Technoculture Research Papers - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

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- Management, Military History, Military Science, Military Intelligence
- by Jaime Piracón
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- Technoculture, Ethnography, Digital Media, Video Games
- by Isabel Valverde
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- Critical Theory, Emotion, Human Computer Interaction, Aesthetics

This article explores the integration of the mobile phone into the religious experience of Christians in Nigeria. Based on the results of an online survey and the author’s observation, it argues that the mobile phone has become an actant in the mediatization of religion, creating dependency among some users and transforming religious praxis in palpable ways. Unsurprisingly, perspectives vary on whether and how the phone should be used during worship. Attitudes coalesce around three viewpoints, leading to the emergence of user groups labelled critics, advocates, and dualists. The accounts of study participants give access into the ways some people seek to (re)configure their engagement with religion by inserting the mobile phone as a multifunctional techno-spiritual gadget.

- by Allwell Nwankwo
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- Religion, Christianity, Cultural Studies, Media Studies

Many scholars assume that industry meddles in scientific research in order to defend their products. But this article shows that industry meddling in science can have a variety of consequences. American food manufacturers long denied that trans fats were associated with disease. Academic scientists, government scientists, and activists in fact endorsed trans fats as a healthier alternative to saturated fats. But in 1990, a high-profile study showed that trans fats increased risk factors for heart disease more than saturated fats did. Industry funded a U.S. Department of Agriculture study that they hoped would exonerate trans fats. But the industry-funded U.S. Department of Agriculture study also indicated that trans fats increased risk factors for heart disease more than saturated fats. Industry quickly began developing trans fat alternatives. This confirms that corporations get involved in science in order to defend their products. But involvement in science can be the very means by which corporations persuade themselves to change their products.

- by David Schleifer
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- Sociology, Social Movements, Technology, Food Science

Abstract Video games and virtual worlds play substantial roles in contemporary transhumanism. Many transhumanists appreciate the freedom and power that accompany these digital landscapes and recognize that they can promote transhumanist ways of thinking beyond the borders of explicitly transhumanist groups. Video games and virtual worlds enable transcendence through their design and contribute to transhumanism through the options they enable and the influence they have. Because of their significant place in transhumanism, video games and virtual worlds are thus important to the study of religion and science in the twenty-first century.

- by Robert Geraci
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- Artificial Intelligence, Game studies, New Media, Technoculture
- by Thomas Malaby
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- Practice theory, Technoculture, Ethnography, Play

"This paper discusses how practicing teachers conceptualize commercial off the shelf (COTS) videogames within classroom-based English language arts instruction. Understanding how today’s teachers perceive virtual worlds and videogames
as an instructional tool for schema building within literacy development will help researchers better understand ways to structure games-based learning in classroom environments. Data for this study were drawn from case study research of a graduate pilot course focusing on the intersections of virtual worlds, popular
culture, and literacy instruction. Findings indicate that a limited understanding of videogames and virtual worlds does not hinder practicing teachers from desiring to create engaging units of study using videogames as a schema building tool. However, teachers feel that using videogames for schema building in the classroom will lead to negative perceptions of how they are viewed as teachers. This is compounded by the perception that they will not receive adequate financial support in the form of professional development from administration, nor will they receive monies for technological support to implement within instruction. However, despite these findings, teachers desire to use games-based learning and implement it as a schema building exercises with their students."

- by Hannah Gerber
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- Game studies, Teacher Education, Technoculture, Ethnography

This paper critically analyzes the real money market place, a feature of the game Diablo 3. To do so I compare the concepts of the audience commodity, prosumption, produsage and playbour to the model of Diablo’s real money market place. The conclusion is that the market place is not fully described by any of the proposed models but is something in-between. Using interview, participant observation and online media this paper then explains the consequences of this feature on the game and the emerging game culture of Diablo. With letting the business model of Diablo 3 influence the game design Blizzard is not acting according to its own core value but instead following suggestions from marketing research and let the design follow the business model. (Hamari and Lehdonvirtä, 2010)
This behavior of a company does fit the first filter of the propaganda model. (Herman and Chomsky, 1988) Game companies as media producers are in a capitalist system forced to act according to financial considerations and not artistic or ethical ones. It marks the departure of even AAA games from a focus on producing the best possible product for their audience to abusing audience labor and to forging games after a monetization model instead of vice versa.

