Journal articles on the topic 'Virtual disk format'

Abstract: Cloud computing has experienced significant growth in the recent years owing to the various advantages it provides such as 24/7 availability, quick provisioning of resources, easy scalability to name a few. Virtualization is the backbone of cloud computing. Virtual Machines (VMs) are created and executed by a software called Virtual Machine Monitor (VMM) or the hypervisor. It separates compute environments from the actual physical infrastructure. A disk image file representing a single virtual machine is created on the hypervisor’s file system. In this paper, we analysed the runtime performance of multiple different disk image file formats. The analysis comprises of four different parameters of performance namely- bandwidth, latency, input-output operations performed per second (IOPS) and power consumption. The impact of the hypervisor’s block and file sizes is also analysed for the different file formats. The paper aims to act as a reference for the reader in choosing the most appropriate disk file image format for their use case based on the performance comparisons made between different disk image file formats on two different hypervisors – KVM and VirtualBox. Keywords: Virtualization, Virtual disk formats, Cloud computing, fio, KVM, virt-manager, powerstat, VirtualBox.

This article describes the development of an information system for managing the register of serialized items based on a cloud service. Cloud services provide the ability to access computer equipment, hardware resources, disk memory and databases via the Internet in a remote format. The developed information system belongs to the type of information retrieval system. Examples of cloud services include: renting a virtual server; virtual contact center; application rental; data store; private cloud. For development, you need to use the services of cloud services for renting a virtual server.

The most peculiar characteristic of a cultural heritage is represented by its uniqueness. To ensure that an object is preserved against environmental deterioration, vandal attacks, and accidents, modern Cultural Heritage documentation involves 3D scanning technologies. In the case of fragmented artefacts, the digitization process represents an essential prerequisite for facilitating an accurate 3D reconstruction. The aim of this research paper is to present a framework that enables an accurate digital reconstruction of fragmented or damaged artefacts using ornament stencils obtained from 3D scan data. The proposed framework has been applied for the richly adorned ornaments of the fragmented Dacian embossed disk from Piatra Roșie. The case study makes use of the 3D dataset acquired, using a structured light scanner to extract vector displacement maps, which are then applied to the 3D computer-aided design (CAD) model. The output of the framework includes a proposed digital reconstruction of the aurochs fragmented Dacian embossed disk, as well as the ornaments’ stencils database. The proposed framework addresses problems that are associated with 3D reconstruction processes, such as self-intersections, non-manifold geometry, 3D model topology, and file format interoperability. Finally, the resulting 3D reconstruction has been integrated within virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR), and mixed reality (MR) applications, as well as computer-aided manufacturing (CAM) based on additive manufacturing to facilitate the dissemination of the results.

Cloud computing allows for access to ubiquitous data storage and powerful computing resources through the use of web services. There are major concerns, however, with data security, reliability, and availability in the cloud. In this paper, we address these concerns by introducing a novel security mechanism for secure and fault-tolerant cloud information storage. The information storage model follows the RAID (Redundant Array of Independent Disks) concept by considering cloud service providers as independent virtual disk drives. As such, the model utilizes multiple cloud service providers as a cloud cluster for information storage, and a service directory for management of the cloud clusters including service query, key management, and cluster restoration. Our approach not only supports maintaining the confidentiality of the stored data, but also ensures that the failure or compromise of an individual cloud provider in a cloud cluster will not result in a compromise of the overall data set. To ensure a correct design, we present a formal model of the security mechanism using hierarchical colored Petri nets (HCPN), and verify some key properties of the model using model checking techniques.

