My Work on Play the Past

Chalk this announcement up to 'meant to say something earlier, but kind of kept putting it off.'  I've been very excited in the explosion of coverage over the past few years on gaming and thoughtful explorations of games under different disciplinary backgrounds, with one of the best examples being the phenomenal Play the Past website.  Here, authors from diverse professional backgrounds mull over topics such as 'The Presence of the Past in Fallout 3', 'What Comes Before the Platform: The Refuse of Videogames' and even 'Lies & Gamification'.

A few months ago, I was asked if there were any topics I though might be good for Play the Past and I immediately turned to the idea of player modifications, as they relate to one's sense of cultural heritage, in the very popular Cold War board game 'Twilight Struggle.'  Next, I tackled the question of 'Validating Model COIN's', which analyzed how game models of counterinsurgencies achieve validation through their combination of play-design mechanics and secondary source evaluation.  I then wrote on a topic, first written and debated here on Peasant Muse, about 'Interpreting History Through Games' which made the argument that board games could be analyzed as 'platforms' as defined by Ian Bogost and Nick Montford in their seminal work 'Racing the Beam'.

I've enjoyed writing for Play the Past.  I find it to be a great venue for exploring the intersections, boundaries and transdisciplinary approaches that are so vital for examining the world of gaming and cultural heritage.  That's why it makes me very happy to announce that I will be joining the fantastic group of authors at Play the Past as a regular contributor.  You can see my very first attributed post (the previous posts listed above were written under a guest writer account) discussing religious elements found in the sandbox game, Minecraft- 'Pilgrimage in (Minecraft) Middle Earth'.

I will still explore game topics here at Peasant Muse- I just now have another venue to engage a different sort of audience, with a cast of supporting authors that, frankly, make me realize how much I still have to learn and consider.  As I said above, this is a very exciting time for those of us interested in exploring games with more thoughtful consideration and I am personally thrilled to be a part of what I consider one of the shining exemplars of how this work can be done.

Going Beyond the Textual in History

Photo by Andrew Mason

Because of my interest in both history and games, I'm always on the look-out for good writing or new takes on how to bring elements of the gaming world into the framework of historical inquiry.  Increasingly, I'm finding my best sources of this kind of reading from my Twitter stream, as was the case when Shawn Graham (@electricarchaeo) pointed me towards an article in the recent edition of the Canadian Game Studies Association journal, 'Loading…', titled 'Beyond the 'Historical' Simulation: Using Theories of History to Inform Scholarly Game Design'.  Tackling what they call 'gamic action', the authors of the paper look to use elements of 'procedural rhetoric' (a concept introduced by Ian Bogost in his work 'Persuasive Games') combined with 'valid and scholarly means' of constructing the past (modeled on the monograph or print article) to produce 'reasonably justified truths' compatible with current methodologies in use by many historians.    

I mention the article not because I found it to be a progressive example of innovative historical thinking on games, but rather the opposite.  Instead of offering a means by which games can be productively and thoughtfully incorporated into historical study, the authors present a reactionary stance that seeks to bind 'gamic action' within the tightly defined epistemological boundaries incorporated into textual modes of history.  While they do offer valid insight when it comes to analyzing the roles and pretenses games follow today with regards to claiming historical validation, the repeated insistence on bringing into alignment the modes of 'objective' history and playable games not only overlooks the complimentary nature of both in creating reasonably justified truths about the past (to borrow a central concern of the authors), but also ignores the more fundamental issue centered on student prosumption (production + consumption) of historical knowledge.

Photo by Caro's Lines

While the first objection stems from concern the authors profess regarding games ability to present historical 'truth' as exemplified by the monograph, the second objection goes to the core of a fundamental debate now occurring in the discipline of History.  Examining both these objections yields the insight that History must go beyond the textual when forming links outside the circumscribed boundaries current epistemologies demand.  This is not abandonment, it is augmentation.  Rather than take a simplistic, reductionist view of the interplay between history and games, it might suit both the Historian and the Student better to uncover the more nuanced and complex interoperability both spheres of knowledge possess.

Let's begin with what the authors define as the 'gamic mode'.

"A gamic mode of history is the construction of scholarly historical arguments as scholarly games, creating a relationship to commercial games analogous to that of non-fiction to fiction in literature. This enables scholars to convey their research in ways that go beyond the limits of textual monographs, digitized historical sources, and digital simulations." [3]

via schaver.com

Thus the introduction of two parallel themes that run through the entire article- first, that scholarly historic arguments can be laid 1:1 over the gamic mode and, second, that this gives the gamic mode a source of truth to which other, commercial games cannot lay claim.  Simply put, the two worlds of textual history and games cannot coexist unless they are mirrors of each other, for to allow the possibility of transition between distinct spheres of knowledge would imply that truth is relative and the certified authority of the historian is no greater than the roll of a die or play of a card.  Students/players, in the 'commercial' and 'simulative' gamic modes, are empowered to both consume and produce knowledge on a level that is difficult for traditional Historians to acknowledge, much less accept.