- by Patrick Prax
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- Critical Theory, Technoculture, Ethnography, Digital Media
- by piotr zawojski
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- Technoculture, Postmedia, Hybridisation, Hybrids
- by Alyea Sandovar
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- Game studies, New Media, Technoculture, Ethnography
- by Brett Lunceford
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- Information Systems, Electronic Engineering, Communication Engineering, Sociology

The metaverse is a digital universe where creators can build worlds, create characters, make rules and establish cultures, and from these worlds sprout stories and experiences. The development stages of technical objects in the metaverse is perhaps most often seen as a process of creation by enthusiasts such as designers, programmers, architects and so on. This paper offers a perspective on technocultural imagination and proposes a knowledge map that suggests bold visions, desirable commitments, and creative methods for creators to solve problems, build elements, contents, and applications within the metaverse. On this note, we have detailed two (2) prescriptive points that would serve as a framework to help meta creators build frames of meaning and expression. These include spacetime creator-platform collaboration and spacetime thinking.

- by Denis Inengite
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- Technoculture, Collaboration, Imagination, Metaverse
- by Ruth Oldenziel
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- Engineering, Technoculture, History of Technology, Political Science
- by Melanie Swalwell
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- Aesthetics, Game studies, Technoculture, Ethnography

The essay that launched Afrofuturism. Introductory essay, in which the term is coined and theorized in depth, followed by interviews exploring the idea with leading African-American cultural theorists. From the collection FLAME WARS,... more

- by Helen Thornham
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- Technoculture, Ethnography, Digital Media, Video Games

"The essays in this volume discuss both the culture of technology that we live in today, and culture as technology. Within the chapters of the book cultures of technology and cultural technologies are discussed, focussing on a variety of... more

- by Göran Bolin
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- Communication, Technology, Media Studies, New Media

Games have intruded into popular, academic, and policy-maker awareness to an unprecedented level, and this creates new opportunities for advancing our understanding of the relationship of games to society. The author offers a new approach to games that stresses them as characterized by process. Games, the author argues, are domains of contrived contingency,capable of generating emergent practices and interpretations, and are intimately connected with everyday life to a degree heretofore poorly understood. This approach is both consistent with a range of existing social theory and avoids many of the limitations that have characterized much games scholarship to date,in particular its tendency toward unsustainable formalism and exceptionalism. Rather than seeing gaming as a subset of play, and therefore as an activity that is inherently separable,safe,and pleasurable,the author offers a pragmatic rethinking of games as social artifacts in their own right that are always in the process of becoming. This view both better accords with the experience of games by participants cross-culturally and bears the weight of the new questions being asked about games and about society.

- by Thomas Malaby
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- Technoculture, Ethnography, Digital Media, Video Games

In this paper we articulate an empirical approach to the study of social action in digitallymediated contexts. Our approach extends Carl Couch’s theory of cooperative action, which is based on a set of “elements of sociation”: acknowledged attentiveness, mutual responsiveness, congruent functional identities, shared focus, and social objective. Three additional elements of sociation, adapted from studies of jazz performance, are added to the list of elements that characterize coordinated action: a formal theory of task performance, an informal theory of task performance, and synchronicity of individual actions. Using audio-visual recordings of gameplay, the minutiae of social action were captured and subjected to repetitive, reflexive and collaborative analysis in order to identify these patterns, including their potential causes and consequences. We use data from two games—the single-player real-time strategy game Eufloria and the massively multiplayer online game World of Warcraft...

- by David Kirschner
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- Computer Science, Technoculture, Ethnography, Digital Media

With the expansion of the European Union eastwards, nations have adopted various strategies for being included in the European community. This article discusses examples of cultural technologies used by post-communist countries in aligning with Western Europe. It is argued that the phenomenon is in fact not new, as the marketing of nations has occurred since at least the World’s Fairs of the 19th century. However, while the World’s Fairs addressed the nation-states of high industrialism, cultural technologies are the features used in a post-industrialized context, where it is more important to impress with abilities of symbolic production rather than with traditional industrial production. In terms of modernization processes, it can be argued that the increased emphasis on symbolic production indicates a shift from techno-industrial modernization to techno-cultural modernization.

