User:Thijshijsijsjss/Human Parser/Manual for Print

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About Navigation

Necessary. This annotation should be the start of the thesis. It should set the scene and make a reader comfortable with venturing into the text. At the moment, it is written from a practical pov, very meta. This doesn't say anything about navigation thematically, while there would be a lot of connections (navigating choices in a TA, navigating 'your manual', navigation in new places and the dissociation it can bring).

Dear HUMAN,

I am THIJS. You are now reading my THESIS.

This is not an isolated story. This is a story about dissociation -- feeling like there's an involuntary mismatch between how you experience the world and how the world experiences you. It is a story told through the lens of text-adventures, hoping to connect questions of personal identity, 'living with a manual', the fast paced world (of content) and the virtue of the obsolete. This lens is made concrete with the Human Parser game central to this project: an embodied exploration of dissociativity. This game, this embodiment, is accompanied by a game manual, another old media. This thesis, in turn, is a collection of annotations to this manual -- defying the idea that a manual can be be all-encompassing, especially when it comes to a person. This text is a sprawling adventure, like life and identity not giving away its secrets all at once. You can explore them at your own pace, in your own order. This requires a little confusion, a little vulnerability, and a little imagination. This is a personal story, but not necessarily mine alone. You are encouraged to parse it in your own way. You don't need to be a confident navigator, just one looking for mutual understanding :)

[Once I am confident again when one would read the thesis (during the game, after, something else?), I will probably add that here (or in between the final sentences). In particular it is important to add how the reader will move from one annotation to the next. Ending should have a thematic tone, either identity or TA related. Probably About Thijs is the next section.]


About YOU

Meta. Annotation detailing the fiction / game of this text, by introducing the 'I' and the 'YOU'. This is an immediate dive in the deep end, and by making this the first annotation after the 'intro', I am trusting the reader's generosity, trust and patience. But that is something I want to do with this text -- I believe it will reward that generosity.

Dear READER,

I am THIJS. I am writing this text for YOU. I need you to read this text, desperately, for only by your reading I am alive. In fact, by the time you read this, I am no more.

With 'I am no more' I don't mean no more alive -- THIJS lives on beyond this text --, I mean that 'I' has split of from me. In my present, the moment I'm writing these words, I'm still very much in harmony with the 'I' that's written down. But after the performative act of presenting this identity, we (myself and this presentation) no longer coincide. THIJS lives on, but 'I' is left behind in this text. 'I' is an artifact of that past me, a fragment of me when I was writing, a capsule that suggests my lingering presence, and a vessel for us to understand each other with. Without 'YOU', dear READER, 'I' is on the verge of becoming obsolete.

In being human, YOU and I both assume roles constantly. It can be confusing to distinguish between these fragments of ourselves, and to distinguish between YOU and I. It is a spectacular feat of humanness that we keep trying to figure ourselves out. The dance of understanding, a dance we dance together. In this text, I hope that you will dance with me. This is an adventure in text for YOU to explore. Just like I is an artifact of me, YOU is an artifact of you. It is not something that can be determined for you: you will have to navigate YOU yourself. In this way, this is a manual in reverse, not dictating you instructions, but instead inviting you to instruct it.

About Thijs

Necessary. This annotation is about introducing Thijs (me), as an attempt to situate the thesis and to give context for the personal parts of writing. For now, I've tried to capture some necessary information and cover the important pillars. As the thesis grows, and I give more hints towards my person, I might add to / change the lists (e.g. how the library point connects to About Routines)

This is THIJS.


There are some things that are true about THIJS:

  • THIJS is a student of experimental publishing, a MFA program in Rotterdam. (true)
  • THIJS has a background in computer science and mathematics and game making. (true)
  • THIJS is a frequent visitor of local libraries. (true)
  • THIJS has been told to come with a manual. (true)


There are a lot of things that are false about THIJS:

  • THIJS absolutely detests text-adventures. (false)
  • THIJS is a confident navigator. (false)
  • THIJS has experienced it all. (false)
  • THIJS has never cried while writing THESIS. (false)


There are also things about THIJS that are neither true nor false:

  • THIJS comes with a manual. (?)
  • THIJS has a clear idea of who they are. (?)
  • THIJS is in critical danger of becoming an obsolete medium. (?)
  • THIJS is me, Thijs, 'I', the writing voice in this THESIS. (?)

About This Thesis

Maybe necessary, depending on About Navgation. Annotation describing the thesis, separate from introductory annotation about navigation. Meant to parallel About Thijs and further implant some implied questions while giving some playful instight into the ontology of this text. Choses sentences might change as the thesis develops.

This is THESIS.


There are things that are true about THESIS:

  • THESIS explores dissociativity through the lens of text-adventures. (true)
  • THESIS is a collection of annotations to a manual for a game. (true)
  • THESIS is a personal account, a subjective exploration. (true)
  • THESIS invites you to explore, together, this adventure through text. (true)


There are a lot of things that are false about THESIS:

  • THESIS is an isolated text. (false)
  • THESIS must be read in one specific way, navigated in one correct order. (false)
  • THESIS makes you experience it all. (false)
  • ...


