The first part — aptly called ‘Level 1’— is a must-see for anyone who would want a better understanding of games and its socio-historical dynamics; and the larger view of the people, ideologies and technology that gave birth to this ever-evolving cultural phenomenon.

Level 1: Games as by-products of war and societal changes
The Cold War’s promise of mutually assured destruction resulted in a disquieting standoff, which drove computer technology to create missile simulations — an important process in predicting the effects of a nuclear war. This same computer technology was used to create games such as the ‘Cathode Ray Tube Amusement Device’ in 1947, which involved aiming missiles at a target, and was inspired by the radar displays used in World War II.

The same warfare technology also gave birth to ‘Tennis for Two’ in 1958. It’s credited to be one of first electronic games to use a graphical display. This game, which simulates a game of tennis or ping pong on an oscilloscope, was developed on an analogue computer by William Higinbotham. He was an American physicist who helped found the nuclear non-proliferation group, Federation of American Scientists. Apparently, he created this game to amuse visitors to Brookhaven National Laboratory annual visitors’ day.

The game’ Spacewar!’ created in 1962 exploded, not surprisingly, during the mania of space exploration — another frontier for conquest by the Cold War super-powers.

The 70s, with its hippy movement and worldwide openness to change, was an exciting time for games development. 1972 saw the birth of the first home gaming console, the Magnavox Odyssey. It was designed by German-born American inventor Ralph Baer, a leading figure in the development of video games and the video game industry. The Magnavox Odyssey became known as the all-purpose box that could be hooked up to the box of all boxes at the time: the television. While the TV was the model of passivity leaving users to merely watch and receive, Magnavox allowed users for the first time to control the TV.

During the same year, Nolan Bushell and Ted Dabney founded Atari, Inc., which signaled the birth of gaming as an industry. Atari became a pioneer in arcade games, home video game consoles, and home computers. Its most products — the most popular of which is the game ‘Pong’ — helped define the computer entertainment industry from the 1970s to the mid 1980s. The original ‘Pong’ was an arcade version of the ‘Table tennis’, the best-selling game of Magnavox Odyssey. In a time when women’s emancipation movement was gaining power in America, playing Pong somehow sparked a liberating experience. Located in bars, this video arcade was something accessible to the women who now ventured into these formerly male domains. According to the documentary, it became quite common to challenge men to Pong competitions.

Across the other end of the world, Japan was also seeing this new wave of game development. Tomohiro Nishikado created Space Invaders, which was later licensed to Atari. It was such a huge success in Japan that it triggered a 100 yen coin shortage. The smash arcade hit reflected the strong push for developing electronics in Japan at that time, and the collective experience of the atomic bomb. In the words of the documentary makes, Space Invaders, combined the culture of Godzilla and the technology of games as it was literally a game where weapons of mass destruction were dropping from the sky.

Unlike the Age-of-Aquarius-70’s, the 80s saw a time of big money and big business. The games technology was getting better and better and an influx of games hit the market. Atari increasingly became more bureaucratic, marketing and business-oriented.  Rather than creating creative games, the focus shifted to sales, and the goal was set to get more and more games into the market, at the expense of quality and creativity. Not surprisingly, this worked entirely against the company as sales dropped and many games remained unpurchased.
The 80s might have been marked by the shift from activism to big business, but it also was a time when the Cold War games were starting to fall into the background and new concepts of games were emerging. In a period where space shooting or Pong-derivative games were the mode, other new genre of games was spreading their wings.

Pacman was born in Japan. Designed by Toru Iwatani, it’s credited to be the first game to have a protagonist. It reflected Japan’s different ‘tolerance for cuteness’ (evident up to the present) and a different way of perceiving games. Its inventor wanted to create a game that would appeal to both males and females, which made him turn to food — his pizza to be more precise — as inspiration.

In Russia, Alex Pajitnov invented ‘Tetris’, again paving the way for a new genre of games. Tetris was not cultural-specific and required a different way of thinking in real-time.  Decades later, nearly every video game console and computer operating system, as well as other mobile devices would have Tetris (or one of its many variants) available for users. People would close their eyes and still see the Tetris shapes falling endlessly.