This fear is clearly expressed by the authors when they claim that current methods of integrating games and history steer the debate away from expressing and elaborating "a disciplinary way of creating truth" and ultimately seek to transform the discipline by altering its epistemologies and limiting its empirical rigor.  Hence the following claim by the authors:

"This [steering of the debate] in turn limits scholarly debate by increasing ambiguity and opening reader response beyond the determination of whether or not the author has presented a reasonably justified truth." [5-6]

While that statement certainly seems ominous, the real source of angst is not the debate on epistemology, truth and empirical rigor conflating history and games supposedly brings about- it's the fact that the reader is apportioned a space of interpretation hereto held inviolate by certified authorities of the historical profession.  The gamic mode, as the authors see it currently being applied, allows the reader (note careful avoidance of the term 'player') to produce responses that go beyond consumption and simple affirmation or negation of the argument presented.  The reader, enabled to produce (or, more accurately, prosume) their own 'truths', can simply avoid the argument altogether.

Instead of dwelling on this point, let's put it in our back pocket as we survey other important parts of the authors argument.

One key concept that helps the authors align fidelity of the historical textual mode to the gamic mode is procedural rhetoric, a term first introduced and elaborated by Ian Bogost, defined in this context as:

"…the use of computational processes to persuasively and effectively convey an idea. What the author creates in procedural rhetoric is not the argument itself, but a series of general and specific rules through authoring code that a computer can then use to generate the argument (Bogost, 2007). This mirrors scholarly constructions of the past as history in two important ways. First is that the argument is not the past, but a representation of it created by authoring evidential and interpretive relationships that lead to conclusions. Second is that the scholarly historical argument itself consists of facts that are converted to evidence and arranged according to a set of rules for that particular argument via interpretation. The gamic mode of history is an application of procedural rhetoric that takes advantage of the processes inherent in scholarly evidential relationships to express these arguments as games.  While different in form the argument experienced by the player would contain the same series of procedural evidential relationships that work towards a verifiable conclusion with a reasonably justifiable truth attribute that they might have expected to find in a monograph of the same argument." [6]

By linking 'computational processes' to the way in which textual arguments are assembled, the authors hope to bring authoritative strength to their claim that the gamic mode and the textual historical argument can be one and the same.  However, this viewpoint hinges on the assumption that digital games possess an internal consistency of rules and play that allow the player to understand and predict cause/effect relationships in the gamic world.  This, unfortunately, is not the case.

Photo by Ken Goldberg

Digital games are, by their very nature, closed constructions whose operation the player cannot, on face, intrinsically know or predict without engaging first in a large degree of play.  Cause/effect relationships in digital games are determined by trial and error, inference, and the acknowledgment of a reward to indicate progress.  Yet the player can never be sure every corner of a digital game has been explored because many actions are obscured by the operation of code, which the player often cannot access and modify.  In fact, a digital game could be considered the exact opposite of a monograph, where the argument and sources used are clearly articulated.  But of course, this too simplifies the monographs presence, which is never really accounted for in the article.  For while citations are visible the documents behind those citations are not.  Alternatively, we know what the scholar selected but we don't know what they didn't select, or even the range of documents surveyed.  This is not a knock on professionalism, merely the idea that History in pursuit of objectivity nevertheless is guided, perhaps unknowingly, by subjective desires.

There is also the question of why the authors are so dedicated to digital gamic action, leaving the venerable tradition of manual board gaming to the relative wayside.  I find this trend currently common in many historic approaches towards utilizing games- but without straying too far from the question at hand, I would add that board games at least allow an alternative separate from the digital gamic mode to occur.  Board games are 'open' and the player does not have to continually press the boundaries of the world to figure out its meaning, a la digital.  Complete boundaries are defined and areas of ambiguity are not hidden but rather demarcated quite visibly in a manual design.  The player can dispense with the never-knowing and move straight to analysis and interpretation.  It should also be noted that the 'open' design of manual games allows players to assert their own interpretations of the events or model depicted, something the authors, as cited above, greatly disdain.

Player-Made Twilight Struggle Card
by Mark MacRae

To put it on even simpler terms- the main objection the authors have with current gamic modes is that they produce history for consumers, while the authors would much rather produce history for producers.  This approach, currently, is endemic in the historical discipline because historians, by and large, are used to being both the producers and consumers of their own product.  This is why the authors struggle so mightily to make equivalent a textual mode of history and a gamic mode of history, to make claims that this approach can, perhaps, go beyond the textual when, in fact, the very notion of equivalence negates this possibility.  Textual modes focus on producing knowledge through reading, while gamic modes focus on producing knowledge through play.  One allows simple consumption, the other complex prosumption.