There are also things about THESIS that are neither true nor false:

  • THESIS is an obsolete memorabilia. (?)
  • THESIS can say what THIJS cannot. (?)
  • THESIS is a 5 month (133 days) old infant, ready to be set free in the world. (?)
  • ...

About Manuals

Necessary. About the shortcomings of Manuals, and the format of this thesis. Maybe start with micro-anecdote. I imagine this annotation would be on one of the first manual pages. I'm still planning to open the manual with an email / letter, and think these could be attached there.

About Manuals, 1

I will never be able to fully understand you.

My mother told me this[1] over the phone, about 2 years ago. I have a great bond with my mother. We are very similar in many ways, but also very different in many more. Many of our conversations end in a newfound understanding of how exactly we differ. We notice different things, react differently to sensory stimuli and our thoughts follow different patterns. We have different ways of processing the world, each other and ourselves. She's quick to remind me that 'we're wired differently' -- and I think she finds comfort in that.

It's the great human tragedy that we're never able to fully comprehend another person's entirety. Maybe you can get a momentary glimpse in an instant, through means other than words, but that understanding is never sustained. Reversely, never being able to be fully understood can, at times, feel like an inescapable loneliness. But the great tragedy of not-understanding also holds the great human beauty: continuing to try to better understand each other regardless.

In conversation, an image of your conversation partner is created in your mind. Pretending understanding is equating the person to that image, and restricting that person to your understanding of them. To instead acknowledge the grey areas of understanding is a generous gift that allows for connections to develop and evolve. Hearing my mother acknowledge this, was immensely valuable in feeling seen.

Rough draft. This turned out longer than intended, and very personal, and I make some grand statements about the human experience that are only backed by my own experiences. Making up my mind how I feel about it, and curious about your thoughts.

About Manuals, 2

Some people come with a manual.

This is another statement that addresses the difficulty in understanding. However, instead of embracing the beauty in that, this sentence creates the illusion that there's a concise way to overcome it. While the intention might often be an honest, good-spirited attempt to acknowledge our differences, there's an implicit friction to a statement like this. Instead of realizing that understanding is a continued, mutual effort, 'the manual' makes it seem as if one party is 'the problem'. Moreover, seemingly it's that party's responsibility to come with a tool to help others understand them.

The etymology of 'manual' traces back to the Latin word 'manus', meaning 'hand'. The manual is an apparatus kept ready at hand. Why must 'the manualled person' have their identity's insights ready at hand at all times? Even worse: we associate the manual with the machine's determinism. Why must 'the manualled person' be consistent and transparent? Why are they robbed of their potential to change as a person?

What could be a wonderfully rich asymmetry explored like a dance together is turned into a hierarchical transaction by the manual's presence. Why do 'some people' need an outside tool to speak for them? What does this 'manual' entail, anyway? How can any manual possibly convey all human nuance?

Rough draft. The tone's a little harsh. I notice I'm continuously trying to condense my throughts, and end up with Frankensteinian texts. Also wonder here if I want to make an explicit reference to the format of the thesis, or if the decisions for that are / will be clear enough.

About Text-Adventures

Necessary. This annotation is about talking about text-adventures, accompanying another entry talking about interactive fiction. The latter makes a thematic connection to dissociation. This entry should be more explanatory of what TAs are, and the friction their mode of address brings about. Can be shorter, and should annotate an 'early' part of the manual. Main references Get Lamp and Twisty Little Passages.

There are many ways adventure can be evoked through text. Through an exciting novel, maybe even one in which the reader participates in how the story is being told, like the 'Choose Your Own Adventure' book series. Through text even more participatory, like a conversation on an instant text messaging service. The text of a manual to new equipment might contain the adventure of your special hobby, a text-adventure might present itself as a series of distance signs on a road trip, or be incited through the lyrics of a song that played in a memory. Adventure comes in many forms, and meets text in many places.

However, historically the term 'text-adventure' has been reserved for one specific tradition: a "computer-mediated narrative [...] in which the reader helps to determine the outcome of the story" (Jerz, 2000). More specifically: "those computer programs that display text, accept textual responses, and then display additional text in reaction to what has been typed" (Montfort, 2003).

The exchange of textual responses is made possible using a parser. For example, I might have the following exchange: 

PROGRAM > You are in a supermarket. You see a variety of fruits (banana, apple, pear). It is a quiet day, no other people. There's some music playing in the background.
THIJS   > take banana
PROGRAM > You take a banana. You hold it for a few seconds before putting it in your basket.

This is a typical (though arguably mundane) example. Even here, one might sense the peculiarity of the language that is common for text-adventures. As it is a textual medium, it is susceptible to the friction of language. Montfort notes:

Text-adventures were inaccessible, however, to those not adept at puzzle solving and not fluent in the dialect of English their parsers understood."[2][3]

Next to the ability to engage with this language, there seems to be another friction at display: 'you take a banana' seems to suggest 'I' take the banana. But of course, I don't. Some fragmented version of me might, the puppet I control in this virtual world. But this puppet is distinct from the I puppeteering. It is this curious human friction of assuming a subtly different version of ourselves without batting an eye, without thinking it's not real. In fact, text-adventures are build on our suspension our disbelief, our willingness to imagine us as someone different and our (in)ability to actually be them. In Homo Ludens, Johan Huizinga poses this willingness as one of the fundamentals of play.

