User:Natasa Siencnik/notes/turkle2/

Abstract

Sherry Turkle: Video Games and Computer Holding Power (1984). In: The New Media Reader, MIT Press, 2003.

1. Case Study Asteroids
   • girl playing Asteroids in a café in NY Little Italy
   • movement of fingers compaired with staccato in music
   • she is anoyed, complains but still keeps playing every day
   • she is more "possessed" by the game than enjoying it
   • children in a driven, addictive relationship to the machine
2. Video Games on the Market
   • by 1982 more money spent on video games than movies / records
   • peak of excitement about the games passeed with ntheir novelty
   • but video games have become part of the cultural landscape
3. Protests against Video Games
   • carries a message how people feel about computers in general
   • computers became a crucial part of everyday life
   • people have are ambivalent about growing computer presence
   • people like new conveniences (bank tellers, supermarkt)
   • children take the technology for granted, as a fact of life
   • new kind of generation gap between parents and children
4. Myth of Mindless Addiction
   • video games as a window onto new kind of intimacy with machines
   • thos who fear the games often compare them to television
   • game players more likely compare it with sports, sex, meditation
   • television is something you watch, video games something you do
   • video games are interactive computer microworlds

Discussion

• builds an argument / context on the first page (addiction)
• difference between watching tv and playing video games
• tv is something you watch, video games are something you do
• being locked out of video games > not able to change them anymore
• 1980s users and programmers are still closer together
• discussions after loss of modernism > talking about a cadavar
• promise of game that never ends / promise of perfection
• writing video games > new relations to narratives
• holding power > less negative connotation than addiction
• eroticism > inability to obtain something, not achievable
• complexity where the games are situated (arcade > home > internet)

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