- by Göran Bolin
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- Communication, Media Studies, Media and Cultural Studies, Technoculture

Stereotypical portrayals of race are common in many modern video games. However, research on games and
game environments has often overlooked race as an important consideration when evaluating games for their
educational potential. This is particularly true of the educational literature on online games, which has tended
to emphasize virtual game spaces as intrinsically exemplary learning environments while deemphasizing the
narrative content of the games themselves. This article addresses this oversight. Through a close reading of
game communications and fan-created content, the authors examined how developer-produced racial narratives
influence players’ experience of the game world. The authors find that players and player communities
reproduce and reinforce narrow developer-produced interpretations of race during in-game interactions as
well as in player forums and virtual communities beyond the confines of the game world. Because the game
environment is not conducive to players’ critical examination of race, the authors conclude that the game does
not intrinsically provide a means for players to engage critically with game content. They further conclude
that as educational environments these games must be situated and contextualized within the ideologies and
discourses of the physical world.

- by Sharon Tettegah
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- Sex and Gender, Social Sciences, Technoculture, Virtual Environments
- by Mark Deuze
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- Social Theory, Technoculture, Ethnography, Digital Media

This chapter examines the relevance of multimedia technologies in Psychedelic Trance gatherings, exploring its technical, sensory and spiritual convergence. Technology devices have always been a part of our lives, from the first artefacts of early humanity to the most sophisticated of our era, where technology has taken control of some aspects of our lives. In the late twentieth century, a new stage of history characterized by the transformation of our material culture through mechanisms of a new technological paradigm started. We live in communion with all kinds of technologies that complement and extend us in most of our existential aspects, not only in a technical way but also a personal, emotional and even spiritual level. The electronic dance music and its relevance in modern cultures can be a reflexion of this reality, where new technologies and multimedia tools have awakened neo-ritual practices in Psychedelic Trance gatherings, evoking tribal experiences with shamanic foundations, and mediated by high-tech guide elements.

- by Emilia Simao
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- Technoculture, Multimedia, Shamanism, Electronic Dance Music Culture (EDMC)

Considerable scholarly discussion has been given to the idea that we are moving toward a state of “posthumanism.” This essay examines some possible implications of a posthuman existence, specifically as it relates to that most basic of human needs—sexuality. I explore the spiritual aspects of sexuality to see what is lost and what is gained in technologically mediated forms of sexuality. To that end, I consider the interplay between sexual behavior and our conceptions of the sacred, how technologies are changing our views of—and realities concerning—our bodies, and the potential for a sacred posthuman sexuality.

- by Brett Lunceford
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- Creative Writing, Religion, Sociology, Cultural Studies

While many strategy games (both real-time- and turn-based-) use a fictionalized Earth history as a backdrop for their ludic elements, few seek to faithfully represent the progression of music history via the use of pre-existing music. Soren Johnson’s Civilization IV stands alone as it presents a thorough retelling of music history, with representative works from the Medieval, Renaissance, Baroque, Classical, Romantic, and Modern Eras, including works by Josquin, Palestrina, Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms, Dvořák, and American minimalist composer, John Adams. The game’s lead designer and AI programmer, Soren Johnson, personally selected each track included in the underscoring playlists. Drawing heavily upon new interviews with the game designers, this paper explores Soren Johnson’s personal representation of music history, analyzing in particular his use of John Sheppard’s Media Vita, Saint-Säens’s Cello Concerto No.1, Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherazade, and the works of John Adams. I also discuss the implications of Johnson’s personalized version of history and argue that we can identify him with auteur film directors. The paper also addresses the potential for Civilization IV to educate its players in genres they may have been unfamiliar with, helping them contextualize and appreciate previously unfamiliar musics.

Chapter VII
This chapter discusses the way that new video game interfaces such as those employed by Guitar Hero™, Dance Dance Revolution, and the Nintendo Wii™ are being used to invoke the whole body as a participant in the game text. As such, new video games involve more than cognitive education; they impart a set of body habits to the player. Drawing on Marcel Mauss’s concept of “bodily technique,” I propose a new vocabulary for understanding these devices, referring to them as bodily interfaces. Next, I discuss three aspects of bodily interfaces: mode of capture, haptics, and button remapping. In order to help educators take advantage of these developments, I conclude by pointing to theoretical literature on the relationship between the physical and mental aspects of the learning process that may be useful in rethinking electronic games."

