October 18, 2012
Metagaming is a broad term usually used to define any strategy, action or method used in a game which transcends a prescribed ruleset, uses external factors to affect the game, or goes beyond the supposed limits or environment set by the game. Another definition refers to the game universe outside of the game itself. In simple terms, it is the use of out-of-game information or resources to affect one’s in-game decisions.
The term metagame arose in mathematics, passed to military use, and then to politics to describe actions or events that may have been originally thought of as outside the bounds of the situation in question, but that in fact play an important role in its outcome. For example, a specific military operation could be thought of as a game, with the political ramifications of that operation on the war in general as the metagame.
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October 17, 2012
Virtual crime or in-game crime refers to a virtual criminal act that takes place in a massively multiplayer online game (MMOG), usually an MMORPG. The huge time and effort invested into such games can lead online ‘crime’ to spill over into real world crime, and even blur the distinctions between the two.
Some countries have introduced special police investigation units to cover such ‘virtual crimes.’ South Korea is one such country and looked into 22,000 cases in the first six months of 2003. Several interpretations of the term ‘virtual crime’ exist. Some legal scholars opt for a definition based on a report on what was the first prominent case, a ‘rape in cyberspace.’
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October 17, 2012
Gold farming is playing a massively multiplayer online game to acquire in-game currency that other players purchase in exchange for real-world money. People in China and in other developing nations have held full-time employment as gold farmers.
While most game operators expressly ban the practice of selling in-game currency for real-world cash, gold farming is lucrative because it takes advantage of economic inequality and the fact that much time is needed to earn in-game currency. Rich, developed country players, wishing to save many hours of playing time, may be willing to pay substantial sums to the developing country gold farmers. In 2009 the global market for gold farming was valued at around $3 billion annually.
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October 16, 2012
Anti-nationalism denotes the sentiments associated with the opposition to nationalism, arguing that it is undesirable or dangerous. Some anti-nationalists are humanitarians or humanists who pursue an idealist form of world community, and self-identify as world citizens.
They reject chauvinism, jingoism, and militarism, and want humans to live in peace rather than perpetual conflict. They do not necessarily oppose the concepts of countries, nation states, national boundaries, cultural preservation or identity politics.
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October 16, 2012
Deutsche Physik (literally: ‘German Physics’) or ‘Aryan Physics’ was a nationalist movement in the German physics community in the early 1930s against the work of Albert Einstein and other modern theoretically based physics, labeled ‘Jewish Physics’ (German: ‘Jüdische Physik’). The term was taken from the title of a 4-volume physics textbook by Philipp Lenard in the 1930s.
This movement began as an extension of a German nationalistic movement in the physics community which went back as far as World War I. In 1915, during fighting between the German army and Belgian resistance fighters after the German invasion in Belgium, the library of the Katholieke Universiteit in Leuven caught fire when German troops looted and set fire to the town. The loss of the library led to a protest note by British scientists, which was signed also by eight distinguished British scientists, namely William Bragg, William Crookes, Alexander Fleming, Horace Lamb, Oliver Lodge, William Ramsay, Baron Rayleigh, and J.J. Thomson, and in which it was assumed that the war propaganda mentioned corresponded to real behavior of German soldiers.
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October 11, 2012
In Marxist theory, human society consists of two parts: the base and superstructure; the base comprehends the forces and relations of production — employer-employee work conditions, the technical division of labor and property relations — into which people enter to produce the necessities and amenities of life.
These relations determine society’s other relationships and ideas, which are described as its superstructure: its culture, institutions, political power structures, roles, rituals, and state. The base determines (conditions) the superstructure, yet their relation is not strictly causal, because the superstructure often influences the base; the influence of the base, however, predominates. In Orthodox Marxism, the base determines the superstructure in a one-way relationship. However, in more advanced forms and variations of Marxist thought their relationship is not strictly one-way, as some theories claim that just as the base influences the superstructure, the superstructure also influences the base.
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October 11, 2012
In sociology, articulation labels the process by which particular classes appropriate cultural forms and practices for their own use. The term appears to have originated from the work of Italian political theorist Antonio Gramsci, specifically from his conception of ‘superstructure’ (culture, institutions, political power structures, roles, rituals, and state, which are supported by the ‘base,’ the forces and relations of production). In this theory, cultural forms and practices have relative autonomy; socio-economic structures of power do not determine them, but rather they relate to them.
