radio in my car (seriously, there’s a channel for it).… read more
Philosophers vs. Programmers!
After my post of yesterday, Graham Harman made a few helpful observations about the term “object-oriented philosophy.” First Harman observed that the “parallels seem plenty apt,” that “terms can be borrowed freely across disciplines with slight changes of meaning” that “plenty of other names can be used,” and that “it doesn’t matter unless people have such strong preconceived notions of… read more
A stake in the ground
Even though we didn’t really talk much about philosophy, after visiting Graham Harman in Cairo two weeks ago, I was reenergized to think about philosophy in general and speculative realism in particular. In the short time since, a number of friendly bonfires have flared up around the web, most of them camps emanating from Graham’s blog and that of Levi… read more
Versailles Graffito
A little Bastille Day gift can be found below: a graffito found etched onto a map of the grounds at the Palace of Versailles, reading “I ♥ NY.” It’s emblazoned onto one end of the Grand Canal. During the reign of Louis XIV, gilded gondolas would have sailed here. I don’t know why this amuses me so much, but it… read more