Inter/Vention: Free Play in the Age of Electracy

by Jan Rune Holmevik, Ian Bogost (Afterword), Gregory L. Ulmer (Foreword)

A proposal that electracy—the special skills needed to navigate and understand our digital world—can be developed through play. In today's complex digital world, we must understand new media expressions and digital experiences not simply as more technologically advanced forms of “writing” that can be understood and analyzed as “texts” but as artifacts in their own right that require a unique skill set. Just as agents seeking to express themselves in alphabetic writing need to be literate , “egents” who seek to express themselves in digital media need to be—to use a term coined by cybertheorist Gregory Ulmer— electrate . In Inter/vention , Jan Holmevik helps to invent electracy. He does so by tracing its path across the digital and rhetorical landscape—informatics, hacker heuretics, ethics, pedagogy, virtual space, and monumentality—and by introducing play as a new genre of electracy. Play, he argues, is the electrate ludic transversal. Holmevik contributes to the repertoire of electrate practices in order to understand and demonstrate how play invents electracy. Holmevik's argument straddles two in rhetoric, between how we study rhetoric as play and how we play rhetorically; and in game studies, between ludology and narratology. Games studies has forged ludology practice by distinguishing it from literate practice (and often allying itself with the scientific tradition). Holmevik is able to link ludology and rhetoric through electracy. Play can and does facilitate play invented the field of ludology. Holmevik proposes a new heuretic in which play acts as a conductor for the invention of electracy. Play is a meta behavior that touches on every aspect of Ulmer's concept of electracy.

204 pages, Hardcover

First published March 15, 2012

Reviews

[matthew harding · Rating 3 out of 5]

First off, I am an educator that is looking into Gregory Ulmer's electracy for its usefulness as a pedagogical lens, so as audiences go I have a specific focus and need.
What the author seems to be doing in the first three chapters is tracing out the physical manifestation of specific elements found in Gregory Ulmer's theoretical concept (electracy) to create a chronology of its development in real time within technological communities.

The first chapter, Widescreen, is an overview of the project.
The second chapter, Hacker Noir, seems to be working with Ulmer's idea of the "Transversal," and the third, Choral Code, is working with "Chora".
The fourth chapter transitions to consider the trajectory from role-playing MUDs (Multi User Dimension/Dungeon) to MOOs (Multi User Domain) and from MOOs to educational MOO.

None of the information (mostly historical and written at the level of platform, not player) will assist an educator here. What you are still getting is overview.

Ludic Ethics (chapter 6) is split between suggesting that when it comes to video games and real world violence we need to get beyond the rhetoric of blame. Holmevik insists that Ulmer's concept of the Avatar (avatar is as much a noun/person as it is a verb to Ulmer) is the vehicle to get us beyond ethics--"Games, I am arguing, are experience engines [and] 'Avatar must be undergone' Ulmer claims [in order] to invent a new image of ludic ethics" (Holmevik 149).

I don't quite know why, but Marshall Berman's thoughts about how the only way to overcome Modernity is by walking through it (All That is Solid Melts into Air) came to mind here. What also came to mind is Paul Virilio's thoughts on the way in which technological inventions all carry within them the new disasters that they will soon unleash on an unsuspecting public that sees invention as only "progress."
However, these thoughts are not in Homevik's wheelhouse of consideration.

The final chapter seems part apology (for games) and part endorsement for a "ludic transversal" which was mentioned in the Hacker Noir chapter. It's this transversal that Ulmer sees electracy allowing for/underwriting/bringing into being. I'm not going to go into detail here, so just Google the term and Ulmer for more info.

Bottom line: although the book did provide an interesting history of the development of technology networks, as an educator, who does not code, I have no idea what I am supposed to do other than nod my head in tacit agreement, which is not very helpful.