- by Anthony Velez
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- Information Systems, Psychology, Cognitive Science, Social Networks

Online computer games are increasingly seen by game studies and industry as `more than games', i.e., places where players form and maintain relationships by playing together. However, currently, these practices of playing together and their roles for gameplay and the relationships of the players are not presented and explained in an integrated manner. In this context, my research focused on exploring social aspects within and around two online games, World of Warcraft and Star Kingdoms. Specifically, I investigated the emerging practices of playing together with fellow players, friends, family and romantic partners and their functions in an integrated fashion. To achieve this aim, an ethnographic study was conducted (using participant observation and semi-structured interviews) and the data were analysed qualitatively and quantitatively through a ritualisation framework inspired by a multidisciplinary perspective on secular ritual (coming from anthropology, communication and media studies and social psychology). Within this framework, ritual and ritualized play (but also ritualization as a process) were defined as referring to practices through which the game is enriched with new meanings that go beyond the game being `just a game'. These new meanings include those centered on relationships/social interactions and identity. Thus, many gamers play computer games not only for their gameplay, but also for the relationships/interactions established and/or maintained through them. In addition to their value for anthropology, social psychology and communication studies, these findings are particularly useful for game developers and UX designers, who have to find ways to accommodate and support these relationships/interactions via game design, alternative media or marketing strategies.

- by Dana F. Zabet
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- Sociology, Cultural Studies, Psychology, Social Psychology
- by Chris Vanderwees
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- Psychoanalysis, Photography, Technoculture, Jacques Lacan

This paper attempts to look into " Technoculture " as a postmodern trend in science fiction; how it originated and evolved over the years. The study is conducted by situating texts of this category in their relative socio-political context. Starting from the 1700's, the current paper traces how technology made its way into major works of fiction, especially those belonging to the speculative category including dystopian works, uptil the Postmodern age i.e. 1945 onwards. The study is based on the theories of Fredric Jameson and Jean Baudrillard, and includes a close reading of four short stories of Ray Bradbury, which have explicitly dealt with " technoculture ". The selected fiction being set in postwar America shows how technology changed the way humans lived and interacted, and the discontents resulting from excessive dependence on machines. This paper also elaborates how the speculative genre and its content made a perfect match for writers who struggled to portray the mechanical life of the technology-driven society. Apocalypse, cyber wars, and inter-planetary travel seemed probable with many inventions of the 1900's and the public's interest in science fiction works reflected this fascination with futurism. It was for this readership, that " technocultural reality " seeped into Postmodern literature and portrayed dystopian visions of our world in order to caution us about preventing destruction.

- by Maria Anwar
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- Technoculture, Postmodern Fiction, Short story (Literature), Ray Bradbury
- by Teresa Dillon
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- Technoculture, Ethnography, Digital Media, Video Games and Learning
- by Seth Giddings
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- Game studies, Media Studies, New Media, Media Archaeology

The collection’s diverse entries show that contrary to the editorial framing, cyberpunk is not ubiquitous. Instead, the form has merged with other styles (in some cases) and transformed in profound ways (in others) to produce an almost kaleidoscopic explosion of subgenres and aesthetics. Some of these adhere closely to the stylistic and philosophical mold of early cyberpunk, but a significant number—the lion’s share, really—have materialized out of a convergence of developments in posthumanism, feminism, film noir, computer imagery, animation, singularity theory, ecocatastrophe, surveillance, indigenous studies, and more, all evolving along lines that may intersect with cyberpunk, certainly, but not in a restrictive or all-encompassing manner. The range and diversity of these entries demonstrate, then, a kind of balkanization over the last forty or so years, with cyberpunk playing a role, undoubtedly, but not as an overarching category or mode. And really, if cyberpunk existed today as the defining framework of this cultural cluster, would it really be cyberpunk? After all, nothing could be less punk than sticking around for too long.