While the Cold War games started to fade, and the control of Atari in the gaming industry began to waver, other new players by the name of Nintendo and the plumber, Mario, were about to enter the scene. And society was undergoing its own change of guards.
(Up next: Level 2)

When I was his age, my brother and I didn’t have any game consoles or personal computers. Our first experience with digital games came about a year or two later in the form of ‘Pyramid’ a built-in game on a black Casio digital watch. It was a gift from our Tito (Uncle) Alex working in Saudi Arabia (all nephews and nieces got one). I was thrilled not because it was ‘imported’, but because I was challenged to score higher than my brother and cousins. Yep, it was exciting for me to be able to catch the little triangles falling and make sure if all fell nicely in place to form a big pyramid. I had no idea then that Tetris existed and that I would be addicted to it in the future. Anyway, I guess the first signs of my obsessive nature started to reveal itself as it became my daily goal, wherever I was — bathroom no exception — to top the previous day’s score. I was also very pleased with myself when I discovered that pressing a hidden button gave me more chances allowing me to play longer.

Then came Nintendo’s ‘Game & watch’, handheld electronic games that were simply fast and fun to play. I can still see very clearly in mind the words, ‘GAME A’ and ‘GAME B’. These were pretty much the level of difficulties, but that was enough.  

My first ‘Game & watch’ was the game, ‘Chef’. Chef had to catch the food in his pan, while a cat did its best to steal it, and a smug mouse took the food Chef spilled on the floor. The shapes of the sausages, chicken drumstick falling so fast are still imprinted in my mind, but most especially the panicky expression on the very simple and yet memorable illustration of Chef. Again, my inquisitive mind took over as I found out that if I pressed the ACL button long enough, I could get the highest score of 999

Then I moved on to the big time. Well, not me exactly, but my older cousins who bought an Atari game console. The younger batch, to which I belonged, was not allowed to play whenever we wanted. We had to be at our very best behaviour while the older ones played Space Invaders and Asteroid. And then, only after several hours of playing (if and when they took a break) were we allowed to take turns. I remember watching with awe as the boys shot the asteroids and bought down the invaders. I simply thought, ‘I could do that, and even better’ and making a mental note to pray to Jesus later on and ask for super powers in case aliens invaded the planet.

After that I was introduced to the Legend of Zelda (thanks to the same uncle who bought us the Nintendo family computer) and then there was no turning back. I can still feel the awe of holding that shiny golden cartridge in my hand: I was marked by the game-wanderlust and from then on, games would play a significant role in my life and my imaginings.  For the first time, my love for storytelling was merged with the thrill of exploration, puzzle-solving and exploration. I didn’t have any inkling that such childhood experiences in digital games would someday be a part of a collective engagement with technology that would be critically studied, and will form one of the many perspectives from which to view today’s society and culture.

This year’s theme was ‘Free’: not just the price, but the freedom to flow, create and re-create spaces and interfaces around and within us.

One of the topics that struck me the most was the talk on ‘walking through walls’ by Molly Wright Steenson. It was a military strategy used by units of the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) on its attack on the city of Nablus in April 2002. Described as ‘inverse geometry’ as it re-organised the ‘urban syntax’, it used the streets, roads, alleys, or courtyards that constitute the syntax of the city in a non-traditional way; as well as the external doors, internal stairwells, and windows that constitute the order of buildings, the soldiers moved horizontally through blasted walls, and vertically through blasted ceilings and floors. Because the rebels interpreted the spaces made by doors, windows and alleys in a traditional manner — places where you can walk through or enter, but also places where you can be trapped and confronted — Aviv Kochavi, then commander of the Paratrooper Brigade decided to perceive these spaces not in the same way as every architect did. He considered it forbidden territory and thus looked for other ways of moving through the spatial boundaries they were in.

“…. We interpreted the alley as a place forbidden to walk through, and the door as a place forbidden to pass through, and the window as a place forbidden to look through, because a weapon awaits us in the alley, and a booby trap awaits us behind the doors. This is because the enemy interprets space in a traditional, classical manner, and I do not want to obey this interpretation and fall into his traps. Not only do I not want to fall into his traps, I want to surprise him! This is the essence of war. I need to win. I need to emerge from an unexpected place. And this is what we tried to do.”

I found deeply interesting the unexpected way the space — or the interface — was reinterpreted by the military. In this case, it was not the spatial boundaries that created and directed movement, but it was the movement itself — the walking though walls — that recreated the space around it. “Walking-through-walls” re-conceptualised the city as not just the venue, but also the very medium of warfare itself. 

I find this thinking very relevant in our work with experience architecture, where we give structure to and analyse information on different digital platforms: it reminds me to keep on rethinking the interfaces we design and develop; to challenge the usual flows of data and how users access it.