He found his four-year-old son sitting at the front of a row of chairs, playing "trains". As he hugged him the boy said: "Don't kiss the engine, Daddy, or the carriages won't think it's real. (Huizinga, 1949)

Sometimes, my adventure is visiting my parents. My mother gives me a hug and tells me: "you seem to be doing well today". In my head, I'm thinking: don't say this aloud, mama, or Thijs won't think it's real.

Notes

  1. ↑ She said this in Dutch: Ik zal je nooit volledig begrijpen.
  2. ↑ About the Virtue of Esoteric Reimagination: Montfort continues: "This marginalized the form, but it also may have helped it elude strict parental control. By being esoteric, interactive fiction was less likely to be noticed by those who would suppress". Similarly, obsolete media can expose the seams of society. (to be continued, some examples of the use of the obsolete to give a voice to marginalia and against some hegemonic structures) Not necessary to add I suppose, but could be a nice bite sized entry to connect the obsolete media theme which is a little disconnected currently.
  3. ↑ Personally, I don't think puzzles are a necessity for TAs. Like Emily Short states, (citation tbd), a lack of puzzles creates 'temporal gaps' that allow for alternative means of pacing, that I deem very poetically potent. She notes: "Temporal cutting has a cost: the player is ripped away from direct identification with the player character, because the PC experiences things that the player never sees". But this, too, I see as a potent friction -- it is the friction holding this thesis together.

Refereces

  • Jerz, D.G. (2000) Interactive Fiction: What is it?. Available at: https://jerz.setonhill.edu/if/intro.htm (Accessed 15 April 2025)
  • Montfort, N. (2003) Twisty Little Passages. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press
  • Huizinga, J. (1949) Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play-element in Culture. London: Routledge / Thoemms Press.

I think I like this section. There's quite some overlap with the about IF section in addressing the friction of 'you'. However, that text is more pulling from literary references, while this one is gentler and more personal. Atm the difference / relation between TA and IF, which could be a little fuzzy to the diligent reader, but for now I don't think I have any points to make on that, and don't think it matters all that much for the points I do have to make.

About Parsing

About Parsing, 1

The term 'text-adventure' breaks down into two parts: text, and adventure.

Adventure refers to an exciting experience, much like the quest to find a dragon's treasure and make it back alive, or the quest to buy groceries and make it back alive. Next to this definitional meaning, the 'adventure' in text-adventure reveals some history of the genre by referring to the 1976 game Adventure[1]. In this game, the player explores a cave system through basic instructions, like 'GO NORTH'. The game then narrates the results of these actions. Seen as a pioneer of the genre and a milestone in interactive fiction, literary critics Niesz and Holland note in a 1984 review:

In the development of interactive fiction, the original Adventure with its legion of imitators and successors is important because, for the first time, the game let the reader answer with words instead of numbers.

The 'text' in text-adventure also carries history of the genre. Text was not just the extent to which interaction with the computer was possible when the first text-adventure games came to be, and not just the natural link to literature and other fictions. Text has proven to be a powerful, natural and honest way of interaction.

And if there were some technology which could enable you to talk straight to your imagination... well there is. It's called text. [...] And when you're typing, the output that you're typing is in words, same as the input. There's no shift. It's not that you're looking at a picture and typing in words, looking at a picture and moving the mouse around. It's the same environment, it's all words, it's all thoughts, it's all the imagination. (Richard Bartle in Get Lamp, 2010)

For the 'same environment' to exist, for a player to talk with semi-natural language to the game, part of program behind the game needs to interpret the inputted words: the parser. "The parser is that part of the program that accepts natural language input from the interactor and analyzes it." (Montfort, 2003) For example (I might change this to a more thematic example), a player might say: 

YOU    > Ask THIJS about libraries and alexithymia

To which the parser might produce the reply: 

PARSER > I don’t know the word ‘alexithymia’

So the parser takes a close look at an inputted sentence, tries to figure out what the human might mean, and hopes to respond in a way the human understands. The parser is that part of the experience that suggests an understanding between human and machine.

About Parsing, 2

So, putting text and adventure together, we see: text-adventure. "Such works are able to understand natural language input to some extent and, based on such input, to effect action in a systematic world that they simulate." (Montfort, 2003) To Nick Montfort, poet and professor of digital media, the simulated world seems to be very important in text-adventures. And he's not the only one. 

SHORT   > This kind of modelling is at the heart of all the standard IF-writing languages: there must be first and foremost a way to represent the place where the player is [...]." 

MONTFORT > It's like virtual reality that exists in words.

If parsers are such a big part of these virtual realities, it begs the question of the role of parsing in non-virtual realities.

Of course, a virtual reality is still a reality, and any virtually real interaction is still a real interaction. The mechanisms for interacting are our very real, very human mechanisms. Just like the parser interprets the player's words, the player interprets the parser's words. Some might call this reading.

In an essay about illiteracy's susceptibility to oppression, Ismatu Gwendolyn describes reading as a powerfully real act, inciting powerfully real imagination (2024). Maybe parsing is much more about imagination than it is about reading. Parsing, analyzing in hope of understanding, as an exercise in imagination. As an exercise in empathy.

You might say: 

YOU   > I saw your mother at the grocery store the other day. How is she?

