https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/public/ recent bookmarks from robertogreco 2023-07-09T19:58:31+00:00 https://www.chrbutler.com/personal-machines-and-portable-worlds robertogreco“My book is so much about how technology dictates culture. The devices that we use aren’t just accessories to culture or windows that we consume things through; they are collaborators, gateways, and molds…the idea of a personal computer had to be invented, manufactured, and marketed. We had to imagine computers as personal machines.” This is an important point. We could live in a world where computing is a public works — where terminals to central processing work like telephones used to. You can pick them up or put them down, but nothing inside of them is yours. But we don’t live in that world. As soon as the first computer booted up in the first home, the computer became a personal object. And when an object becomes personal, it is difficult to leave it behind. We want it with us. Perhaps that one thing — a simple desire for a personal machine — set us on the course we have followed since. Not Moore’s Law, not Capitalism, but personhood. Later, in the same post, Chayka writes of the Palm Pilot — an early attempt at portable computing — that, despite it not providing much in the way of “fun” features for a kid, there was still an “ineffable appeal to holding a gateway to a digital world in your hand.” A world. There’s that word again. Why a world? There is a sense of dimensional transcendence to computers. As C.S. Lewis wrote of the wardrobe, “It’s inside is bigger than its outside.” In the early days of mobile computing, it was hard to not compare the capaciousness of a computer you could carry with you to something like a book. Of both you could say their insides were bigger than their outsides, but when it came to information, you’d have to settle for figurative capaciousness in a book; their actual contents are literally cover to cover. A digital machine’s contents are an entirely different thing. In the time of the Palm Pilot, a tiny door to a vast digital world was more powerful as an idea than a tool. The digital world just wasn’t as big back then as it is now. But to Chayka’s first point, we built the digital world using these little devices that didn’t do very much. We made it worth the journey. And meanwhile, the object was our companion, and inside was a tiny, personal digital world — our notes, our messages, our few digital texts. It was not much, but it was ours." ... "Many of the examples I’ve looked at so far align with my ideas of what makes a machine personal because they were designed with limitations imposed upon them, and many of the examples I’ve discussed that no longer feel personal have been designed to surpass those limitations. If machines were designed to be more personal, we’d have very different machines. Sometimes it feels like it is simply a matter of whether a machine is connected to the internet or not. But of course it’s more than that. It’s as much about what we do with our machines as it is about what they were designed to do. I think we can still experience the personal machine by choosing to experience a machine that way. In a way, the continued popularity of vinyl is a good example of this. For the same price as a single record, you can get several months of access to more music than you could ever hear in that time. Still, some people choose records over digital files. It’s too easy to dismiss this as an affectation. It’s a choice to experience music in a particular way. It’s also a choice of a personal machine — a record player rather than a phone. One benefit of personal technology reaching the maturity it has is the abundance of choices. It may seem like you must use an iPhone — perhaps everyone you know and care about is group messaging with iMessage — but you can choose something else. Every choice has benefits and costs. Ten years ago, I chose to leave Facebook. The benefits were many; the costs were not having easy access to where people I cared about shared information I wanted to know. A few years ago, I stopped using an e-reader — I had used a Kindle, and then a Kobo, both great machines. The cost was no longer being able to send articles from the web to my machine and reading them, as well as books, in bed. The benefit was not having too many choices in front of me when I just want to read one thing. I went back to the printed book. You could say that’s as much of an affectation in 2023 as playing a vinyl record. Maybe. But it’s a choice. I haven’t owned a laptop for many years. My primary machine is a Mac Mini set up in my home office. The cost is I can’t work from my couch or the local coffee shop. The benefit is I have some separation in my life between work and not work. For me, these choices turn using the same machines everyone uses into a more personal experience." ... "I also notice that when I look at these older machines and the old media they use, I often find myself feeling like I’m looking at a door to a world. I look at a book — there’s a world. Every playable disc in our house — each a world. Once you become accustomed to worldspotting, you can see them in anything. Every object is a world. In the World; of the Worlds Perhaps the days of personal machines are over. Maybe the complexities that Mau and his cohort wrote about are not safely reducible. Maybe we can’t decomplexify the world of things. Maybe. And if we can, I wouldn’t dare imagine it could happen quickly. But if we can, where do we start? What do we look at? What do we use again, despite there being sleeker, faster, frictionless options available? What limits do we embrace so that we can re-balance the human with the machine? I have spent the last few years slowly disconnecting in various ways. I’ve chosen to use things that only do a part of what readily available alternatives do and more. I’ve chosen to stop using some things altogether. I have found that these choices have enhanced my experiences because they’ve supported true insight; they’ve helped me be more aware of what I’m doing, why I’m doing it, and who I am becoming. I have found that they change the world because they change my world. Jung said that in each of us is another. I think that in each of us is another world. A good personal machine reveals that world and helps us shape it."]]