Contageous Communication... The Videogame!
A couple of days ago I suggested that the far more pressing issue for the left consists in producing channels of communication that will provide the infrastructure necessary for producing new collectives, rather than simple framing (here and here and here). Well it appears that caput mortuum has discovered a simulator or game, based on the dialogics of agonistics (that's what it's called) based on precisely such a principle! As caput mortuum puts it,
So Warren Sack is rather brilliant. He has created a graphical interface that visualizes agonisitic pluralism in unfolding democratic debate by tracing sets of inter-related words and themes on Usenet posts (the example above uses alt.politics.bush). He applies a visual accumulative logic, similar to del.icio.us tag clouds, and the "winners" are those who engage the largest number of people in dialogue, promote a set of themes that are taken up by others in their posts, and articulate an influential opinion within discussions.Read on, take a gander, and play!
Labels: Communication, Games
posted by Sinthome at 8:45 PM
3 Comments:
hi Levi,
thought you might like to check out Yochai Benkler, who recently coined the term 'peer production' to describe internet-based systems of economic production such as wikipedia, flickr, del.icio.us, file-sharing collectives, or blogs. the point of interest in these emerging systems is that they are non-monetary. they function more as gift economies-- yet still, they work! revolutionary potential? that remains to be seen; these things could be appropriated.
bona fide *economic* ideas and vision are something that i think are severely lacking in politics on the 'left.' it's too easy to fall into the trap of the hysteric's discourse and denounce everything, with no real conception of how to restructure configurations of desire. deleuze and guattari got it perfectly right in AO: the focus needs to be on libidinal economy.
your level of production here is daunting. i'm trying to get my own blog going but can't seem to find the time just yet to develop it properly. right now you stand as inspiration.
ciao
Thanks for the reference, Bobo. I entirely agree about the lack of vision and concrete ideas on the left. There's a lot of terrific critique out there, but not a lot of concrete theory of change or strategics. In my view this omnipresence of critique tends to generate a pessimistic attitude that no matter what is done it will be done in the name of power or the system. For instance, as Zizek points out, the one thing that seems unthinkable today is the demise of capitalism... Wouldn't it be nice if Zizek made concrete proposals as to how that transformation might occur?
I look forward to reading your blog once it's up and running. I always learn from your interventions.
Thanks Daisy... I played the game a few years ago and just as you remark, my time all but disappeared. Civilization is especially fun as you get to go to war!
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