User:Thijshijsijsjss/Human Parser/About Obsolete Media

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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 succesful 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: costrained 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


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