- by Chad Andrews
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- Technoculture, Cyberpunk, Science Fiction, Cybercultures
- by Adrian E RADILLO
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- Psychoanalysis, Social Networks, Cyberpsychology, Technoculture

“Play” has been a central concept in video game studies for the last several years. Through a close look at the recent Danish-developed game Inside (2016) and an overview of the medium, this paper argues that “work” is an equally... more

- by Chad Andrews
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- Technoculture, Death, Digital Media, Video Games
- by Edmond Y Chang
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- American Studies, Art, Technoculture, Posthumanism

In this debate with Mark Peterson, I argue that media anthropology has four main contributions to make to the interdisciplinary study of media and communication. In addition to Peterson’s three contributions (ethnographic, geographical and theoretical), I propose a fourth potential contribution: media historical research. It is time, I suggest, to venture beyond our ethnographic comfort zones and into the media worlds of our ancestors.

- by John Postill and +1
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- Anthropology, Historical Anthropology, Media Anthropology, Technoculture
- by Seth Giddings
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- Game studies, Media Studies, New Media, Technoculture

The focus of this paper is on the potential challenges and opportunities that might emerge as a result of the continuing development and proliferation of so-called 3D printing technology. In particular, it is interested in looking at how society would cope if 3D printing (or some other form of comparable replicating technology) advanced to such a stage that it became possible to accurately and cheaply replicate any commodity or currency-form many times over. As many readers will no doubt be aware, these are issues that have gained increased traction in recent times, with countless articles and opinion-pieces having been printed on the so-called ‘3D printing revolution’ in the last couple of years. However, whilst the technology underpinning the latest cluster of 3D printers may be ground-breaking, the idea itself is far from new. Indeed, the concept of replicating technology actually has a fairly long intellectual history, with a number of past writers and thinkers having devoted a great deal of time to considering the effects that might result from the (potential) emergence of mass 3D printing capabilities. In this paper, the focus will be on one such text; namely, George O. Smith’s Venus Equilateral series (1942–1945). Looking both at the fictionalised replicating technologies outlined by Smith and the uses they were put to by his protagonists, this paper will offer a critical reading of Smith’s work, with a particular emphasis on his treatment of the 3D printing phenomenon. Likewise, it will also look at how Smith tried to incorporate the idea of mass replicating technology into a wider socio-economic framework, along with his attempts to produce working economic models based on this postulated mode of production. Ultimately, what it shows is that, whilst Smith’s fictionalised technologies may today seem farcically outdated, his reflections and insights on the potential social ruptures and cultural transformations that might unfold as a result of the emergence of mass replicating technology remain as pertinent and as relevant as ever.

- by Matthew Hollow
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- Critical Theory, Technology, Art, Technoculture

"Cybercultural Ecologies examines the interpenetrating relationships between nature, virtuality, and narrative. Operating at the interface between ecocriticism and cyberculture, its approach is narrative-based and thematic, focusing on... more

- by Alf Seegert
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- Religion, New Media, Technoculture, Ethnography
- by Wajeehah Aayeshah
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- Communication, Media Studies, New Media, Journalism

Trans fats became part of the American food system due to a complex interplay among activism, industrial technology, and nutritional science. Some manufacturers began using partially hydrogenated oils, which contain trans fats, in the early twentieth century. Medical authorities began framing saturated fats as unhealthy in the 1950s. In the 1980s, activist organizations, including the Center for Science in the Public Interest, condemned food corporations’ use of saturated fats and endorsed trans fats as an acceptable alternative. Nearly all targeted corporations responded by replacing saturated fats with trans fats, which fit easily into their existing products. Trans fats thus became the perfect solution to the political problem of saturated fats and to the technical problem of what to use in their place. Activists helped precipitate technological change, but by 1994, trans fats were no longer regarded as a solution. Instead, they became regarded as a new nutritional problem.

- by David Schleifer
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- History, History of Science and Technology, Sociology, Technology

The question of how and why people adopt technologies is an area that has received great scrutiny, but less attention is given to those who willingly choose to avoid particular technologies. This article considers current models of technology adoption and explores how technology influences us as a society and individually, paying special attention to how large-scale shifts in technological change come to bear on individuals who choose not to adopt specific technologies. By combining scholarship in the information sciences with observations from media ecology theorists, this article proposes a more nuanced view of technology adoption and resistance.

- by Brett Lunceford
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- Information Systems, Management, History of Science and Technology, Sociology