‘The theory of articulation recognizes the complexity of cultural fields. It preserves a relative autonomy for cultural and ideological elements (…) but also insists that those combinatory patterns that are actually constructed do mediate deep, objective patterns in the socio-economic formation, and that the mediation takes place in struggle: the classes fight to articulate together constituents of the cultural repe[r]toire in particular ways so that they are organized in terms of principles or sets of values determined by the position and interests of the class in the prevailing mode of production.’
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October 10, 2012
The Adventures of Tintin: Breaking Free is an anarchist parody of the popular Tintin series of comics. An exercise in detournement (turning expressions of the capitalist system and its media culture against itself), the book was written under the pseudonym J. Daniels and published by Attack International in 1988. It has recently been re-printed by anarchist publishers Freedom Press which includes for the first time Tintin’s earlier adventures during the Wapping dispute as told in ‘The Scum,’ a 1986 pamphlet which was produced in solidarity with the printworkers.
The story features a number of characters based on those from the original series by Hergé, notably Tintin himself and Captain Haddock (referred to only as ‘the Captain’ and depicted here as being Tintin’s uncle), but not the original themes or plot. Snowy is featured on the cover – being especially visible on the first edition’s cover – but not in the narrative. The story tracks Tintin’s development from a disaffected, shoplifting youth to a revolutionary leader.
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October 10, 2012
In music, sampling is the act of taking a portion, or sample, of one sound recording and reusing it as an instrument or a sound recording in a different song or piece. Sampling was originally developed by experimental musicians working with musique concrète and electroacoustic music, who physically manipulated tape loops or vinyl records on a phonograph.
In the late 1960s, the use of tape loop sampling influenced the development of minimalist music and the production of psychedelic rock and jazz fusion. In the 1970s, DJs manipulating vinyl on turntables gave birth to hip hop music, the first popular music genre based originally around the art of sampling.
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October 9, 2012
The propaganda model is a conceptual model in political economy advanced by Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky that states how propaganda, including systemic biases, function in mass media. The model seeks to explain how populations are manipulated and how consent for economic, social and political policies is ‘manufactured’ in the public mind due to this propaganda. The theory posits that the way in which news is structured (through advertising, media ownership, government sourcing and others) creates an inherent conflict of interest which acts as propaganda for undemocratic forces.
First presented in their 1988 book ‘Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media,’ the ‘propaganda model’ views the private media as businesses interested in the sale of a product—readers and audiences—to other businesses (advertisers) rather than that of quality news to the public. Describing the media’s ‘societal purpose,’ Chomsky writes, ‘… the study of institutions and how they function must be scrupulously ignored, apart from fringe elements or a relatively obscure scholarly literature.’
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October 9, 2012
‘Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media’ (1988), by Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky, is an analysis of the news media, arguing that the mass media of the United States ‘are effective and powerful ideological institutions that carry out a system-supportive propaganda function by reliance on market forces, internalized assumptions, and self-censorship, and without overt coercion.’
The title derives from the phrase ‘the manufacture of consent’ that essayist–editor Walter Lippmann employed in the book ‘Public Opinion’ (1922). Chomsky has said that Australian social psychologist Alex Carey, to whom the book was dedicated, was in large part the impetus of his and Herman’s work. The book introduced the propaganda model of the media. A film, ‘Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media,’ was later released based on the book.
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October 9, 2012
Repressive desublimation [dih-suhb-luh-mey-shuhn] is a term first coined by philosopher and sociologist Herbert Marcuse in his 1964 work ‘One-Dimensional Man, ‘that refers to the way in which, in advanced capitalism, ‘sexuality is liberated (or rather liberalized) in socially constructive forms’ so as to serve, rather than to challenge, forms of social control.
Instead of acting against the social order (as the repressive hypothesis would suggest), sexual liberation was thus co-opted to support the status quo, through the undoing of sublimations (the conversion of negative impulses into positive behavior) and the release of pleasure in socially approved forms.
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