Update on Minecraft

I started playing Minecraft again when I was on vacation recently, on a server this time. I’m actually enjoying it, though my two main fears are definitely in effect when I play (the dark, and water). The first fear isn’t a big deal, especially since the dark is scary due to monsters spawning. The second is just weird, because a game with blocky, low-res graphics like Minecraft can still trigger the feeling of being underwater…which leads me to a small point: for me, the “graphics” or “visuals” of a game help me immerse myself in the game, but once I have done so by whatever means necessary, the game has strong affect. It’s not as simple as pretty art means I care more, or more pixels in the hair means I identify more with the protagonist. Rather, I can be put off by bad art, but if it doesn’t put me off, it is not the lens through which I engage with the game. (Disclaimer: it is the lens for some games. Only a Sith deals in absolutes.)

Another thing about Minecraft this time is that I’m playing with people I already know on a shared server. This is just another way of engaging with them, in addition to playing League or talking on various instant messaging services or using Snapchat (I like being able to write and draw on pictures I take, even if the quality takes a hit for it; also, note the recent lack-of-privacy discussions about Snapchat before running off to download it).

I’m still pretty bad at this game, though. I just make houses and put torches in them and like…that’s it. Oh well. I fell into lava once and lost a nearly-full inventory. That upset me quite a bit, and since then I’ve been either less invested or more careful. Perma-death mechanics are one of the few things I hate in games, mostly because I don’t actually like meaningful consequences for failure.

Random thoughts

Archives are a set of materialities whose practices are reproduced, negotiated, and reconstituted through everyday use—in sum, a technology. (In line with the Suchman definition of technology from “Working Relations of Technology Production and Use,” which I quoted in this post.)

Also—nothing is natural in the sense of emerging de novo—what is natural is the process of trying a thing, and continuing to adapt it until it fits the situation or context. In short, evolution is natural. The ways that people use technologies are natural. The inscription of certain practices as “the way things are” is not natural.

Nothing is what it was meant to be.

Scraps written in the back of Life on the Screen because I didn’t have a notebook on hand.

Emulating reality

When we think of emulation, we usually think of the emulation of software that exists only as a digital artifact. But something recently brought to my attention challenges this predominant narrative of software and emulation. In the world of digital preservation, it’s a fairly obvious point that the digital is not any less real, any less material, and this example only highlights that.

So, the topic in question: I found an old blog post (from 2009) celebrating the fortieth anniversary of the moon landing. This post describes a project to emulate some of the original code from the command module and lunar module. It’s mostly really just something cool on the web, but more than that, there’s a reason why I’m writing a(n admittedly short) blog post about this: this is a clear case of emulation applied to something that was undeniably “real-world.” What could it even mean to emulate the code from the lunar module? What draws someone to do that? I guess you have to be fascinated with the Apollo Program, and also really into old code. Or something. But how can you emulate this code and forget that three people were inside the module that this code represents? How can you emulate this code and forget that two people used this code to set foot on the moon?

It’s a reminder that even when we are talking about emulation of games (link to a thought-provoking and vaguely relevant blog post), we’re talking about a constellation of things that real people played in real space. And sure, maybe emulation isn’t responsible for representing that aspect of the experience, but we are.

On metadata; or, data about data about data about…

Today, I was looking through a bunch of things including the excellent Signal blog run by the Library of Congress (I like to read this blog every so often, though they post daily). One post on email file formats (obviously, in the context of preservation) had a link to a site which hosted this presentation by Carl Fleischhauer from 2006 about audio-visual data and different approaches in commercial and cultural-heritage institutions. I think there’s a lot to take away from this admittedly bare-bones and dated presentation, but the major point is the recognition of overlaps in the mandates of those institutions. And how this overlap gets materialized in metadata.

As a side note, I think one way I think about research and things that I am studying is by recognizing institutional mandates and institutional authority, and then moving on to identify the ways that individual people negotiate their relationships to these institutions. Not sure exactly where that places me, but pretty squarely within contemporary media/cultural studies. (Which is why it’s funny that I’m in an iSchool now, but we’ll leave that laugh for another day.) I also surprise myself by being interested in people, because for a long time I wasn’t. It was all traces and objects and materials and practices. Also understanding everything as technologies. (I lied, maybe that’s a new thing.)

So, I’m reading this presentation and it comes to a discussion of metadata and how metadata needs are (obviously) different for different institutions/user groups. In this case, the two groups referred to are public television and commercial broadcasting (p. 46 in that pdf document), but I was reminded of another set of user groups that I read about recently (I suppose this is why I’m trying to blog more, because my memory is utter shit and I can’t depend on it). I think the point in that one was talking about how, no shit, we can’t use a metadata system made for a commercial system for archival quality metadata.

Metadata schemas are technologies, made for different use cases, and understandably can never be complete. But I think it’s illuminating to see what different institutions use different descriptors and tags and such, because the fact that, say, WordPress distinguishes between Posts and Pages and that Twitter now stores “post replied to” and “user replied to” are all important in understanding these systems in contemporary use. And honestly, all of these are metadata, even though the kind of metadata I’m talking about are the kinds required to contextualize an object in a socio-historical context (Dublin Core, MARC, etc.).

On a related note: check out the Historical Software collection at the Internet Archive, they’ve got tons of stuff available for in-browser emulated play.

In which your author revises her opinion of Suchman

Technologies can be understood as materials whose stability relies upon the continuous reproduction of their meaning and usefulness in practice.

– Suchman (1993), “Working Relations of Technology Production and Use.”

I’ve had similar thoughts and read similar thoughts strewn over papers before but this is a perfect crystallization of the nature of technology. I think this has to go on my mythical quote board, to pull out whenever someone questions why I care about smashing up materiality and practice and context and performance into a great big ball of “research material.” It’s why, although I focus on games, I also look at literature and scanlation (lol yeah really) and “new media” in general.

But I’ll be honest, this works just as well to explain myths, or methods, or anything used by people to make meaning. Which makes me wonder: what if technologies are tools for meaning-making? As in, understand technology as anything that a person uses in order to add meaning? I know this is sloppy, but I feel like it kind of has to be in order to capture the human elements of this. I’m suggesting we look at myths and methods (just to be consistent here) as technologies in the production of meaning.

tl;dr: Suchman got this one right on the nose, and I’m grateful for it.