But although I have a grudging admiration for this perspective, the tactic of ‘walking through walls’ has greatly impacted the democratic spaces offered by both public and private domains. By invading and worming through the domestic interiors, the inside has been turned to outside: private domains became thoroughfares of conflict where fighting takes place ‘…within half-demolished living rooms, bedrooms and corridors of poorly built refugee homes, where the television may still be operating and a pot may still on the stove.’

If they have walked through walls and reinvented the spaces around them, what could have then been removed or displaced? Which pathways have been blocked or rendered impassable and which new spaces are going to evolve, adapt and perhaps fill in the gaping holes in the walls?

First of all, they made a funky little video for their song "House of Cards" in a non-traditional way:

"No cameras or lights were used. Instead two technologies were used to capture 3D images: Geometric Informatics and Velodyne LIDAR. Geometric Informatics scanning systems produce structured light to capture 3D images at close proximity, while a Velodyne Lidar system that uses multiple lasers is used to capture large environments such as landscapes. In this video, 64 lasers rotating and shooting in a 360 degree radius 900 times per minute produced all the exterior scenes."

This did not only lead to a very cool music video (something Radiohead's been known to do more often, take for example the classic Street Spirit (Fade Out)), but the technologies used also made it possible to release the actual data gathered for and used in the video. Which is what they did: open source meets music video productions. Or at least a first step in the right direction has been made.

On YouTube, a House of Cards group has been created to keep track of user-generated videos from the released data, and Google Code features details of the project, including the making-of video and a data visualisation tool which allows you to browse 'navigate' the video yourself while it plays. Nice.

• There’s a game console designed for active playing indoors and outdoors
• Crowds naming products and getting paid for it
• And my personal fave — a 2.8 inch karaoke machine (w00t!)

Last time, I posted about Locomatrix, a UK-based company that develops location-based games. Locomatrix creators, Richard Vahrman and Moira Nangle, who described themselves as ‘keen walkers’, wanted to make game that would encourage kids to play outdoors. Now, there’s ‘Swinxs’, a game console designed to encourage active and social play among children. It’s created by Swinxs B.V., a Dutch games developer.  

How it works: You’ve got Swinxs, the game console. which talks, cheers and explains the games, referees and keeps score. Then there are the XS tags, wristbands with microchips that communicate with the console. It starts the games, retrieves player profiles and measures performance. Up to 10 individual players can join in a game.

Players can connect Swinxs to the computer through a USB cable to download new games (for free) and upload performance data at swinxs.com. They can also issue challenges, share experiences. The games are grouped by age and category and are mostly educational and adventure games. A software development kit (SDK) is also available that lets players or third parties create their own games for the system.

I haven’t tried it myself, but it looks like the kids are having fun.

Then there’s ‘NameThis’, an online site where community members submit names for products and services requested by innovators. Their selling point is that why settle for the ideas of the few when you can get the ideas of the crowd. People requesting names pay $99 and within 48 hours are guaranteed to have three ‘world-validated’ names for their ‘thingamajig’. The site is powered by Kluster, which claims to use complex algorithms that let the brightest ideas surface, not just the loudest ones.

They take $80 out of each naming fee and distribute it to the members who create/influence the top three names:

1st Place:    $40 to Namer, $10 Shared Amongst Influencers
2nd Place:    $16 to Namer, $4 Shared Amongst Influencers
3rd Place:    $8 to Namer, $2 Shared Amongst Influencers

Check out the names being bounced around – some are quite witty and right on target, while some can make your hair stand and bring you back to the very first time you tried your hand at conceptualising

Last, but definitely not the least, is the world’s smallest karaoke! Created by a Japanese toy-maker (Tomy Co. Ltd),  it’s a seven centimetre (2.8 inches), on-the-go, must-have gadget for the young pop-star wanna-be. It targets elementary school kids, girls in particular, who adore pop stars.

This so-called ‘Hi-kara machine’ comes with headsets, but can also be used with a second set of headphones or put on speaker mode. Apparently, the invention of the Hi-kara machine follows the trail of an emerging trend in Japan, called ‘hitokara’ -- or "lone karaoke" -- which means going out to sing karaoke alone.