Multimedia Development of Virtual-Based Google Earth Learning in SKI Subjects in MTs, The development of virtual-based google earth learning multimedia is an effort to visualize places / locations in three dimensions because lectures are insufficient in expressing material orally and using media have not varied used by teachers so that students are unable to understand the material about SKI subjects. This has an impact on one of the factors that make SKI subjects difficult to understand. The research aims to develop multimedia learning SKI (History of Islamic Culture) in Madrasah Tsanawiyah Negeri 1 Solok by using an interactive multimedia format in showing the places where the dawah trip of Prophet Muhaamad saw. in Makkah and to find out the validity of virtual-based google earth learning multimedia. The research methods used are research and development (development research) the ADDIE model developed by Dick and Carry (1) needs analysis; (2) design of the developed product; (3) expert validation and revision; (4) field trials. Instruments for collecting data in this study are interviews, observations, validation sheets. The multimedia that has been developed is then tested for validity by experts using Aikens V. Research results show that the results of virtual-based google earth multimedia validation are categorized as very valid (0.915). Based on the validation results, this virtual-based google earth multimedia is valid for use in ski learning the dawah material of the Prophet Muhammad saw in Makkah.

The article is devoted to the study of political discourse within the virtual space – an "artificial" world created in recent decades with the help of information technologies, where individuals are able to communicate with each other over vast distances, modeling their own personality at will. The research, in particular, is aimed at studyinh how political communication changes in the virtual reality, what linguistic and extralinguistic means are used by political actors when communicating with their electorate and between each other. Using the categories proposed by T. van Dijk, the article proposes the use of new characteristic features for Internet discourse, such as speaker's anonymity, semi-formal tone of communication, more open and competitive expression of opinions, emotionality, etc. for the analysis of communication within the virtual space. The article proposes a clarification of the definition of political discourse, highlights its most important features, defines differences in communicative strategies depending on the gender of the speaker or political actor. With the help of the proposed categories and based on the works of such prominent scholars as R. Wodak, L. de Saussure and T. van Dijk, the article provides a new definition of the concept of political Internet discourse, which is aimed at a more complete consideration of the interaction between individuals within the virtual space. It is suggested to use the categories proposed by T. van Dijk for the analysis of communication within the virtual space, which will allow to single out communicative situations that are directly related to the political sphere. By comparing communicative situations in the "artificial" world with the physical one, it is argued that a characteristic feature of political Internet discourse is the transfer of extralinguistic components through textual communication. It is clarified that in many communicativesituations between political actors and other users, the latter act as the information recipients, limited only to the ability to interact with other recipients. In conclusion, it is suggested to understand political Internet discourse as actions of a linguistic and extralinguistic nature, related to the political sphere and implemented in the virtual space by political actors and ordinary users; actions, which are characterized by the possibility of anonymous subjectivity, semi-formality, a more open and competitive nature of expressing opinions, etc., and in which the transfer of extralinguistic components is achieved mainly through text communication. Based on the categorical clarifications made in the article, strategies for further Internet discourse analysis are developed.

Esta investigación forma parte de un proyecto del grupo DiLeMa, que diseñó un paquete interactivo virtual para la comprensión de textos expositivo-explicativos en formato hipermedial, sobre la base del Modelo constructivo-integrativo de W. Kintsch y van Dijk (1978), Los tres niveles de representación de W. Kintsch (1998), el texto expositivo-explicativo de T. Álvarez, los subtipos del texto expositivo-explicativo de Meyer (1984) y la Web 2.0. Además, presenta un panorama de investigaciones relacionadas con la lectura de textos de dicha tipología, mediante herramientas de la plataforma Moodle, para dar lugar a las metodologías cualitativa y hermenéutico-dialéctica de tres instrumentos de medición, con el fin de llegar al análisis de resultados y a cinco conclusiones como estrategias que buscan cualificar el marco situacional en quince estudiantes. Â

The workflow in modern hospitals entails that the medical treatment of a patient is distributed between several physicians and nurses. This leads to intensive cooperation, which takes place under particular time pressure and requires efficient conveyance of relevant patient-related medical data to colleagues. This requirement is difficult to achieve with traditional data representation approaches. In this paper, we introduce a novel concept of anatomically integrated in-place visualization designed to engage with cooperative tasks on a neurosurgical ward by using a virtual patient’s body as spatial representation of visually encoded abstract medical data. Based on the findings of our field studies, we provide a set of formal requirements and procedures for this kind of visual encoding. Moreover, we implemented a prototype on a mobile device that supports the diagnosis of spinal disc herniation and has been evaluated by 10 neurosurgeons. The physicians have assessed the proposed concept as beneficial, especially emphasizing the advantages of the anatomical integration such as intuitiveness and a better data availability due to providing all information at a glance. Particularly, four of nine respondents have stressed solely benefits of the concept, other four have mentioned benefits with some limitations and only one person has seen no benefits.