To which I might produce the reply: 

THIJS > I am appreciative of this question. She is navigating it well, she has not been sick in 119 days. What about yourself?

And you might say: 

YOU   > Sick? I haven’t been sick either. In fact, I’ve been very active. I’m building a campervan to travel with.

To which I might produce the reply: 

THIJS > Wow, I did not know! Let me make you a road trip CD! Do you know the song ‘Islands?’

Your world is different from my world, and your words don't mean the same as my mine. You cannot read my mind, and I cannot read yours. Parsing is that part of the human experience that bravely attempts understanding. It's the generosity of trying, of listening. It's the continuous asymmetric act of conversing, the performance we make together.

In Dimensions of Difference (2020), Dinah Murray notes that in conversation, there is no such thing as 'mind reading', and thus, we shouldn't consider it that way:

[Dialogue] is not much like reading, it is a lot more like dancing or sailing or improvising music together, and concerns reciprocal noticing, intuition, engagement and attunement.

Maybe it's the same for a text-adventure, maybe it's not much like reading. You're dancing with the parser, engaging in imagination, sailing through the fantastical. Hoping to understand. To understand the game you're playing, and maybe to understand yourself.

Notes

  1. ↑ Nowadays more commonly referred to by the retronym Colossal Cave Adventure. (Woods, 2011)

References

About Interactive Fiction

This text is about giving a little insight into interactive fiction, and connecting that to dissociativity. I dont know yet how I feel about the headers. I wrote this without them, and feel like they interupt the flow a little and are a little pretentious. But without seperating it from the rest, I feel the final part isn't emphasized enough. And that conclusion is what justifies the rest of the text for me, so this is important.

About Interactive Fiction, 1: The Dissolution of 'I'

In the text Cybernetics and Ghosts, writer and Oulipo member Italo Calvino proposes and investigates the notion of a literary automaton: 'a machine not only capable of assembly-line literary production, but of a deep exploration of psychological life' (1980). In doing so, Calvino reflects on his experiences producing text. He notes that in the process of writing, the 'I' splits into different figures:

Into an 'I' who is writing and an 'I' who is written, into an empirical 'I' who looks over the shoulder of the 'I' who is writing and into a mythical 'I' who serves as a model for the 'I' who is written. The 'I' of the author is dissolved in the writing, the so-called personality of the writer exists within the very act of writing.

(note: I could expand a lot on this part ^)

The Oulipo (Ouvroir de littérature potentielle) were prolific in writing in non-traditional formats. At the same time, they occupied themselves with the very tradition of writing, 'claiming not to innovate at any price' (Lescure, 2003). They intended to find structures within the constraints and procedures of writing. Famed examples include George Perec's A Void, a book without the letter e, and Raymond Queneau's A Hundred Thousand Billion Poems, a combinatorial exercise presenting 10 sonnets of which the lines at the same positions are all interchangeable with each other. By this, Queneau invites the reader to become part of the process of literary creation. He also wrote Yours for the Telling, a branching short story with explicit choices for the reader to make. Again, an attempt to include the otherwise distant reader by means of interactive co-narration.

About Interactive Fiction, 2: The Dissolution of 'You'

Interactive fiction is a story in which you are the main character. Your own thinking and imagination determine the actions of that character and guide the story from start to finish. (Blank, Lebling, 2001)

It has been common for interactive fiction to address the reader with 'you'. Famous, formative examples of interactive fiction include text-adventures like ZORK (the manual of which being the origin of the above quote) and the Choose Your Own Adventure book series[1]. There's a curious difference in the way the reader is addressed in Zork and the CYOA books compared to Yours for the Telling: whereas most CYOA decisions are diegetic[2], and the choice is concerning the 'you' that appears as a character in the text, in Yours for the Telling, the decisions are non-diegetic, and concern 'you', the reader.

This highlights a curious effect interactive fiction has on the idea of a reader[3]. Similar to how Calvino describes the splitting of the 'I' in writing, in interactive fiction the 'you' is dissolved. There's a 'puppet-you' who is addressed in the story, controlled and existing in the mind of the 'reader-you', but whose existences don't fully coincide. There's a 'projected-you', envisioned by the creator, with whom they play an unwritten meta-game exploring the friction of this partial coincidence, and a 'meta-you' trying to figure out what the creator's projections are.

This is a natural result, maybe, of the process of shared creation: the 'I' and 'you' bleed into each other. This is a striking observation. A primary purpose of turning fiction interactive and of addressing the reader by 'you', is to improve immersion: [explanation and reference]. In the hopes of increasing reader presence, there's a parallel fade-out of reader identity.

About Interactive Fiction, 3: The Dissolution of Me

(This was all build up. Now for the dramatic conclusion and the thematic justification for all this IF-talk)

This is a striking observation indeed. The 'you' dissolving is the exact experience I have experiencing dissociation. 'You' bleeding into 'I'. Hoping to find my presence amidst my ever-fading sense of identity. The user Thijs directs the agent Thijs to strike up a conversation that the writer Thijs has written and the reader Thijs must listen to, with a meta-Thijs observing in an attempt to figure out who this figure 'Thijs' might be. A co-narration of Thijses all fighting for coexistence, yet never fully coinciding.

