¡Ay Machina!

My father, who grew up on a farm, served in WWII as a ship’s navigator. He said that he decided to go to sea because there might be more of a chance to survive the war. Though he was a consummate storyteller, I never heard him talk much about his experiences, except for a few references to sailing up the Thames while watching explosions on either side of the bow. His message was that War is a brutal business, that cruelty and hardship are commonplace, and that it is not to be admired. It wasn’t until much later, after he died, that I heard about the deadly Murmansk Run, and how he navigated his crew to safety, at a time when the a majority of the convoy crews were killed by submarine attacks. In a way, it was not a surprise because he taught me most of what I know about how to navigate this life: how to look beyond the surface, how to listen to the wisdom of others from very different backgrounds, and how to find one’s own moral compass.

As a returning student, artist/designer, and experienced parent, my views on media might come from a slightly different perspective than those who are more enamored with technology for its own sake. From my vantage point, there is a prevalent mindset in the American culture that status, including academic status, is directly related to funding and which areas chosen to receive it. Therefore, it seems to me that Science and intellectual pursuits, which apply scientific methods of inquiry, have come to be treated with a reverence that the Humanities are not (unless we are talking about the famously lucrative entertainment industry). Additionally, it is said by many that the world of academe suffers from what is termed “the silo effect,” which can describe a lack of cooperation between an institution’s departments, or a lack of emphasis on interdisciplinary research due to specialization.

One aspect that I appreciate about New Media is that it straddles many of the realms of knowledge, which have previously been relegated to their respective corners, creating marriages of Music and Physics, such as in the elegantly designed game Auditorium, or melding technology with new ways to present history, art, and storytelling, such as at the Rijksmuseum. The attitudes of some disciplines being more “pure” than others are being challenged and new possibilities are being explored due to an increased ability for interconnection, literally and figuratively.

Therefore, after reading the article by Tim Lenoir, “All but War Is Simulation,” and being asked to express my reaction, I have to say that I found it both revealing and deeply disturbing. I have wondered before why game designers have focused so often on violent games. From what Lenoir has detailed, it has much to do with funding and how the military routinely underwrites and directs projects. This funding pipeline leads research in certain directions, and helps to create cozy business relationships once researchers learn how to jump over the necessary hurdles to become government vendors.

The same week that I read the Lenoir article, I began reading The Language of New Media by Lev Manovich. In the foreword written by the founder of Rhizome.org, Mark Tribe describes the debate, which took place on his email list during the time the book was being written. He recalls that the more theoretical Europeans criticized Americans for having a “ ‘California ideology’ (a deadly cocktail of naïve optimism, techno-utopianism, and new-libertarian politics popularized by Wired magazine)”. I think this criticism still has the ring of truth today since Lenoir’s article does not stray into observations on whether the alliance of the Military-Entertainment Complex has moral complications, training as it does entire generations of (mostly) boys to think of war and gaming simultaneously, death and enjoyment. Perhaps "Military-Entertainment Complex" should also be a psychological term.

Cartoon courtesy of artist and physicist Randall Munroe at www.xkcd.com