Abstract Background: Dysregulated Notch signalling contributes to breast cancer development and progression, but validated tools to measure the level of Notch signalling in breast cancer subtypes and in response to systemic therapy are largely lacking. A transcriptomic signature of Notch signalling would thus be warranted, and in this report, we have established such a classifier. Methods: To generate the signature, we first identified Notch-regulated genes from six basal-like breast cancer cell lines subjected to elevated and reduced Notch signalling by culturing on immobilized Notch ligand Jagged1 or blockade of Notch by g-secretase inhibitors, respectively. From this cadre of Notch-regulated genes, we developed candidate transcriptomic signatures that were trained on a breast cancer patient dataset (the TCGA-BRCA cohort) and a broader breast cancer cell line cohort and sought to validate in independent data sets. Results: An optimal 20-gene transcriptomic signature was selected. We validated the signature on two independent patient datasets (METABRIC and Oslo2) and it showed an improved coherence score and tumour specificity compared with previously published signatures. Furthermore, the signature score was particularly high for basal-like breast cancer, indicating an enhanced level of Notch signalling in this subtype. The signature score was increased after neoadjuvant treatment in the PROMIX and BEAUTY patient cohorts, and a lower signature score generally correlated with better clinical outcome. Conclusions: The 20-gene transcriptional signature has the potential to better stratify patients and to evaluate the response of future Notch-based therapies for breast cancer. Citation Format: Eike-Benjamin Braune, Felix Geist, Xiaojia Tang, Krishna Kalari, Judy Boughey, Liewei Wang, Roberto A. Leon-Ferre, Antonino B. D’Assoro, James N. Ingle, Matthew P. Goetz, Kang Wang, Theodoros Foukakis, Anita Seshire, Dirk Wienke, Urban Lendahl. Identification of a Notch transcriptomic signature for breast cancer [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the AACR-NCI-EORTC Virtual International Conference on Molecular Targets and Cancer Therapeutics; 2023 Oct 11-15; Boston, MA. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Mol Cancer Ther 2023;22(12 Suppl):Abstract nr B013.

Abstract Here we report pre-clinical characterization of the clinical compound BI 1810631, a HER2 specific, EGFR wild-type-sparing tyrosine kinase inhibitor (TKI). BI 1810631 has shown early signs of clinical activity in patients carrying tumors with HER2 aberrations [NCT04886804], mainly comprising HER2 mutations (Heymach et al. 2023). In non-small cell lung cancer, activating mutations in HER2 are found in 2-4% of patients and predominantly cluster in exon 20 within the tyrosine kinase domain (TKD), of which the most frequent variant is A775_G776insYVMA. Studies across tumor cell lines and xenograft mouse models show that BI 1810631 is a potent and selective inhibitor of HER2-driven oncogenic signaling. Compound-mediated reduction of cell growth and survival was observed in mutant HER2 driven Ba/F3 cell systems, in human tumor cell lines in vitro and translated into tumor regressions in a genome-engineered HER2-YVMA mutant xenograft model. The in vivo efficacy of BI 1810631 was further confirmed in HER2 exon 20 mutant patient-derived tumor models. Corresponding biomarker studies in vitro and in vivo showed modulation of pharmacodynamic markers, corroborating the on-target mechanism of action of the compound. These findings demonstrate that HER2 mutations can be effectively addressed by BI 1810631 and support the ongoing and future clinical trials. Citation Format: Ralph A. Neumüller, Birgit Wilding, Dirk Scharn, Anke Baum, Martin Augsten, Irene Waizenegger, Shinji Kohsaka, Valeria Santoro, Paolo Chetta, Lydia Woelflingseder, Johannes Popow, Daniel Gerlach, Peter Ettmayer, Thomas Gerstberger, Julian Fuchs, Matthias Treu, Stephan Zahn, Mark Pearson, Mark Petronczki, Darryl B. McConnell, Norbert Kraut, Flavio Solca. BI 1810631 is a novel EGFR wild-type sparing, HER2-selective small molecule inhibitor that efficiently blocks HER2 mutant-driven lung cancer [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the AACR-NCI-EORTC Virtual International Conference on Molecular Targets and Cancer Therapeutics; 2023 Oct 11-15; Boston, MA. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Mol Cancer Ther 2023;22(12 Suppl):Abstract nr C140.