As interactive fiction, the text-adventure is not just a narrative. It is a model for the inability to grasp one's identity in full. An interactive model. And so, with trust, it is also a playground to explore the friction of one's identity. It is the adventure of existence in text. It is were 'I' can become 'you' for a while to see if that feels like 'me'.

The tone of this section is a little different from the others. Okay? Or better to remain more distant? The pacing here is quite fast. Should I elaborate more?

Notes

  1. ↑ Notably, Queneau's Yours for the Telling was first published in 1973, preceding the Choose Your Own Adventure (CYOA) books made by Edward Packard that started serial publishing in 1976 and book publishing in 1979. (Kraft, 1981, Scafferri, 1986)
  2. ↑ Diegetic meaning 'occuring within the narrative'. A diegetic choice is one acknowledged by and part of the narrative, whereas a non-diegetic choice occurs on a different level, separating the story as told and as read.
  3. ↑ to add: can we even speak of 'a reader' at this point. the reader / user / player / witness / agent are all ways of addressing this figure in Aarseth's writings.

References

  • Calvino, I. (1980) 'Cybernetics and Ghosts', in: Calvino, I. The Uses of Literature. USA, pp. 3-27
  • Lescure, J. (2003) 'A Brief History of the Oulipo', in Wardin-Fruin, N. and Montfort, N. (eds.) The New Media Reader. Cambridge, MA, USA and London, England: The MIT Press, pp. 172-176
  • Blank, M., Lebling, D. (2001) Instruction Manual for Zork I: The Great Underground Empire. USA: Activision Inc.

Kraft, S. (1981). 'He Chose His Own Adventure'. The Day, October 10. Available at: https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=_nUfAAAAIBAJ&pg=1663,2191360 (Accessed June 20, 2024)

About Dissociation

Necessary. This annotation is meant to give a (my) 'definition' of dissociation, or a clear illustration of it. (might be important to note I am not necessarily referring to the DSM5 def nor to the associated labels) Can be short? Can be long?

I am unsure about the form of this annotation. Below is just some meta writing so that the second reader at least has the important definitional info!

This is a personal account, not meant to exhaust the wide range of experiences that are captured by the term in psychological, psychiatrical, bussiness, colloquial or ...other... settings. In particular, I am not referring strictly to the term as understood in psychology, nor to any of the five 'dissociative disorders' specified by the DSM-5.

For me, dissociaction is the experience of an (involuntary) disruption and distancing in your sense of identity, a disconnect between your thoughts, feelings, actions and self-perception, a mismatch between how you experience the world, and how the world experiences you the detachment that comes from that, the doubt and misunderstanding and discomfort ... the inescapable loudness of the questions: who am I?

New attempt. Leaving the above entry there for now.

The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5) describes dissociation in the following way:

Dissociative symptoms are experienced as a) unbidden intrusions into awareness and behavior, with accompanying losses of continuity in subjective experience (...) and / or b) inability to access information or to control mental functions that normally are readily amenable to access or control (...).

This thesis is not meant to exhaust the wide range of experiences that are captured by the term 'dissociation' in psychological, psychiatrical, bussiness, or colloquial settings. Nor is it meant to restrict its meaning to those situational definitions. This is a personal account, meant to rebel against the manual dictating the lines between which a person is allowed to feel, the manual dictating the rules with which a person is meant to live, and the manual dictating the methods through which a person is invited to understand.

Here are some more ways to understand 'dissociation':

Dissociation is an (involuntary) disruption and distancing in your sense of identity, a disconnect between your thoughts, feelings, actions and self-perception, a mismatch between how you experience the world, and how the world experiences you.

Dissociation is your mother telling you how happy you look lately, when you don't feel happy at all. It is not being able to tell her how you actually feel and sometimes trying to be the person she thinks she sees. It is looking in the mirror and seeing that person and noticing how happy they look and wishing you were them.

Dissociation is the detachment, the doubt and misunderstanding and discomfort, the inescapable loudness of the question: who am I?


References

  • American Psychiatric Association (2013) Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders: DSM-5. 5th edn. Washington, D.C.: American Psychiatric Publishing.

About Obsolete Media

Was core, then nice to have, now sits beautifully awkwardly between thematic, core and optional. Annotation acknolowedging the connection to obsolete media. It seems like this axis is not super present, which I'm okay with (there might still be some pen plotter action), but I think it's still nice to mention, and connects to some other entries.

About Obsolete Media, 1

This is a love letter. 

Dear,

I have not told you about my first week of COVID19 lockdown. I was asked to instruct teachers on how to use Microsoft Teams. I had never used Microsoft Teams. In fact, I was oblivious to the mere existence of Microsoft Teams. But it was a paid job, and I needed money, so I said yes. My first teaching session was in 3 hours.

At first, it was nice. I got to talk to many people, bonding over the shared awkwardness of misunderstanding the software that was forced upon us. Maybe it was strenghtened by the early pandemic atmosphere, but in our mutual navigation, I found a great care. I felt appreciated for my efforts, and was excited to share and help, and was curious to explore the seams of Teams.

(But this is not a love letter directed to Microsoft Teams.) 

It did not last long. There was no time for misunderstanding this software, no virtue in failing to use it as Microsoft intended. Soon, my assistance was no longer needed. Not because I had been successful in conveying the curiosity and care that would allow .... But because new software was imposed -- we needed to innovate and quickly adapt. The need for ... vanished, and with it, this little community of care.