Stalwart defense of the 'consumptive' textual mode can be further seen in the authors elaboration of Alan Munslow's three broad epistemological approaches to historical scholarship, those being construction, deconstruction and reconstruction.  Because deconstruction relies upon one's own experiences to form understanding of evidence and arguments presented, the authors reject such claims of historic inquiry because "to certain extent (deconstruction) means the past is unknowable and denies a corporate understanding of history."  Reconstruction is similarly disqualified as its primary exemplar, the computer simulation, asserts that collected facts of the past can be arranged and recreated to simulate the past as it actually happened- yet this involves subjective qualifiers and emphases that the authors stress "taxes the traditional historian's ideal of objective scholarship." 

This leaves construction as the preferred epistemological approach in producing an authoritative historical gamic mode.

"Constructionist history builds up knowledge of the past and expresses the past as history by both analyzing how and what individual pieces of evidence can do, and what conclusions about the actions of historical agents (be they individuals or corporate entities) can be established through evidence relationships. In this case, evidence itself is separate from a notion of historical fact, as the fact only becomes evidence based upon its relationship to the question at hand. The constructionist approach to history, while allowing almost any question to be asked, provides parameters around how the question can be answered." [7]

What gives construction the edge for the authors is that it neatly lays outs parameters establishing how 'almost any question…asked' can actually be answered.  Construction also goes hand-in-hand with the use of narrative to act as the communicator of historical truth.  Narrative as communicator of truth is so vitally important to the authors that they express fear in letting the student have input on interpretation outside of that directed by the Historian:

"Narrative is so closely tied to our understanding of action, and as history is the study of past action, that if the historian’s prose does not present a cohesive narrative to the reader, the reader then creates one. Therefore, the gamic mode of history needs to be able to utilize narrative in the same way." [8]

This is not 'meaningful' description.
 Photo by Phil Romans

Under this rationale, it becomes easy for the authors to question the role of any gamic mode in which the student/player becomes a nexus of interaction or interpretation of historical evidence.  Simulations and counter-factuals, the bread and butter of commercial games, are thus scorned by the authors because they allow the student/player to feel as though their actions create meaningful and accurate depictions of the past without utilizing "empirical, justified truths claims about the past."

The solution presented by the authors is Shadows of Utopia: Exploring the Thinking of Robert Owen, a digital game that lets players simulate "an argument about Robert Owen's thinking."  Placing questions of education and labor reform before the player expressed through puzzles and game-world exploration, Shadows of Utopia demonstrates the idealistic thinking of Robert Owen via player transformation of the game-world's 'lazy, foolish shadow-creatures who steal and rob' into real people who attain wealth and morals through factory work.  Mimicking the textual authenticator of citations, Shadows of Utopia provides in-game source documentation in a transparent manner, going so far as to link "sources and related interpretations to the game code, user interface, and aesthetic choices," although how this is accomplished is not specifically defined.

The authors conclude that efforts like Shadows of Utopia not only can "do all the things that the textual mode does" but also "add digital utilities that augment research in imaginative and useful ways." 

Now, to be clear and upfront, I think that Shadows of Utopia sounds like a fascinating attempt to bridge the epistemological gap between what we understand to be the practice of history with the act of play encountered in the gamic mode.  However, I'm not willing to burn all other existing and potential bridges from history to games as the authors of 'Beyond the Historical Simulation' have done.  For one thing, porting (to borrow a phrase from digital gaming) over the epistemological guidelines of textual monographs and journal articles to the gamic mode doesn't allow one to go beyond the textual mode- it merely extends that mode to gamic space without taking into account the unique epistemologies gamic space inherently possesses.  (The authors want to 'paper over' the gamic space, literally, with textual modes)  To make a simple point of comparison, a monograph does not seek reader input whereas a game, by its very nature, requires player input to be utilized.  When you read a journal article, you are passively absorbing knowledge.  When you play a game, you are actively absorbing knowledge.  The authors argument presented above seeks to appropriate player activity and channel it into passive knowledge absorption.

Instead of trying to simplify the conflation of history and games, perhaps it would be better to acknowledge their separate epistemological boundaries and formulate a way to negotiate knowledge handoffs between the two spheres.  Katie King in her recent work Networked Reenactments, points the way to just such a negotiation in her analysis of flexible knowledges and pastpresents displayed in commercially produced television reenactments.  Here we often see the interplay of several fields of knowledge, represented either by talking heads or physical actualization of knowledge epistemologies through representative involvement (i.e. having a Historian and Architect work together in recreating a Roman bath), set against the backdrop of a historical narrative that links the past to the present.  When you add in the viewer angle to reenactments, the demarcation of specialized knowledge becomes less and less viable as the flexible knowledges required to fulfill the reenactment demand greater mobility than tight epistemologies might otherwise demand.  Thus King notes,

"…it is especially important that reenactments are not a way to keep pasts and presents apart-or a way to keep authorities and alternative knowledges, metaphors and referents, materialities and abstractions, forms of academic expertise and cultural entertainment, or affects and cognitions separated, managed, or delimited by membership. Flexible knowledges, transdisciplinarities, new media, all plunge us into uncertainties, risk, collusion, and collaboration; all conditions that-as with responsibilities to multiple audiences from painfully limited authorships-we do not control and in which we are elemental "bits" in emergent reorganizations of knowledge economies and among altering evaluations." (17)

The uncertainty noted by King is what the authors of 'Beyond the Historical Simulation' wish to avoid, as it potentially invalidates the Historians authoritative position in knowledge making.  But, again, King notes this aversion in traditionally defined disciplines presented with flexible knowledges when she states, "intensively experienced affect is what signals movement across knowledge worlds, as well as what indicates cognitive and affiliative shifts across what counts as authoritative."