Text linguistics is a designation of any work oflanguage science devoted to the text as the primary object of enquiry (Dijk 1979). Following Beaugrande (1995), 'text' is viewed here as "an empirical communicative event given through human communication rather than specified by a formal theory". This communicative event rests on a "dynamic dialectic" between the "virtual system" oflanguage and its realisation in the form of an "actual system" emanating from selections made by the text producer (Sa'Adeddin 1995, 1998). These selections are effectuated in terms ofthe expectations and presuppositions (Bloor and Bloor 1991) of the target world audience (see Sa'Adeddin 1987a, 1990, r991) and/or schemes that the producer has on them. A priori, the field of Comparative Literature is as legitimate an area of investigation for the text linguist as it is for the lettrist. This is particularly tnte given the fact that literature is a form of linguistic performance with special status and value, par excellence. As translation is, in the final analysis, a tex:t lir1guistic a_ctivity across langU:a..ge com.munities and a prin1e tool for the comparatist, it is feasible to see it as a bridge between the two disciplines. Being essentially Translation-based, Comparative Literature ;;;n a. l: the bilingual comoaratist in a oaiiicular form of ·.innate' translation, structured on a complex process of interpretation and re- interpretation (see Sa'Adeddin 1990). Translation Criticism involves all the constituents which contribute to text-production and text experiencing (Sa'Adeddin 1995), and which need to be observed in quality assessment, if the comparatist is to proceed with maximum confidence. The intuitive heuristic checklist suggested here may provide the initial grounding for a systematic text analysis procedure, which would be of special relevance to the comparative lettrist. .

Abstract KAT6 paralogs KAT6A (MOZ; MYST3) and KAT6B (MORF; MOZ2; MYST4) are histone acetyltransferase (HAT) enzymes that acetylate histone H3 and thereby epigenetically regulate gene transcription by altering chromatin structure. Dysregulation of KAT6 activity (gene amplification, overexpression, fusion, mutation, etc.) is observed in breast and other cancers. In several subtypes of breast cancer, KAT6A is amplified as part of the 8p11-p12 amplicon and/or is overexpressed in 11 to 15% of overall breast cancer population. Overexpression of KAT6 correlates with worse clinical outcome in ER+/HER2− breast cancers. Here we present the discovery of novel and potent KAT6 inhibitors with robust in vitro and in vivo anti-tumor efficacy and high selectivity against other KAT family members KAT5 and KAT8. Our lead KAT6 inhibitor compounds demonstrate strong anti-proliferative effects in ER positive breast cancer cell lines with KAT6 dysregulation while demonstrating robust target engagement biomarker activity (inhibition of histone H3 acetylation at lysine residue 23). In addition, these compounds exhibit desirable ADME and pharmacokinetic properties including good oral bioavailability in tested species, supporting potential once daily dosing in humans. The lead compounds also demonstrate enhanced in vitro cellular efficacy in breast cancer cell lines when combined with OP-1250, a complete ER antagonist (CERAN), and CDK4/6 inhibitors, illustrating their combination potential. In addition, these lead compounds demonstrate excellent dose-dependent anti-tumor activity resulting in tumor growth inhibition and tumor regression in a KAT6A amplified ER+ breast cancer xenograft model, highlighting their potential as a novel therapy in ER+ breast cancer. Additional nonclinical efficacy testing, and safety profiling of these lead compounds is currently underway to select a clinical candidate. Citation Format: Gopinath S. Palanisamy, Chandregowda Venkateshappa, Megha Goyal, Susanna A. Barratt, Brian R. Hearn, Girish Daginakatte, Aravind A B, Samiulla D S, Kalisankar Bera, Sangeetha S, Leena Khare, Alison D. Parisian, Dirk A. Heerding, Raymond A. Ng, Cyrus L. Harmon, Susanta Samajdar, Murali Ramachandra, David C. Myles. The discovery of potent KAT6 inhibitors that demonstrate anti-tumor activity in preclinical models of ER+ breast cancer [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the AACR-NCI-EORTC Virtual International Conference on Molecular Targets and Cancer Therapeutics; 2023 Oct 11-15; Boston, MA. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Mol Cancer Ther 2023;22(12 Suppl):Abstract nr A044.