Recently, I had to uninstall Microsoft Teams from my phone. My device had gotten 'too old'. I wasn't using these chats, but it was a great isolation to be forced to part with them, forced to remove myself from the social context for not keeping with the latest technology, for not keeping up with the fast paced world.

1296 days later, I met you, dear PLOTTER.

(This is a love letter to my HP7475A pen plotter -- a printer-like machine from 1983 that holds physical pens to draw. A machine that was collecting dust, left alone after being deemed 'too old'.) 

I had never heard of PEN PLOTTERS, and I was oblivious to your existence. There was no decision made that led us to meeting. You were there, and I was there, too. I'm usually a little shy, and am usually quite self-aware and embarrassed about that. But you were so beautifully showing your own vulnerability, that I did not worry about sharing mine. I have never been comfortable in these exploratory steps, and I try to hide this. I am a confident navigator (false), I have experienced it all (false) and know who I am (?). But you gave me time. For the first time, I felt like I was exploring truly in collaboration. To my surprise, I was not scared to touch you. Nor was I scared to take it slow. I was still a little scared to fail. But with you, I did not worry that feeling appreciated had to be transactional, like I needed to push myself to justify my presence. The time we spent together was so much more simple, simpler than my head usually makes life out to be. With you, I was experiencing life with so much meaning.

Later, you told me: I enjoyed and will cherish every part of us, because I was always fully engaged in every second of it.

Now, we haven't talked in a while (57 days). But I know this is temporary. I know you are there, and I am here, too. We still have time. Time to care and fail and care more, in this little journey we are exploring together. Sometimes I worry that you are the one calling yourself 'too old'. But when the time comes, when you are 'too old' again, when the time comes, when I'm overwhelmed again by the pace of life, when that time comes I will always choose you.

First half of letter feels too long. While 'personal' on paper, I don't feel it is very personal, not in the way About Routines is. Not that all intimacy should be confessional, but here I feel like it's too gimmicky atm. Might need to change, or might feel differently in the future. We'll see. Second part I like. But as a whole, the section spends too much time on setting the scene, in ways that are only vaguely contributing to the core story on the thesis? Is a little self-indulgent? This is in the running for longest annotation, but it's certainly not the most central one.

About Obsolete Media, 2

Lori Emerson (2022) identifies slow, small, open, cooperative, care and failure as characterizing values we can learn from old media. This resonates with my experience with pen plotters. These machines were broken before we repaired them in collaborative repair sessions. They were awkward, noisy and stubborn. But through experiments of curiosity, they revealed themselves to be inviting to play with and to fail with, because of their seamfulness. There's a great honesty in these machines, and a great performativity. Through these things, I saw the plotter invite a community of collaboration and of care. Bethany Nowviskie (2016) notes the ethics of care to "reorient a humanistic appreciation of context, interdependence, and vulnerability -- of fragile, earthly things and their interrelation". Amidst a current media landscape that values fast-paced, seamless and (socially) isolated experiences, plotters prove to be a powerful counter to the need to experience it all. They provide a shared exploration of curiosity. Slow curiosity, the type that can collect dust for years, while not losing it's power, relevance or use.

Emphasizing that old machines do not just possess value not just by virtue of nostalgia, Emerson cites Jack Halberstam (2011) by saying old media provide one of many ways to imagine "not some fantasy of an elsewhere, but existing alternatives to hegemonic systems".

Text-adventures -- often literal fantasies of elsewhere -- have a status similar to pen plotters: relics of the past. But they hold much more than just a fantasy. Now, they reveal a context that used to be: constrained ways to use the computers we take for granted, discussing with friends how to progress in a cryptic puzzle, bla bla. By this, text-adventures provide an alternative to the hegemony in the current video game landscape (described by Fron et al. (2007) as "an entrenched status quo which ignores the needs and desires of 'minorty' players"). Think about the prevalence of dexterity based gameplay only achievable for the able-bodied. Or think about the obsession with 'improving' graphics, demanding players to stay up to date with expensive hardware only obtainable to the financially-abled. Or think about the trends in current AAA titles, mostly alluding to power fantasies only enjoyable by one homogeneous group (Anthropy, 2012).

The video game manual, too, is an old technology. Shannon Mattern (2024) compares the manuals of old to seamless technology like chatGPT, which "refuses to be touched" when asked about its own design. She notes it is "a crucial time to recover the history, politics, and aesthetics of the repair manual as a didactic genre and creative form". Maybe this is true not just for manuals. In the current media landscape wider than just games, everything is content, everything is moving fast, and every moment is a moment of decision. Text-adventures may have been a dominant presence once, but in this current landscape, their clunky, constrained, non-linear gameplay provide a fundamental opposition to the idea of experiencing it all. They provide a slow curiosity, one that we can share in ways that bla bla.

Decently satisfied with this as first draft, though more 'political' than the rest of the thesis. I do feel like this section covers much if not all of the first section. Considering this is not the most important axis of the thesis, I wonder if it's justified that it is this length now. On the other hand, because it is not as interwoven into the other sections, it needs to stand on its own, and maybe the extra space is necessary for that.