I have tried in previous posts (one on course design, another on modeling counterinsurgency) to indicate a way towards understanding how to use games in historical study that seeks to broaden the analytical framework beyond that of the textual, even though the textual is essential to analyzing games.  If games offer us nothing but interpretations of history, something I don't fully believe, there is still valuable cultural significance worthy of study in the act of play that brings about said interpretations.  How are cultural narratives sustained or modified in play?  Why do some historical 'truths' stick to the public consciousness, while others are perennially ignored?  How are certain conflicts or simulations modeled, and why would designers build games to emulate these processes?  How does a players analysis of the game, its play-design mechanics, impact how they approach replays or creating modifications?  (In particular I'm thinking of 'pacifist' play in Skyrim and even the creation of a '72 Summit Series card for Twilight Struggle)  

King offers a potent conceptual metaphor for analysis of games with her use of pastpresent- a player literally links the past to the present with their act of play- in addition to providing a framework though which diverse disciplines can interact on the subject of games through her analysis of flexible knowledges.  This is a good start- but as the 'Beyond the Historical Simulation' article makes clear, there are still many who are skeptical of such ventures.

Photo by Mollenborg

Games are highly complex cultural artifacts that situate themselves on the borders of several disciplines, embodying fully the sort of reenactment potential for flexible knowledge discussed by King above.  While it might be nice to render the gamic mode under the auspices of textual epistemologies, these can only take us so far in our understanding on the interactions of both and perhaps limit us, arbitrarily, from expanding and utilizing historic knowledge in emerging 'posthumanities' approaches the study of games demand.  We can surely do better than advocate for the gamic mode to become backwards compatible with textual monographs.

Graphospheric Insights into Augmented Reality

Photo by aroid

Russian history continually brings me surprises.  Just the other day, I learned (via the Austerity Kitchen blog on the New Inquiry, written by Christine Baumgarthuber) that Russian soldiers occupying Paris after the defeat of Napoleon brought about a new culinary term with their demands that restaurants deliver their ordered food and drink Быстро, or quickly, hence bistro.  Simon Franklin, in his recent Kritika article titled 'Mapping the Graphosphere', informed me that the Interior Ministry of Russia produced over 30 million printed documents by the mid-19th century.  While instances of French culture being shaped by Russian influence are certainly worthy of deeper examination, a la bistro, it was Franklin's statement, indeed his entire article, which captured my greater attention.  

Why?  Because I'm in the midst of preparing a presentation for the upcoming Theorizing the Web 2012 Conference (#TtW12) and my topic, looking at evidence of textual dualist and textual augmented reality conceptions used in Imperial Russia, directly concerns the analysis of Franklin and his concept of the 'Graphosphere' (of which the Ministry of Interior and its 30 million documents was but a part).  I want to spend this first post of two introducing Franklin's argument and exploring its implication for our understanding of augmented effects brought about by the emergence and coexistence of print and manuscript cultures.

Defined as the "totality of graphic devices used to record, store, display and disseminate messages and information, and the social and cultural spaces in which they figure," Franklin goes on to say that the Graphosphere has both external and internal boundaries.  Whereas previous scholars pursued exploration of the outer boundaries' expansion into spaces either new or already colonized by traditional non-graphic communicative methods (i.e. oral), the goal of 'Mapping the Graphosphere' is to investigate the internal boundaries between graphic methods, such as the interaction between print and manuscript.  This approach yields several valuable insights, particularly when one applies the observations Franklin makes towards further elaborating essential properties and operations of an augmented reality operating under textual auspices.  While the in-depth article is an extremely good read (Kritika, in general, publishes outstanding articles), I want to focus, below, on particular points that I plan to integrate into my #TtW12 presentation.