> christopherbutler whatisacomputer porability computers computing objects 2023 personal personalmachines machines gadgets communication expression imagination toys technology laptops smartphones phones purpose utility entertainment infinitude devices audiencesofone portals identity exploration legendofzelda zelda worldbuilding brucemau massivechange complexity institutewithoutboundaries potential thoreau simplicity human humans balance invention creation distraction attention waste want voyeurism kylechayka personhood palmpilot capitalism mooreslaw worlds companions maremecum vademecum designfiction sciencefiction scifi projectara robinsloan marydoriarussell quantumleap limitations constraints choice kindle kobo iphone tradeoffs limits facebook disconnecting carljung jung https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:8225eb3c6c52/ 2016-07-17T19:59:50+00:00 http://makegames.tumblr.com/post/147367627844/this-is-an-excerpt-from-the-spelunky-book-which robertogrecoHyrule must become more indifferent to the player. It must aspire to ignore Link. Zelda has so far resisted the urge to lavish choice on the player and respond to his every whim, but it follows a similar spirit of indulgence in its loving details, its carefully crafted adventure that reeks of quality and just-for-you-ness. But a world is not for you. A world needs a substance, an independence, a sense that it doesn’t just disappear when you turn around (even if it kinda does). It needs architecture, not level design with themed wallpaper, and environments with their own ecosystems (which were doing just fine before you showed up). Every location can’t be plagued with false crises only you can solve, grist for the storymill. It’s easy to mistake Thompson’s assertion that “Hyrule must become more indifferent to the player” for an assertion that game developers shouldn’t care about the player or shouldn’t guide the player toward their ultimate vision. What it means is that the guides must be a natural part of the world, and the world, like Miyamoto’s cave, must simply exist. If a world is independent and self-sufficient, so are its inhabitants. If every part of a world exists only for the player, both the world and the hero will feel artificial. Nintendo wasn’t the only developer to lose sight of that cave in Kyoto. All game creators must control the player’s experience to a degree, and it’s easy to take it too far—this is particularly true of large studios with bigger budgets that they have to recoup from audiences that include many casual players. Designers often mistake intentionality for good game design: We think that a cave must have a treasure chest in it, and if there’s a treasure chest it must be guarded by a monster, and if there’s treasure in the cave, then the player must find it, and if the player must find it, then there has to be a map that leads the player to the cave. That feels like good design because we took the time to plan it out and in the end the player did what we expected. But it doesn’t guarantee that the player will feel like they’re on a true adventure, making genuine discoveries. Creating Spelunky was the perfect project to help me think about what a true adventure meant to me. Working by myself on a small freeware game made it easier to focus on my personal vision instead of what other people wanted. Using Game Maker allowed me to focus on game design rather than technology. And then there was the randomization of the levels, which made it impossible to fully control the player’s experience. All I could do was create the building blocks of the world and set them in motion—what came out could be as surprising and indifferent to me as it was to the players."]]> derekyu games gaming videogames spelunky zelda learning howwelearn shigerumiyamoto exploration worlds kyoto caves hyrule zpd design gamedesign maps mapping techgnology autonomy experience amusementparks themeparks legendofzelda nintendo edg srg https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:68ee8bdc931c/ 2012-08-25T05:42:35+00:00 http://www.cbc.ca/ideas/massey-archives/2007/11/07/massey-lectures-2007-the-city-of-words/ robertogreco imaginarycities cities reading ulysses jamesjoyce kafka jung carljung apollo cassandra meaningmaking meaning sensemaking understanding perception imagination therealworld mapping maps theself self literature fiction reality margaretatwood plato names naming language words rubendarío socrates aristotle symbolism symbols thecityofwords worlds writing borges themaker poetry commonvalues donquixote gilgamesh bible history society storytelling stories cbc masseylectures 2007 albertomanguel donquijote makingsense https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:2d736cdef0cb/ 2012-02-20T00:40:48+00:00 http://tevisthompson.com/saving-zelda/ robertogreco 2012 space play openendedness open-ended autonomy exploration memory spatialmemory worlds worldbuilding nintendo videogames gaming zelda games gamecriticism gamedesign via:tealtan tevisthompson howwelearn hyrule legendofzelda independence zpd howweplay openended https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:525c3719d2c5/