References


About FOMO

Optional About the fear of missing out, and how IF opposes that. ~1 paragraph. In search for references.

FOMO -- 'the fear of missing out' -- is a symptom characterizing a generation (blehg). It is often not just a fear, but a self-fulfilling prophecy. Amidst constant exposure to social media, no barrier to consuming world news, ubiquitous contradicting voices trying to convince you to live life in specific ways, one can easily feel paralyzed. It speaks to the notion there's a way to 'fail' in experiencing life, that is only reinforced by the way social media encourages comparisons to the way others are experiencing. We don't want to fail, and we are hesitant to commit to any choice that might be a wrong one.

Multi-linear or non-linear narratives (such as text-adventures) are interesting in the current landscape of consumption in that they fundamentally oppose the notion of experiencing it all. The only way to proceed is by going down one path, and leaving behind another. Exploring one path in a branching narrative can leave you wondering about the 'missed options', but even going back to check out another is different from being exposed to them all at once. The creators of the branching cyberdrama Deep Simulator note:

Xu Cong: It's the lack of boundaries that causes this overwhelming and disorienting feeling, right?

Ag: Yes. That which we see in our experiences has boundaries, then suddenly you're in a world that has no boundaries, no clear path, and you don't know what to do. (Ag, 2021)

Having to make decisions that (irreversibly) lead you down one path of content while leaving behind another is a rare discomfort nowadays. But it is a precious discomfort. I'd like to start the section with a personal remark, that maybe can get it's resolution here. Why is that discomfort precious to me?

References

  • Ag (2021) Deep Simulator. Translated by Keeler, J.A. Shanghai: 51 Personae, London, UK: Tabula Rasa Gallery.


About Routines

Optional. Might be a nice extension to About Parsing, and a more personal account (which I like and I think is welcome). Hope it can convey undertones of themes I'm not explicitly naming. And I hope / like to show some of my process and connect it themstically (similar to About Signalling). Don't know if 'routines' is the final name.

When I was in high school, I played the piano. I knew a few songs. One time, I played a song in front of friends, and overheard a negative comment. Every time I played that song after that, I heard that same comment at that position in the song. Soon, every song I knew triggered an associated memory.

I write this thesis in long library sessions. Sometimes I hear people talk about their dreams. Moving abroad, exploring the world. Traveling in a campervan, months on the road. These sound like wonderful dreams. But anytime I'm 5 hours deep into a library session, I can't help but think: this is all I want in life, this abstract monotonous familiar approximation of happiness. So I go to the library, and write. And then I walk home. I walk home listening to the same song every time. Islands, by King Crimson. Listening to Islands, I walk home thinking the same thoughts I thought the first time walking home listening to this song. It was November 14 2024, 102 days and many library sessions ago. I just happened to listen to Islands that day. I had just shared the song with a person very dear to me. In an attempt to express how I felt, or maybe in the hopes they would be able to tell me. I walk home and listen and think the thoughts I thought that day. 8:15 into the 11:56 minute song, I arrive home. Sometimes I silently cry in the hallway for the remaining 221 seconds before taking off my shoes and continuing my day. These days, I'm not able to share songs anymore with that person very dear to me. Sometimes it's difficult to interpret your thoughts and emotions.

After a while, I had to take a break from playing piano. Every note triggered a memory. This was too much. I tried it again recently, 2403 days since high school, but memories I hadn't thought about in years still came back, vividly. Songs I'm not able to share anymore, no one to tell me how I feel. The exercise of empathy and understanding extends to oneself, the imaginative parsing. Why do I keep listening to Islands?

About It All Being Connected

Optional? Connected to several mentions of grocery shopping, to routines (song makes me think), a call-and-response with experiencing it all, an account of dissociation, but with a positive lining. If I am to add about trusting your feelings, the candy could be fruit, but that might just be superficial and silly. Don't know if the McGuire example really adds to the section atm. I love it as an example, and think it might be possible to make a point about the form of the thesis here.

I am in the grocery store, holding a banana. A song is playing that I heard once while travelling. During this travel, I saw a banana farm.

Every morning I eat the exact same breakfast: 3 spoons of oats, 3 spoons of a yoghurt, a little Nutella and 1 banana. I eat the banana mindlessly. I enjoy the banana, don't get me wrong, but I am mindless of its existence. It blends away with the yoghurt and oats, it blends into a numb moment of me mindlessly chewing it. But now I am here, holding a banana. Maybe it is the song, but I think about the great distance this banana had to travel. I think about those who harvested it. I think about the decades spent breeding this banana so that it might appeal to my mindless palette, about the slavery that was involved in it, about the slavery that probably still is, about how glaringly ignorant I am of these important matters, about how this all is condensed into a mere 0,32 eurocents, about how this banana will be mindlessly chewed tomorrow at breakfast, a mindless mouth chewing a banana held by a mindless hand that at this point I can't recognize as my own anymore. Someone is holding a banana, thinking about travels to banana farms they heard about, and just like for the banana I can only speculate who they are and how they came to be.

The next song starts playing, and I put the banana in my basket.

