my mind on books

In reading, one should notice and fondle details. There is nothing wrong about the moonshine of generalization when it comes after the sunny trifles of the book have been lovingly collected. If one begins with a ready-made generalization, one begins at the wrong end and travels away from the book before one has started to understand it. Nothing is more boring or more unfair to the author than starting to read, say, Madame Bovary, with the preconceived notion that it is a denunciation of the bourgeoisie. We should always remember that the work of art is invariably the creation of a new world, so that the first thing we should do is to study that new world as closely as possible, approaching it as something brand new, having no obvious connection with the worlds we already know. When this new world has been closely studied, then and only then let us examine its links with other worlds, other branches of knowledge.

— Vladimir Nabokov, “Good Readers and Good Writers,” from Reading in Bed: Personal Essays on the Glories of Reading selected & edited by Steven Gilbar

[Continuing an occasional ‘mind alphabet’ series. I recently came across several things dealing with virtual worlds, not exactly games, but related…]

• Mitch Kapor spoke at Berkeley’s I School about Second Life (podcast). Kapor believes that virtual worlds such as Second Life will become the next big “disruptive innovation” on a par with the personal computer and the Internet (topics of his two earlier talks in the series). Currently virtual worlds are in the early adopter stage, according to Kapor, comparable to the early “DOS era” of PCs.

• Also Freakonomics is running a Q&A with Second Life creator Philip Rosedale (so far all Q no A)…

• A recent book on the topic: Exodus to the Virtual World: How Online Fun Is Changing Reality by Edward Castronova:

Virtual worlds have exploded out of online game culture and now capture the attention of millions of ordinary people: husbands, wives, fathers, mothers, workers, retirees. Devoting dozens of hours each week to massively multiplayer virtual reality environments (like World of Warcraft and Second Life), these millions are the start of an exodus into the refuge of fantasy, where they experience life under a new social, political, and economic order built around fun. Given the choice between a fantasy world and the real world, how many of us would choose reality? Exodus to the Virtual World explains the growing migration into virtual reality, and how it will change the way we live–both in fantasy worlds and in the real one.

Some books related to games, further exploring the philosophical, psychological or cultural implications:

• Gamer Theory by McKenzie Wark (with a superb site at The Future of the Book, including a networked version of the text with reader discussions.)

Ever get the feeling that life’s a game with changing rules and no clear sides, one you are compelled to play yet cannot win? Welcome to gamespace. Gamespace is where and how we live today. It is everywhere and nowhere: the main chance, the best shot, the big leagues, the only game in town. In a world thus configured, McKenzie Wark contends, digital computer games are the emergent cultural form of the times. Where others argue obsessively over violence in games, Wark approaches them as a utopian version of the world in which we actually live. Playing against the machine on a game console, we enjoy the only truly level playing field–where we get ahead on our strengths or not at all.

Gamer Theory uncovers the significance of games in the gap between the near-perfection of actual games and the highly imperfect gamespace of everyday life in the rat race of free-market society. The book depicts a world becoming an inescapable series of less and less perfect games. This world gives rise to a new persona. In place of the subject or citizen stands the gamer. As all previous such personae had their breviaries and manuals, Gamer Theory seeks to offer guidance for thinking within this new character. Neither a strategy guide nor a cheat sheet for improving one’s score or skills, the book is instead a primer in thinking about a world made over as a gamespace, recast as an imperfect copy of the game.

• Everything Bad is Good for You by Steven Berlin Johnson: “In this provocative, intelligent, and convincing endorsement of today’s mass entertainment, national bestselling author Steven Johnson argues that the pop culture we soak in every day-from “The Lord of the Rings” to “Grand Theft Auto” to “The Simpsons”-has been growing more and more sophisticated and, far from rotting our brains, is actually posing new cognitive challenges that are making our minds measurably sharper.”

• The Grasshopper: Games, Life and Utopia by Bernard Suits (which I found via a review at Virtual Philosopher)

In the mid twentieth century the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein famously asserted that games are indefinable; there are no common threads that link them all. “Nonsense,” says the sensible Bernard Suits: “playing a game is a voluntary attempt to overcome unnecessary obstacles.” The short book Suits wrote demonstrating precisely that is as playful as it is insightful, as stimulating as it is delightful. Suits not only argues that games can be meaningfully defined; he also suggests that playing games is a central part of the ideal of human existence, so games belong at the heart of any vision of Utopia.

• Finite and Infinite Games: A Vision of Life as Play and Possibility by James P. Carse, which begins:

There are at least two kinds of games. One could be called finite, the other infinite.

A finite game is played for the purpose of winning, an infinite game for the purpose of continuing the play.

• review of Katherine Nelson’s Young Minds in Social Worlds: Experience, Meaning, and Memory. at American Scientist
• review of Christine Kenneally’s The First Word: The Search for the Origins of Language. also at American Scientist
• Baboon Metaphysics by Dorothy Cheney and Robert Seyfarth discussed on NPR’s Fresh Air
• Oliver Sacks’ Musicophilia is discussed at Historical / Present
  
• Of course, Mind Hacks has reported on the Pinker-Churchland debate over The Stuff of Thought; helping out those of us who don’t have access to Nature

American Scientist Online has published this review by George Lakoff of Ray Jackendoff‘s new book, Language, Consciousness, Culture: Essays on Mental Structure (Jean Nicod Lectures)

Link to Authors@Google: Ray Jackendoff

[tags] George Lakoff, Ray Jackendoff, review, book, linguistics [/tag]

Following up the recent post here on “Philosophy and TV” … “Pop Goes Philosophy” is a monthly column at PopMatters from George Reisch, the editor of the Popular Culture and Philosophy Series at Open Court. Discussing the relationship between philosophy and popular culture in his latest column (in response to an article in the Chronicle of Higher Education), Reisch concludes:

When philosophy went pop and the doors of the ivory tower were thrown open, in other words, the point was not to lure the public inside. Some may wander in, of course, and find they like that “extremely self-reflexive relationship” Asma describes. But the vast majority hope that philosophers will take the chance to get outside, to look up from their intense focus on their own tradition and take seriously what’s going on in popular culture.

Open Court also has a podcast series drawn from the various “… and Philosophy” books. I can’t wait to download some of these, with titles like: “Knowing When to Be Afraid: Rationality and Suspense” (from Hitchcock and Philosophy) and “Why Make a Matrix? And Why You Might Be in One” (from More Matrix and Philosophy).