To begin, Franklin makes a very astute observation that I believe should be repeated early and often (to borrow and remix a famous phrase about voters) regarding the interplay of culture plurality, i.e. multiple print cultures, multiple manuscript cultures:

"There may be one or several cultures using a given technology, and in each of those cultures the interrelations among technologies may function similarly or differently.  Such are some of the basic issues in the study of the internal boundaries of the graphosphere." [533]

Contrasting this view with the 'positivist' genealogy proffered by traditional accounts, in which pre-modern oral/manuscript monoculture became superseded by the modern arrival of print monoculture (that, in turn, became displaced by digital media), Franklin turns the implication of this line of inquiry towards interpretation of Russian graphic culture:

"When the assumptions of this model are applied to Russia, they lead to a foregrounding of the fact that the introduction, assimilation, and dissemination of the modern technology, though ultimately inexorable, were late and slow by comparison with the equivalent processes in Western Europe (viewed as the model of proper technological progress).  … In consequence, the importance and functions of manuscript cultures (in the plural) are both underestimated and underinvestigated." [533-534]

Two important implications surface here; first, as I noted in my short analysis of Marshal McLuhan's Gutenberg Galaxy, when discussing augmented reality conceptions centered on the notion of speed (either in technology acceptance or use) simply cannot be applied without grossly skewing the interaction technology facilitates among the vast interplay of multiple cultures, and second, engaging in analysis based on monocultural notions of print, oral and manuscript use blinds one to the interweaving of these cultures and the strategy or tactics utilized by groups or individuals in the production/certification of knowledge across this diffuse cultural landscape.

Found via BuzzMachine

Take, for example, the Petrine introduction of a new print culture at the start of the 18th century, one centered on the administrative.  While printing presses were not unknown in the nascent Russian state prior to Peter the Great's ascension to power, the vast bulk of printing activity centered on ecclesiastical titles.  Interestingly, these early printed religious works did not distinguish themselves as unique or new through the 'moveable type' medium, as their visual construction closely mimicked the original manuscript version of the texts in question.  At this point, equivalence defined the visual and functional relationship between manuscript and print; one cultural mode did not possess increased authority or certification over the other.  

This relationship changed when Peter introduced his 'westernizing' reforms, spurring development of a new administrative print culture that, while definite in its separation from ecclesiastical affairs, emerged alongside, not superimposed, on the manuscript cultural practices embraced by the church.  While the hierarchy of authority would generally shift to print over the course of the 18th and 19th centuries, manuscript culture continued to thrive and be used by the church.  Essentially, the Petrine administrative culture not only fostered the emergence of print culture plurality, but also provided a space for the operation of manuscript culture in a manner that did not invalidate its claim to a specific type of knowledge production and certification.

Photo by themactep

What does this mean for an augmented framework that seeks to understand the nature of knowledge production and consumption, or prosumption, through the lens of a singular reality?  If we accept, as Franklin does, that multiple cultures exist and interoperate, then we must begin to chart the waves of augmentation, or the degree to which a particular culture permeates the milieu of space under investigation, all the while keeping in mind that even the supposed complete absence of a particular culture still leaves residue on the actions taken by participants in social space.  Because augmented effects ebb and flow based on a participants physical location and technological utilization, documenting the permeation of a particular culture into social space is a continuously dynamic activity.

In part II of my exploration of Franklin's article, I want to address the idea that the Tsar's saw print as a means to amplify and verify their authority- even as the very mixed nature of print and manuscript culture in the larger Russian social sphere meant that illiterate peasants could effectively negotiate meaning and interpretation when pressed by the power of print culture.  I will also explore how concepts of textual dualism came into play with the advent of Peter's administrative print culture by looking at a play both heavily censored in print and widely distributed, uncensored, in manuscript form.

My Abstract for Theorizing the Web 2012

Photo by Nic McPhee

Recently, I've been very engaged in the discussion over concepts of augmented reality and digital dualism as debated and refined by the talented writers of the Cyborgology blog, in addition to other notable voices like Rob Horning on his blog Marginal Utility and Mike Bulajewski, a.k.a. Mr. Teacup.  One reason I'm fascinated with these topics is that I find in them an enormous potential to view interactions between Russian authorities and their subjects during the Imperial period in a new light.  One position I've started outlining and investigating is the idea that Russian history can be viewed through an augmented reality framework that utilized textual platforms and practices, instead of digital counterparts we rely on today, to achieve its augmented effects.  

My post examining the empirical roots of digital dualism pointed towards examples in which Russian peasants confronted textual dualist claims made by the Imperial state with augmented claims to reality informed, in part, by rumors or idealistic concepts found in folktales.  Beyond peasants, my post reviewing Eugene Martin's 'Jews and the Imperial State' demonstrated that Imperial authorities also used textual dualist  conceptions when trying to  document and identity the Jewish population in an individual context.

Now it looks like I'll have the opportunity to discuss these ideas, and more, at the Theorizing the Web 2012 conference (search #TtW12 on Twitter) being held at the University of Maryland campus in College Park on April 14th.  I found out a few days ago that the conference organizers accepted my abstract proposal, and I wanted to post that abstract here so as to give people an idea of what I want to talk about.  The title of my proposed talk will be 'Charting the Waves of Augmentation: Textual Dualism & Augmented Reality in the Russian Empire'.  The abstract is reproduced below:

While the current focus on how digital technology alters our conception of the self and its place in the broader perceived reality yields fascinating insight into modern issues, there is much to be gained by analyzing the presence of augmented reality in a pre-digital era.  In a period, not far removed from our present, where moveable type and increasingly individualized documentation fueled the textual wave of augmentation, it was largely governments- not corporations- that sought to harness the informative potential offered by these analog technologies.  Western European powers, like France, Britain and Prussia/Germany, fostered impressive civil bureaucracies that utilized growing literacy rates in order to create a disciplinary regime based on documentation, while another great power, Russia, struggled to achieve the same results with its meager supply of trained civil servants.  If Russian authorities wanted to build a foucauldian gaze of panoptic power through documentation, they had to make compromises in order to do so. 