I can imagine myself doing karaoke alone in the house, but it’s much more fun to do it with your friends (and lots of beer and lots more food ;-p ). I think I’d use the Hi-kara not to go on a solo karaoke trip, though, but I love the idea of mobile karaoke! But then again I’m Filipino so I think that’s hard-wired in my genes. ;-p

The theme of this year’s edition of Reboot in Copenhagen was “free”. Is there such a thing as free lunches, software, mobile phones, networks…? What are the social boundaries of the concept of freedom? How free or gratis or libre is the open-source melting pot we dwell in? How much does freedom actually cost?

The conference kicked off with an invigorating talk by Tor Nørretranders in which the proverbial line ”Share your shit” was born and which became something of a motto of the conference. Just like physical shit, intellectual shit (or ideas in other words) need to be shared and released. Otherwise they become waste. In order to be able to continuously generate progressive and effective ideas, we need to share them with the world when they are born and set them free.

At conferences like this, it’s about those two lines a day which your hear and which make perfect sense to you. I certainly had more than two of them and I feel grateful for the insights they provided me with. Thanks to them, the inevitable quasi-intellectual nagging of some of the talks did not disturb me.

Day two was definitely more stimulating with talks like Beauty in web design by Cennydd Bowles, Building the open web by David Recorden and the absolute highlight for me: Complexity and freedom by Flemming Funch. In a smooth and convincing manner the concepts of complexity as self-organizing criticality and freedom were explored and married. In both the realms of nature and nurture complexity means self-organizing criticality and not an equilibrium. This state makes freedom possible and from then on, we are “free” to redefine the concept of freedom until it matches our needs and desires. The speech was intensely intricate and the audience was “in the flow” from start till finish. Even the overtly flamboyant outfit and appearance of Funch failed to distract or raise an eye-brow.

In general the amount of verbal diarrhoea was rather limited and the creative shit-sharing prevailed. Outside the conference too, sharing took place in different forms and shapes. Well, hungover is simply overrated…toch?

More inspiration: www.reboot.dk

In technology, a mashup is a web application that combines data from several sources to form a single integrated tool; i.e. a user can add reviews to tourist locations in Google Maps for the benefit of travelers, thereby creating a new and distinct web service.

Social and networking technologies have given birth to mashups and hybrids. But the principle and practice of mixing unexpected combinations is not just limited to the realm of web applications. It is also refected in other more traditional media.

Imagine Rome and Juliet in modern-day Tokyo, where the warring Capulets and Montagues are represented as Yakuza clans. Hamlet in an Earth devastated by global climate change and where the cyberworld is in a state of war. A Second Dark Age caused by a global energy crisis as setting for ‘The Tempest’.

These are some of the titles from the ‘Manga Shakspeare’ collection by UK publishing house SelfMadeHero. The collection showcases Shakespeare’s classic tomes combined with the iconic Japanese comic book style. It has been flying off the shelf in the UK and Asia since it was released in 2007.

Seven works were released in 2007 as part of the "Manga Shakespeare" series -- "Romeo and Juliet," "Hamlet," "The Tempest," "Richard III," "A Midsummer Night's Dream," "Macbeth" and "Julius Caesar." Adaptations of "Othello" and the comedy "As You Like It" are due out in autumn this year.

Wikipedia defines ‘Manga’ as a Japanese word for comics and print cartoons, and when literally translated, means "whimsical pictures". The dynamic, emotional and cinematic character of Manga complements perfectly the drama, intrigue and intensity of Shakespeare’s plays, magnifying the storytelling prowess of both. This unique approach has gained the interest of a broad audience: it has appealed to the younger audience, and also captured the interest of educators, who have included the series in the school curriculum.

The might of comics worldwide has been evident since its mass publication became more in demand in the early 1900s. Comic books or comic books style-based publications have not only served the call of entertainment, but have been widely-used tools for educational and political reasons.

A great example of educational comic books is The For Beginners® documentary comic book series, which has been passed on from one curious reader to another in many years. It has sold more than one million copies. Its titles range from philosophy to politics, art, and culture, and other concepts and discipline — all of which entertain and respect the intelligence and intellectual curiosity of its audience. ‘Chomsky for Beginners’, ‘Domestic Violence for Beginners’, ‘Erotica for Beginners’, ‘Che for Beginners’, ‘DNA for Beginners’, ‘Elvis for Beginners’, and the list goes on.

My own interest in history, mythology and writing can be traced directly to the comic books my father regularly bought for me and my brother. From the bunch of superheroes in Marvel and DC (which I would re-write so that someone’s bound to fall in love with another), to historic figures like the Native American Hiawatha and the Philippine’s Jose Rizal; from the gods and goddesses in Mount Olympus to the ‘diwata’ (fairy of the forest) Maria — protector of ‘Makiling’, the mountain of my childhood.

