Magic or Mayhem? New Texts and New Literacies in Technological Times
The title of this session comes from a 1999 computer game, Magic and Mayhem. A highly literary fantasy/problem solving game drawing on myth and narratives ranging from Classical Greek to Arthurian. Initially a perfect choice for a curriculum designed around fantasy and popular culture, the game examplifies what it might means for literacy to be shifting in the direction of design (Kress and van Leeuin 1996. Kress 1995, New London group 1996 et al.). Yet, also characteristically, despite the enthusiasm of teachers workingin the project with which this paper is concerned, the game was ultimatly rejected as a textual choice because of age ratings and attendant fears. violence, panics, and community apprehensions about the anti-social and anti-literacy nature of games. ‘Magic and Mayhem’ speaks both to the possibilities and to the disruptiveness of linking literacy and curriculum with computer games.
The Video Game as an Emergent Media Form
The emergent cultural form of the video game indicates two possible shifts in the direction of pop media. The success of the games with teenagers points towards a post broadcast era, where cinema and television are finally superseded as dominant media forms. The success of Nintendo and Sega points towards the growth of distinctively Japanese pop media styles within the global pop matrix. Both trends are difficult to analyse, but do lend themselves to the speculative form of the essay, within which one can trace the issues of gender, representation and desire they raise for media regulation and screen theory.
Consuming Electronics: Japan's Strategy for Control
Consumer electronics has been one of the boom industries of the postwar era. It is now almost completely dominated by Japanese companies who have proved themselves adept at refining technologies borrowed from the West and at exporting cheaper, quality products back to the West. A protected domestic market, supremacy in miniaturised manufacturing techniques, the careful targeting of key components and the shrewd analysis of social trends have been the hallmarks of Japan's strategy for control of a sector from which innovations can 'trickle up' to even larger markets.