One essential compromise of Russian documentary practice hinged on embracing a stable and conservative textual dualist conception of reality with regards to tracking populations or promulgating laws.  On the individual level, this meant that lived identity and the identity held by the 'gaze' of documentation consistently remained asynchronous when conflated for the purposes of military conscription, admission into university, acquiring a passport, etc… On the national governance level, textual dualism provided the absolutist regime a means to utilize aspects of the liberalistic program without ceding any measure of real power to representative bodies or embracing truly civic concepts of citizenship devoid of ethnic or religious qualifiers.  Again, the textual reality espoused by tsarist documentary practice did little more than provide a thin veneer to justify inequalities among the estates and could do almost nothing to mitigate the asynchronicity between the document (in all its various forms) and lived experience, which could include use of rumors, 'everyday resistance' or even outright revolt. 

The interplay between textual dualist conceptions of identity and the augmented reality those conceptions measured up against thus largely framed many social conflicts experienced by the Russian empire over the course of the 19th and early 20th centuries.  Yet this interplay contained significant variance along the spectrum between dualist and augmented perspectives.  Sometimes peasants embraced textual dualism for the strategic benefit it could provide, but they were just as comfortable in arguing an augmented perspective to vex authorities when required.  Authorities often granted some space for augmented claims to exist, simply because efficiently enforcing a dualist conception through discipline proved beyond the capacity of the ruling regime.  The unique blending of documentary dedication on behalf of the state, a malnourished bureaucracy mostly incapable of enforcing disciplinary desires and a largely illiterate population canny enough to exploit the inconsistencies of both, give the Russian experience unusual depth in terms of an augmented analytical perspective.  Charting the wave of textual augmentation in Russian history helps explain the interplay between digital dualism and augmented reality, including the spectrum of strategic potential between both, in our present day.

It looks like the conference will be livestreamed and recorded, and when I find out more specific information regarding when I will be speaking (as well as the list of the other, no doubt, awesome presenters) an update will be posted here.

Between Reality & Cyberspace

(Author's Note- Mr. Teacup responded to my piece on his blog.  PJ Rey also posted a response on Cyborgology, addressing points made by myself and Teacup.  Both are excellent and I recommend reading them to see this conversation continued.  JA)

What does the term 'cyberspace' mean?  Does this Gibsonian construct adequately fulfill the task, currently asked of it by many, of defining the digital/physical realm interaction in terms of its scope and function?

Photo by aagius

Attempts to frame new social interactions spurred by digital innovations in communication, documentation and self-actualization (just to name a few) generally encounter problems of word choice when describing the effects these advancements bring to our growing conceptions of reality.  Literary terminology, often built upon antiquated notions reconfigured to suggest a potential or future state of being, sometimes suits the purpose of analogy when looking at these phenomena.  Yet there always comes a time when our understanding of an event or construction of reality demands that we re-evaluate our word choice, lest our future analytical efforts be hindered by its, perhaps, outmoded or misleading operation.  PJ Rey and the internet persona known as Mr. Teacup produced just this sort of re-evalutation of the term mentioned above, cyberspace, through two excellent pieces titled 'There is no Cyberspace' and 'There is Only Cyberspace', respectively written.

PJ Rey argued that the term cyberspace, first coined by William Gibson in the short story 'Burning Chrome' and defined as a 'consensual hallucination', is deeply problematic in describing our contemporary social web because the web is neither consensual nor a hallucination.  Thanks to the ubiquity of smart phones, pervasive documentary practices (something Nathan Jurgenson calls the 'Facebook Eye') mean that even if someone does not participate in the social web their actions are nonetheless captured by it to some degree, thus shaping our actions on the individual and societal level.  Many of us cannot control the degree to which this 'Facebook Eye' documents our actions (Could you stop every friend from making comments or posting pictures of your embarrassing moment from last week's party?  What about last year's party?) making the web far from a consensual space.  In many ways, because the web is not consensual it is also not a fantastical or a hallucinatory space either.  It is a part of reality- the web is as real as reality itself.  Actions taken offline impact online relations and vice-versa, allowing Rey to state that, "causality is bi-directional.  We are all part of the same human-computer system."

For Rey, 'cyberspace' is merely the continuation of dualist thinking inherited from the Western philosophical conception of the mind-body separation.  Because the web always held a dialectal relationship with the physical world, Rey suggests that new vocabulary be created to more accurately explain the web/reality interplay, the augmented reality encompassing it all.