Abstract Pancreatic cancer is the fourth leading cause of cancer death in the United States, with a five-year survival rate of less than 8%. Existing therapies have failed to improve pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) patient prognosis. The dense desmoplastic reaction which occurs in PDAC makes it challenging for drugs and immune cells to infiltrate the fibrotic barrier. There is a need to exploit lesser explored targets in PDAC that can influence both the tumor and its microenvironment. One such avenue could be via targeting polyamine metabolism which is upregulated in pancreatic tumors. Though aberrant polyamine upregulation in pancreatic tumors has been known for decades, there has been little progress in translating this information into a PDAC therapeutic strategy. Additionally, there is a dearth of information regarding the dysregulation of polyamine metabolism in human PDAC and its association with clinical outcomes. Thus far, preclinical studies targeting polyamines using polyamine blockade therapy (PBT) has improved survival of pancreatic tumor bearing mice. Literature shows effectiveness of PBT in eliciting an anti-tumor immune response in other tumor types. Whether these results translate to the immune-privileged PDAC microenvironment need to be determined. The present study explores polyamine gene expression in human PDAC samples by mRNA expression analysis of frozen PDAC and Pancreatic intraepithelial neoplasia (PanIN). The Cancer Genome Atlas in the public domain was used to identify clinical outcomes of PDAC patients associated with select polyamine gene expression. Further, the anti-tumor effects of PBT and associated tumor microenvironment changes were identified using in vivo PDAC models and histological assessment. Polyamine dysregulation was found to be evident in human PDAC progression. Also, increased expression of certain polyamine-related genes was associated with poorer survival of pancreatic cancer patients. When targeting polyamines using PBT in immunocompetent C57Bl/6 mice with Pan02 tumor cells injected in the pancreas, PBT significantly increased overall survival. PBT also resulted in an increase in the infiltration of macrophages (F4/80) and expression of T-cell co-stimulatory marker (CD86) as assessed by immunohistochemistry and further quantification of imaging. Based on these changes, we hypothesized that PBT could prime the tumor microenvironment to be more susceptible to existing therapeutics. In conclusion, targeting polyamines using PBT results in increased survival and immune modulation in PDAC. Citation Format: Sai Preethi Nakkina, Sarah B. Gitto, Veethika Pandey, Jignesh G. Parikh, Dirk Geerts, Kenneth P. Olive, Otto Phanstiel, Deborah A. Altomare, Carlo Maurer. Differential expression of polyamine pathways in human pancreatic tumor progression and effects of polyamine blockade therapy on the in vivo pancreatic tumor microenvironment [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the AACR Virtual Special Conference on Pancreatic Cancer; 2021 Sep 29-30. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2021;81(22 Suppl):Abstract nr PO-120.

