Language games, the legitimation of knowledge

In immediately designating the field of his text as knowledge in computerized societies, Lyotard opens a space for cybernetics to both implicitly and explicitly inform what he is saying. I didn't realize until section 6 that 'knowledge' is translated from savoir and 'learning' from connaissance, a distinction that I understand to be quantitative vs. qualitative (more informally, having to do with familiarity). For this reason I'm interested in Lyotard's assertion that in the next general transformation, the nature of knowledge "can fit into the new channels, and become operational, only if learning is translated into quantities of information" (4).

This radical proposition then is developed by Lyotard's discussion of how knowledge is legitimated, and he suggests that 'traditional' theory is more invested in narrative, whereas 'critical' theory is more concerned with self-reflexive questions. The notion of credibility (extending to Lyotard's assertion that postmodernism is incredulity toward metanarratives) and of who is authorized to be believed stands out to me as a point through which to begin unpacking the text. The continued references to games, and language games in particular, really intrigues me, especially in terms of how the rules of the game are legitimated, and then what that game legitimates (a passage that interested me was on p. 24). In addition, it is interesting that Lyotard uses the term 'performativity' in the text in very much the way that the concept of performative utterances was set out by J.L. Austin, and yet that he also uses performativity with respect to systems-- "the optimization of the global relationship between input and output" (10). With regards to this question, I was particularly interested in section 12 and pages 64-65. I am somehow tenuously linking the idea that knowledge can be legitimated through performativity to the idea that the disembodied definition of information set forth in the Macy Conferences created rules for a game wherein if a technology could be developed with this definition as its 'basis,' the basis was legitimated. The idea of 'moves' is also fascinating.

Because it is a report on knowledge, it is interesting to me how self-referential Lyotard gets about the idea of the university, or even with his examples, e.g. "The university is sick." Also, "Copernicus states that the path of the planets is circular" is an interesting choice because so much of Lyotard's discussion has to do with knowledge possibly circulating as currency in the future, with all attendant questions of access and power.