Affirming several of Rey's assertions through a decidedly different analytical embrace, Mr. Teacup first dissects what he calls 'augmentism', a view attributed to the stance taken by Rey and others who write on the Cyborgology blog, before tackling the main issue at stake in the piece; what if there is no reality and only cyberspace?  Teacup expresses a very nuanced critique in both sections of his response, one that makes a compelling yet, ultimately, flawed case for why augmentism and augmented reality claims fall flat.

Let's begin with the presentation of augmentism.  Teacup states that, "One thing that seems to be often implied is that digital dualism leads to exaggerated fears and anxieties, and augmented reality does not…augmentism effects a kind of naturalization or even domestication of technology."  He goes on to bring up the example of parents concerned with their child spending too much time playing World of Warcraft.  While on face, the concern expressed by the parents would appear to enforce a digital dualist perspective of reality (Our son is spending too much time in the virtual world and ignoring the real world), Teacup accurately demonstrates that an 'augmented' perspective is actually at work as the parents are essentially stating that while the son may only feel like he's in a virtual world, he is, in fact, very much a part of the real world and that ignoring real world concerns to play immersive games has impact.  The parents concern reflects a belief in the dialectal relationship between the web and reality- a conception Rey argues for in his piece.

"Many moral panics are centrally concerned with the threat of confusing fantasy for reality," writes Teacup, who later adds, "by this definition, the criticism of moral panics is itself a moral panic."   When Rey criticizes conceptions of reality rooted in a digital dualist discourse (like those espoused by the media concerning issues of internet addiction, violence in video games, etc…) he is engaging in a moral panic that is similar to the moral panics criticized in the first place.  Yet Rey plays the trump card in asserting that there is no other space, no other fantasy world or virtual reality, for a digital dualist moral panic to build upon- there is no 'alternate world' that can be confused for reality because the web is as real as reality itself.  The augmentist perspective, with its soothing naturalization of technology, presents a conception of reality in which the web seamlessly integrates and becomes a part of the everyday.  One can't have panic over frictional issues between the web and the real- the web is real so there is no friction and thus no panic.

Happy Days thanks to Augmentation!
Photo by New England Secession

Teacup presents this view, the idea of a frictionless augmentation, in order to set up the contrast between Rey's augmentism and Teacup's own assertion that there is no reality, there is only cyberspace.  Making clear that this Lacanian inspired view is a subjective viewpoint to be explored and not an ontological statement like the title of Rey's original piece, Teacup executes a cunning act of rhetoric.  Attacking conceptions of reality by means of asserting alternate subjective viewpoints allows Teacup to not only turn Rey's argument on its head, without necessarily invalidating its central thesis, but also insist that fantasy is the only means we have to experience reality.  "This is because the Real is too strong, we cannot confront it directly," posits Teacup, who then summons a list of traumatic occurrences in which participants report an 'in a movie'-like experience when asked to describe their perception of events.  Thus, Teacup's title, 'There is Only Cyberspace', should be understood as an acknowledgment of the traumatic real repressed.  Furthermore, Rey's title, 'There is No Cyberspace', can be understood as a similar repression of the traumatic real that, Teacup says, "is disclosed through fantasy."  For this to be true, as a subjective viewpoint, the sort of assuagement of technology with reality brought about by an augmentist perspective cannot be accepted.

Why?  Because, as Teacup asserts in the second-half of his argument, there is an alternative between a dualist construction of reality, embodied by the mind-body debates, and an 'augmented' perspective of reality (Teacup calls this an 'embodied cognition'); there is the Lacan inspired 'antagonistic opposition' perspective.  He writes, "to put it another way, our subjective self-consciousness feels like it has been grafted on, and sits in an uneasy relationship with the body."  As such the self exists in some degree of friction with the body, making augmentist claims impossible to assert.  In denying the hybridity involved in 'antagonistic opposition', Rey ignores what Teacup labels the "simultaneously horrifying and compelling" nature of the modern cyborg.  This is why Rey must refute the term 'cyberspace'- to accept its existence would be to face the traumatic reality head on.

The reason Teacup makes such a compelling argument is that he attacks Rey's 'augmented reality' conception at its assumed weakest point; the idea that web/reality dialectal relationships, through their interplay, are devoid of friction that could lead to panic.  Yet I'm not sure that is an accurate assessment on the workings of an augmentist perspective.  For example, there are questions related to the degree of permeation the digital wave of augmentation holds on any given space or situation.  I live in Oregon and it is entirely possible for me to drive into a vast forest and lose all cellular connection, making my Galaxy S phone (my personal connector to the 'Facebook Eye') useless in documenting my experience.  Say I go on a hike and see an amazing waterfall.  When I return home, reentering the potential gaze of the 'Facebook Eye', the composition of my self is asynchronous to the self connected to and expressed through the web.  I could remedy this asyncronicity by posting an update, or perhaps uploading and posting photos I took of the hike with my old point-and-shoot camera.  But, I may choose not to post an update or upload photos.  If I never tell a single person about my hike, then no matter how good the 'Facebook Eye' becomes it will always possess an asynchronous composition of my identity as compared to the lived experience.  Smart phones and digital platforms make documenting life very easy (even non-consensual, as Rey observes), but in this ease I am reminded of the Philip K. Dick quote from 'A Scanner Darkly':