My years in college and the early period trudging through the ‘professional world' were spent feeding my imagination with Gaiman’s Sandman comics on one hand, learning the real state of economy in the Philippines with IBON comic strips in another hand, while tucked in my backpack were the reader-friendly political comics I used in training sessions with farmers. And then there was the occasionally required Heavy Metal reading

One thing though -- I was never as smart as my brother who actually drew comic strip for his classmates and charged them for it. ;-p Anyway, see for yourself some of the Manga Shakespeare series artwork.

I *heart* comics!

-- survivors expressing their anger at the Burmese government

We are in trouble, help!
We are hungry!
- written on the road after the storm

Enabled in part, and mediated by today’s internet and networking technologies, citizen journalism—or participatory journalism— has become a more permanent element of the media landscape. Whereas before was a clear delineation between author and reader, news maker and audience; today’s social, networking and collaborative-based applications like blogs, wikis, forums, widgets combined with easy-to-use but hi-tech digicams and mobile computing have  blurred the lines between ‘amateur’ and ‘professional’ in the world of journalism.

That average citizens can engage in the writing, production and distribution of news and opinion is not an entirely new concept. It has been rooted in many struggles for change in world history and advocated in recent years by development workers.

Thanks to many ordinary citizens who participate as both witness and storyteller of the world around them, even more people like us get to see the world from a point of view other than that of oragnised media industries. More than this, in the midst of danger and conflict, the world is given the chance to see what’s real, raw and unglamorous — reality uncut. Like the plight of Burma.

Burmese citizen journalists
The devastation of Burma in recent weeks was not really unleashed by Cyclone Nargis. It was its military junta who made a natural catastrophe an unbearable tragedy. This I learned thanks to the Democratic Voice of Burma and its group of Burmese reporters and photo-journalists — all ordinary citizens — working covertly to bring the world the real story of the storm. The DVB is based in Norway and comprises a handful of Burmese activists in exile.

Burma's military junta, with its tightly controlled state media, paint a picture of a country quickly recovering, with mostly upbeat images of the country's military leaders handing out aid to survivors. Photo-journalists are not allowed to take photos of the more gruesome reality: hungry survivors squatting on roadsides, stinking corpses floating in flooded waters, injured survivors waiting hopelessly for help. Local relief organisations and volunteers are threatened to not coordinate with monks, who are once have gathered in the streets not in protest, but merely to help the communities.

The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies has claimed that as many as 127,990 people may have died as a result of the cyclone, while the UN says more than 100,000 may have perished. The UN also estimated that between 1.6 and 2.5 million people have been severely affected by the disaster.

As of this writing, the UN is still unable to mount a full-scale relief effort, because Burma has not yet granted visas to dozens of disaster relief specialists. This despite the fact that US and French ships loaded with aid are in the waters close to the country, but without clearance to port.  Even Archbishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa has stood up to say that the junta has committed crimes against humanity in its handling of the catastrophe; that the regime had "effectively declared war on its own population."

Thanks to Burmese citizen journalists, we are not kept in the dark and fed false images of recovery Hopefully, the world can repay them with supporting the Burmese people in their struggle not just to survive this natural catastrophe, but also to regain its freedom and a better quality of life.

Dutch people prefer to use Google over the websites of government agencies when searching for government-related information. This was the conclusion of a research conducted by the University of Twente under the commission of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. According to the study, finding out the right kind of information users are looking for either takes too long, or the process seem to be too complicated as majority of the users don't possess the right kind of skills to be able to pull out the information they need from the site. Which 'skills' in particular were not mentioned in the paper, but it's probably about information searching skills. However, the study also revealed that it's not just a matter of possessing the right 'search skills', but more importantly, the way government agencies' websites are built -- the websites are not based on the search behaviour of its target users.

Not a shocking headline for us working in interactive media ('It's the users, stupid!'), but this is still the case for many organisations, both public and private. In the quest to surface all information that a company or institution can offer, they end up overwhelming users instead of helping them. Users end up disoriented and lost. And of course, who would they turn to but Google.

It's a pity the report didn't specify which government agencies sites were evaluated, or the factors that led the researchers to conclude that such websites were not oriented to the users' search behaviour. It's still an interesting point to consider especially in the realm of good governance, where correct and relevant information-gathering and dissemination can contribute to participation, transparency, accountability and effective and efficient processes.