The keys

First of all, you just lost the game.

It is of course a primitive viewpoint, but that just means it surpasses us in some way: the idea of understanding existing in a box, or behind a door, which can be opened through the correct application of a key--a key, then, represents the singular revealing the multiple. The key to the labyrinth was Ariadne's thread, it had nothing to do with Theseus or the Minotaur, those two were interchangeable, like Beowulf and Grendel (as Gardner has noted). The key to the Langlois reading is like a thread, which I am entirely incapable of rolling into a ball, but I think it can be indicated in certain spots. On page 3: "These changes cannot be captured by conventional theories focused on the study of meaning, as they result from the introduction of new software systems whose processes are always hidden behind a cultural interface." What is the cultural interface? The analyst. The processes of the system are hidden by their revelation. Langlois wants us to take into account the necessary influence a priori of the system upon the articulation of the system. Of course the system only exists as a series of points of articulation (if viewed in series), so like the Deleuze and Guattari method of always placing the trace back on the map, this seems to be a problem mainly of precedence. The system precedes its own articulation, which must then consist in a continuous tracing back of its own source. "The economies of meaning production" (p 4) is a good way of putting it, it has to do with where we locate (therefore allocate) value. It is an awareness that the obvious order--hardware precedes software--must be reversed in order to advance. It's all software. But I don't know if I agree when she says that "The first challenge lies in finding a theoretical framework to take into account..." (p 20), doesn't that constitute an unnecessary return to structuralism? Of course, a theoretical framework will have to exist, but it should be produced by its own articulation (I realize this goes nowhere). Maybe what I'm saying is that we need to feed Wikipedia until it becomes bigger than everything else. The problem of the representations (Empire of Fashion vs. Harry Potter) seems to be to find a representation which includes both of them as terms which could be equivalent (that might be Wikipedia). If we're playing a game, fiction is supposed to constitute cheating, as opposed to the technical writing (in its various forms) which is how you're supposed to play the game. It seems the rules have to be rewritten to acknowledge that you were always supposed to cheat. Of course, it's not cheating if you don't get caught, but that's fascism. So even if Wikipedia is God, it is as necessary as it always has been to allow the devil to roam freely through it. Maybe the best way to prevent cheating is to make everyone try to cheat at the same time. But then what about the people who aren't willing or able to cheat? Ah, there's the framework, I suppose.

I like the Wark reading better. Talking about Actor-Network Theory seems to sidestep the issue Wark is attempting to grapple with directly: we're not movie stars (not yet), we're players. Who says "I'm a player"? We tend not to like those people. But that's because they're the ones winning the game. And it's not really a game like chess, it's more like an online shooter, you can die as many times as you want, but if you keep dying you get frustrated and take off your headphones, leave the computer behind and go do something more "productive" like going to hell. Of course the immediate problem with this phrasing is that we are supposed to be killers. But isn't that the way it always has been? The goal seems to be to recontextualize our ideas about living and dying in the arena so that we no longer fear the opponent we see coming towards us. It appears inevitable that in order to overcome death (avoid death) we must become death. But that very inevitability is our real opponent, and he (she it) doesn't follow the rules. Shooting another player is always a misfire, we were always aiming at the programmer, and of course you can't use the design to fight the designer. So we must all learn to cheat, not by finding the loopholes in the program from the inside, but by learning to program ourselves. The Wikipedia model seems relevant here too--that's the only game in town. The three levels are interesting, too--one is you're watching a movie and then it's over, two is the movies are always playing there, in the ether; three is the game, which nevertheless becomes boring. I think perhaps the solution is in the myth of Sisyphus: why did the gods subject him to such cruel and unusual punishment? Not because he deserved it, the gods don't care about things like that. They did it because they wanted something of him. What did they want? Not for him to balance a stone on a hill. They just wanted something to laugh at forever. It's the funniest joke in the world, if you're a god.