"What does a scanner see? he asked himself. I mean, really see? Into the head? Down into the heart? Does a passive infrared scanner like they used to use or a cube-type holo-scanner like they use these days, the latest thing, see into me—into us—clearly or darkly? I hope it does, he thought, see clearly, because I can’t any longer these days see into myself. I see only murk. Murk outside; murk inside. I hope, for everyone’s sake, the scanners do better. Because, he thought, if the scanner sees only darkly, the way I myself do, then we are cursed, cursed again and like we have been continually, and we’ll wind up dead this way, knowing very little and getting that little fragment wrong too." (185)

Photo by Denis Mojado

This, to me, is the main conundrum in trying to assert that the web is reality.  We must address this issue of whether or not the 'Facebook Eye' operates as a scanner darkly or a scanner clearly when engaging in pervasive documentation.  If it indeed operates as a scanner darkly, then there can be no denying the presence of friction in the web/reality interplay found in an augmented reality.

There is also the question regarding the order, or level, of augmented documentation.  I'm not on Facebook but it is still possible for my life to be documented there through discussions people have about me, pictures taken with me in them that are then posted, etc…  Yet, I would generally have no knowledge of this documentation unless those who saw the post or produced it informed me of its existence.  In a strange way, the web connected self, in this case, would be asynchronous to the self of lived experience, but only when the two are conflated.  Also, because I'm not registered as an official entity on Facebook there is no publicly available collected 'timeline' through which to view my web connected self.  I have become a ghost, one that is asynchronous to the lived self.  In the pre-digital era, such asynchronous meetings of one's self occurred with the spread of rumors or reputation (I am reminded of that classic phrase by Twain, "the reports of my death are greatly exaggerated), yet the limits of communicative speed provided some measure of delay for the impact of their effects.  Today, thanks to nearly instantaneous communication platforms available to an increasing number of people, rumors or reputation can spread quickly and in a very organized fashion.  Unless one dedicates a great deal of time to managing their Web-connected self, there will always be moments of asynchronicity when the lived self and the web-connected self are called upon to account for each other.

Photo by Miles Tsang

This is not to say that a dualist conception arises between the lived self and the web-connected self, merely that augmentation of our reality is limited to permeation and penetration of its augmented effects.  If we accept the premise that the Web is reality, then we must also accept that primary loss of connection to the web will create asynchronous gaps between our experience and the experience pervasively documented on the web.  Even if others note our absence through Web platforms like Facebook or Twitter, this documentation is on a secondary order (sometimes bordering on speculation) from that attained by the primary view of documentation.  In short, even an augmentist perspective contains elements of friction that can lead to panic, but more accurately asynchronicity.  With this viewpoint, debates over the alien nature of the self to the body become largely moot, as they, too, primarily deal with asynchronous concepts.  However, Teacup is right to question the 'naturalization of technology' perhaps glossed over in current augmentist conceptions, as there is much ground to explore on the nature of the web/reality interplay.  And, of course, while Rey dismisses and Teacup only obliquely mentions it, the fact that a digital dualist conception can still be used in contemporary discourse at all needs to be more fully investigated.  As I've noted with Russian peasants during the late 19th century, the era of textual augmented reality, there were situations when an augmentist perspective proved most effective (i.e. using concepts of Justice found in folktales to challenge the law or treatment under a landowner) and other situations when a dualist construction (eschewing traditional rights in a court proceeding in favor of written statutes) suited needs better.  As Rey states in his post, the durability of the term 'cyberspace' to describe the web clearly indicates that a digital dualist discourse continues to hold sway.  This strategic selection of dualist vs. augmentist perspective demands further investigation if we are to better understand the relation of the self to the larger augmented reality.

Just like Mr. Teacup, I agree with Rey's argument that the web is reality and not a separate sphere of activity.  However, just as I cannot accept Teacup's view that 'augmentism' equates to a frictionless, panic-less, 'naturalization of technology', I also cannot put full faith in a conception of augmented reality that does not account for the asynchronicities inherent in documentation, which is something Rey's 'augmentist' position does not address.  To be fair, elaborating the workings and composition of relations that go into an augmented reality is still in its infancy, and posts like those written by PJ Rey and Mr. Teacup do a great service in deepening our understanding of this phenomena.  As I have tried to demonstrate above, there are many aspects of this conception of reality that need to be explored.  Ultimately, Rey is correct when he calls for a new vocabulary to explicitly describe our affirmation that the Web is not a separated sphere from our reality- our current terminology is too vague.