Objectives: The aim of the research is to create an experimental data set of coronal section images of a human head. Methods: The head of a 49-year-old male cadaver was scanned by computed tomography (CT), then perfused with a green filling material via the bilateral common carotid artery, before being frozen and embedded. The head was sectioned along the coronal plane by a computer-controlled 5520 engraving and milling machine, capable of either 0.03-mm or 0.06-mm interspacing. All images were captured with a Canon 5D-Mk III digital camera. Results: A total of 3854 section images were obtained, each with a resolution of 5760 × 3840 pixels. The number of section images at 0.03- and 0.06-mm interspacing were 1437 and 2417, respectively. All the images were stored in JPG and RAW formats. The image size of each RAW format was about 24.5 MB, whereas for JPG format, the equivalent size was about 5.9 MB. All the RAW and JPG images together occupied 117.35 GB of disk space. Conclusions: The interspacing of this data set section was thinner than those of any comparable studies, and the image resolution was higher, too. This data set was also the first to take coronal sections of the human head. The data set contains image information from the smallest structures within the human head and can satisfy the needs of future developments and applications, such as the virtual operation training systems for otolaryngology, ophthalmology, stomatology, and neurosurgery, and help develop medical teaching software and maps.

The archaeology of disability is a relatively recent and little-known approach in France. While the study of palaeopathology now goes hand in hand with funerary archaeology and osteoarchaeology, the French study of disabilities and disabling pathologies remains marginal and unevenly treated, depending on location, chronology and researcher’s interest. This paper focuses on highlighting the compatibility between this new research area, the obligations of osteoarchaeology, and the benefits of developing a national, diachronic, and interdisciplinary study. A database is designed within an interpretive, consensual framework, that can be adapted to overcome limitations and promote open-minded research on the care of the disabled in their own communities. A preliminary category selection of disabling pathologies has been made. These are trepanation, completely edentulous and/or compensating denture, neuronal impairment, severe scoliosis, Paget's disease, Diffuse Idiopathic Skeletal Hyperostosis (DISH), rickets, dwarfism, infectious diseases, unreduced fracture, amputation, severe degenerative disease and others. This list has been critically reviewed by experts in the field; it will evolve in a somewhat Darwinian fashion. Our database is hosted on the Huma-Num platform, with a management interface and quick access based on multiple tabs. The data includes information about archaeological operations, subjects, and pathologies; it is complemented by pictorial data stored on the Nakala platform. The development involved creating a prototype using HTML, CSS, JavaScript, SQL, and PHP, with features to display, add, modify, and delete operations and subjects. Enhancements have been made, including search optimization, charts, and the ability to export data in CSV format. The database, whose administrative interface can be accessed at archeohandi.huma-num.fr, contains so far 211 existing operations with a total of 1232 registered subjects spread throughout metropolitan France. These initial data reveal numerous research perspectives in osteoarchaeology that can be combined with other research topics, such as virtual reality.

