Key ideas
- modernity defined by contradictions, tensions, conflicts, not linear.
- Cold war as an ideological conflict
- Consumer society
- Nuclear threat
- Video games as a product of the cold war and consumer culture
- How the rise of games in the past-war connected to these wider historical developments?
At this point in the lecture we were asked to describe the elements of modern ideals that are represented in the following advertisements
- branding, nuclear family, new appliances, abundance, choice of different brands, white people
- Full fridges, middle class women to upper class women, luxury, branding, this brand=full fridges and ovens, sophistication
- Menu which means choice and options, clean, luxury in transport, Implied narrative of the viewer being the man.
How Hamilton’s collage both celebrates and satirises the consumer society.
- No relation and a lot of distance between figures
- Cut outs of objects make it uncanny, as everything fits a different context and their own separate style, illustrated, images, different angles
- Celebrates by showing off and displaying all the best things of the era.
- Satirised by using stereotypical things that wouldn’t commonly be in a house
- Claustrophobic, escapism, immersive, self- absorbed
The IBM computer
- Technological firsts, brand new magnetic storage, first GUI (mouse pen), first computer network, ARPANET used for text MMOs, IBM designers were making games in free time, Big developments in cybernetics (communication between people and machines) screens, input, output.