<<Nguyen [creator of Flappy Bird] wanted to make games for people like himself: busy, harried, always on the move. “I pictured how people play,” he says, as he taps his iPhone and reaches his other hand in the air. “One hand holding the train strap.” He’d make a game for them.>> https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/the-flight-of-the-birdman-flappy-bird-creator-dong-nguyen-speaks-out-112457/

"There is no variation or evolution in gameplay throughout the game, as the pipes always have the same gap between them and there is no end to the running track, having only the flap and ding sounds and the rising score as rewards." again Flappy Bird

"We could have games for anything. Games for attending classes, co-working, and making art. Games for work. Games for just hanging out. We're going to make these kinds of games. But at this point, it's time we stop thinking about them as games and start considering them part of a broader field: spatial interfaces." https://darkblueheaven.com/spatialinterfaces/

"The accumulation of gadgets hides these meanings Those who use these devices do not understand them; those who invent them do not understand much else. That is why we may *not*, without great ambiguity, use technological abundance as the index of human quality and cultural progress." Wright Mills (1959)

interface proletarization: disappearance of navigation, the user doesn't go anywhere, things come to them

a good interface: one that, despite its complexity, you can understand so well that you can forget about it

e.g. the theremin

"I realized that we can't have a single good term to describe what we do with digital media for a reason.

In the 1960s-1970s digital media pioneers like Alan Kay systematically simulated most existing mediums in a computer. Computers, and various computing devices which followed (such as "smart" phones)came to support reading, viewing, participating, playing, remixing, collaborating.. and also many new functions.

This is why 20th century term s- reader, viewer, participant, publisher, player, user - all apply."

Lev Manovich in 2011

http://lab.softwarestudies.com/2011/07/how-do-you-call-person-who-is.html

currently in the rabbit hole of ppl programming on their mobile

manipulation vs customization

if agency is the ability to interrupt automatized behavior, then rewiring the computer means acquiring agency in a computer system

"From the perspective of system developers, a utilitarian morality governs technology use. The good user is one who adopts the systems we design and uses them as we envisioned (Redmiles et al., 2005). Similarly, the bad or problematic user is the one who does not embrace the system or device. This creates a moral problem, a stain to be eradicated." https://www.ics.uci.edu/~djp3/classes/2012_01_INF134/papers/nonuse-ozchi.pdf

ok, I finally have a synthetic table of what I mean by "user proletarianization" https://networkcultures.org/entreprecariat/the-user-condition-03-user-proletarianization/

in other words, user proletarianization is a form of functional integration

summary

angry birds (action) vs flappy bird (behavior) for now in Italian, but soon to be translated and expanded

https://not.neroeditions.com/interfacce-aviarie-angry-birds-flappy-bird/

the most "active" user of an hegemonic technology is the one who decides not to use it

"Hence one has to ask what happens existentially when I press a key. What happens when I press a typewriter key, a piano key, a button on a television set or on a telephone. What happens when the President of the United States presses the red button or the photographer the camera button. I choose a key, I decide on a key. I decide on a particular letter of the alphabet in the case of a typewriter, on a particular note in the case of a piano, on a particular channel in the case of a television set, or on a particular telephone number. The President decides on a war, the photographer on a picture. Fingertips are organs of choice, of decision." Flusser

"At root, [World of Warcraft] is not simply a fantasy landscape of dragons and epic weapons but a factory floor, an information-age sweatshop. custom tailored in every detail for cooperative ludic labor" Galloway, The Interface Effect, 44

@entreprecariat how about those that do detouring, hacking, reverse engineering etc?

@rra @entreprecariat Possibly, or perhaps sometimes those tactics are slightly less insidious versions of the same or are trying to position the hacker closer to the top of the pyramid. Refusal is still more radical, no?

@entreprecariat @eel are you an "active" enough user of a hegemonic technology to log into facebook every day but then only use it in ways that undermine facebook, convince other users to leave, fuck up their analytics etc

@entreprecariat 100%

@entreprecariat I don't like the word, not only because I am allergic to Marxism (having lived in the paradise delivered) but also because word's origin is coming back to people who only own their children. Maybe the Vatican Latin dictionary has some root words for people who only own a smartphone?

@saper yeah, the term is heavy. I borrow this specific understanding from Bernard Stiegler. I'm also pondering if bringing Marxism to the table is necessary or not (alienation/estrangement are useful concepts). A simple way to solve it, is to turn the focus to the means and speak therefore of "interface industrialization"

@entreprecariat Ok, thank you. The comparison is so appealing that I wonder what pitfalls are hidden there... it's inspiring

@entreprecariat on the other hand, I was reading Antonio Negri :)