Often I find myself numb, until suddenly, I am not. Then, life comes at me all at once. A brief glimpse of the unimagineable scope of interwoven threads that came to intertwine in this moment. Richard McGuire's Here is a 6-page comic showing snapshots of the same location over different moments in time. The fragments are not shown chronologically, but are instead shuffled and layered on top of each other. By not portraying these threads in order, a reader experiences it all at once. This is overwhelming, but faithfull to the experience of such awareness; you get caught up in the middle of it. It is a powerful experience. It is a story of being human, of culture and being infinitesimal. It is painful and scary and joyous and inspirational and all the things. The human condition is one of connectedness. This can be difficult to navigate, but one worth engaging with actively.

When I am in the grocery store holding a banana, I think of myself as a 6-page comic, as a series of unordered and barely coherent snapshots. It is painful and scary and difficult to navigate. It is also engaging and meaningful in a way part of me does not want to miss out on.

References

  • McGuire, R. (1989) 'Here', in: Spiegelman, A. and Mouly, F. (1989) Raw. New York: Raw Books & Graphics.

About Zork

PARSER > I don't understand the word `alexithymia'.

YOU    > Panic.

PARSER > Your score has just gone down by one spoon.

This example is inspired by Learning ZIL (1989), an instruction manual to the Zork Implementation Language that calls parsers 'a notorious part of every IF program'. Inspired by Adventure, Zork was released in 1977 by Infocom and was massively influential in bringing text-adventures to the emerging scene of home computers. This was done by way of a custom interpreter to the Zork Implementation Language, the Z-machine, that enabled ZIL games to be played on any machine by just writing Z-machine implementation for that machine (Blank, Galley, 1980).

However, an official compiler that compiles ZIL into Z-machine instructions has never been released. And after company reorganization at Infocom, ZIL was declared `functionally dead' (citation tbd). The ZIL manual's subtitle aptly reads: `Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Writing Interactive Fiction But Couldn't Find Anyone Still Working Here to Ask'.

To this day, there is a community around writing for Z-machines, decompiling them and writing new interpreters. How curious it is that after almost 50 years, it's humans parsing the computer.

References

About Character Creation

About Character Creation, 1

QUESTION > Do YOU hold eye contact for a second or 2?

THIJS has had many speculative diagnoses thrown their way. At times, it can be very useful to see them through such lens. However, it can also be confusing. When THIJS doesn’t know how to feel, how to act or who to be, they might think: ‘ah, but a person with this diagnosis will surely feel this, do that, and be such’. So THIJS feels this, THIJS does that, and THIJS becomes their diagnosis. 

QUESTION > From 1 to 10, how content are YOU now? Often questionnaires are used in such processes, and they have a similar effect.

Often these questionnaires are (supposedly) designed to capture nuance in the sum of their questions, not in the individual ones. That means that any one question tends to be absurd when considered in isolation. (These questionnaires also tend to be quite perverse, often being presumptuous in nature and clinically avoidant of terms ‘the patient would surely misunderstand’.)

When faced with a question, YOU are prompted to introspect. But by the question’s absurdity, YOU do not always know the answer. The more YOU think about it, the more it might seem like there’s no end to answering this question, nor a beginning. YOUR identity begins to fade in front of you. 

QUESTION > Do YOU do things YOU care about deeply?

About Character Creation, 2

QUESTION > What is YOUR name?

Many video games start with character creation: defining the character the player will embody. This comes in many forms: specifying the physical attributes of a human-like entity, giving a name to that entity, or assigning them character traits and flaws. Also non-human and even inanimate entities can serve as the player's embodiment, like a truck in some road trip simulator. In play, we still refer to that diegetic entity as 'I'.

We assign a value to this representation of ourselves in the game world. This value becomes particularly apparent through the friction that arises when one cannot represent themselves. For example by misrepresentation of gender or race, or features, or when a player is unable to control the in-game 'I' like they want to. In any such case (and there are many more) a rift starts to form: we are made aware of the dissonance between ourselves and the entity we want to consider as 'I'. Reversely, the 'dissonant I' can hold power, exactly because they provide an opportunity to explore a person we cannot be, we are not allowed to be, or a person we might be unsure about being. (Role playing games, for example, provide an amazing opportunity for embodied exploration of one's gender and sexuality.)

That we call this diegetic entity 'I' is highly peculiar, for our 'character' need not be a representation of our non-game self (for better or for worse). Character creation happens through absurd questions. Absurd, in their disconnect to the non-game world, their disobedience to normal world logic. That 'what is your name?' is a question worth consideration, suggests we lend these representations power outside of the scope of our current being. Yet we imagine ourselves as these representations. We want to imagine ourselves as these representations. We feel what they are feeling, do what they are doing, and become who they are. Character creation is a process of willfully prophetic diagnostic quetionnaires.

About Human Parsers

Core / meta. I think it would be nice to state the 'tagline' of my project. Yet to be decided if it should just be the tagline, or with some more elaboration. For now mirror the About Thijs / Thesis sections, but not attached to that idea.

A parser is an interpreting agent -- what is A HUMAN PARSER?

  • A HUMAN PARSER is an interpreter that happens to be a human agent.
  • A HUMAN PARSER is an interpreter that parses humans.
  • A HUMAN PARSER makes the act of parsing, or interpreting, human.

Could serve as conclusion, in which case I would elaborate some more, bring together some more threads running throughout the thesis, and suggest how they are captured in these sentences.

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