They may have been obscured by the popular media's fascination with the World Wide Web, but for many Net users, Usenet newsgroups still constitute an equally important interactive tool. While Web pages present relatively static information that can be structured through hypertext links and searched using Yahoo! and similar services, newsgroups are fora for open, interactive discussion on virtually any conceivable subject, amongst participants from around the world -- more than any other part of the Net, they are instrumental in the formation of virtual communities by allowing like-minded individuals to get together, exchange their opinions, and organise themselves. Having emerged from email mailing-lists, newsgroups are among the oldest uses of computer networks for communication; based around a simple exchange of all new postings among the participants, they offer few of the comforts of more modern technologies, and so it is not surprising that a number of services have begun to provide powerful Web interfaces for newsgroup access. One of the oldest and most reknowned amongst these sites is Deja News. Since its launch in May 1995, Deja News has expanded to cover around 50,000 different newsgroups, which are contained in a memory archive that is several hundred gigabytes in size, according to some reports (Woods, n.pag.); the company itself boasts accesses by more than three million users each month to the hundreds of millions of articles it has archived ("Company Background", n. pag.). What makes Deja News attractive to so many users are the many search options the service has added to its newsgroups interface. Deja News visitors can search for any article subjects, keywords, newsgroups, or participants' names they are interested in: if you're looking for the absolutely latest on the White House sex scandal, search for "Clinton + Lewinski" and limit your search to articles posted in the last few days or hours; if you want to know what newsgroups your co-worker is writing to in her lunch break, simply ask Deja News to find all postings by "Annabel Smith". If you can't quite remember the address for the latest Internet camera site, Deja News will. To put such powerful research capabilities at the fingertips of any Web user raises any number of legal as well as ethical questions, however. To begin with, does Deja News even have the right to archive anyone's and everyone's postings to newsgroups? The simple fact that users' articles are posted openly, for all newsgroup participants to see, does not necessarily automatically imply that the article may be made available to a greater public elsewhere -- by analogy, if you have a casual conversation with a group of people, you aren't usually expecting to see your words in the history books the next day (but analogies between the Internet and 'real life' are always dangerous). Unless you spoke to someone with a photographic memory, you can usually rely on them gradually forgetting what you said, even if you made a fool out of yourself -- that's human. Appearing as the result of a Deja News search, articles lose their original context -- the newsgroup discussion they were part of -- and are given an entirely different one, a context in which by virtue of being so presented they may gain new and potentially questionable authority. As is so often the case for information on Websites, the information in articles which can thus be found through services like Deja News cannot easily be verified or disproven; due to the loss of context, researchers cannot even gain a feel for a writer's trustworthiness in the same way that seasoned newsgroup members can. Neither may they always detect intentional irony and humour: playful exaggeration may easily appear as deliberate misinformation, friendly oneupmanship as an angry attack. The results of author-based searches may be even more potentially damaging, however. Deja News offers various mechanisms that can include searches restricted to the articles written by a particular user, culminating in the 'author profile' that can be used to list all posts ever made by a particular user. One does not need to be paranoid to imagine ways in which such a powerful research tool may be abused -- perhaps even (and most easily) by the Deja News company itself: since, following general Web etiquette, access to the service is free for normal users, Deja News relies on other avenues of income, and doubtlessly it would be tempting to sell the rights to exploit the Deja News database to professional spammers (Internet junk mailers). These could then aim their advertising emails directly towards the most promising target audience -- those who have in their newsgroups postings shown the most interest in a particular product or service. Indeed, Deja News notes, somewhat vaguely, that it "can provide efficient and effective Internet-based marketing for various types of online marketing goals, such as testing messages, building brand awareness, increasing Website traffic or generating leads" ("Company Background", n. pag.). While such uninvited advertising may be annoying to unsuspecting Internet users, more damaging and mean-spirited uses of the 'author profile' can also be imagined easily. What if your prospective new employer finds the comments you made about the company in a newsgroup article last year? What if they check your author profile for your attitude to drugs (did you ever write an article in rec.drugs.cannabis) or your sexual orientation (any posts to alt.sex.homosexual)? What if some extremist group targets you over your support for multiculturalism? Thanks to Deja News and similar services, anything you've ever said may be used against you. The virtual walls of cyberspace have ears, come with a perfect memory, and are prepared to share their knowledge with anyone. A valid line of argument against such criticism notes that we are all responsible for our own actions: newsgroups are, after all, public discussion fora that are open to all participants -- if you make a controversial statement in such a place, you must be prepared to suffer the consequences. However, the threat of being taken out of context must once more be emphasised at this point: while the articles that can be found through Deja News appear to accurately reflect their writers' views, the background against which such views were expressed is much more difficult to extract. Furthermore, only very few newsgroup participants will be aware that their postings are continually being archived, since newsgroups generally appear as a fairly ephemeral medium: only the last few days or, at most, weeks of newsgroup traffic are usually stored on news servers. An awareness of being archived would help writers protect themselves -- it may also serve to impoverish newsgroup discussion, however. Even more importantly, the already-digital, computer-mediated nature of newsgroup discussions has far-reaching implications. Dealing with units of data that come in a handy, easily stored format, services like Deja News tend to archive Usenet newsgroups interminably -- your first flames as a 'clueless newbie', years ago, may therefore today still be used to embarass you. This is the most important new development: analogue, organic, human memory eventually fades; we tend to organise our memories, and remember those things we regard as most important, while others gradually vanish. Many modern legal systems reflect this process by gradually deleting minor and even major offences from a citizen's criminal records -- they forgive as they forget. Other than in cases of extreme Alzheimer's brought about by server crashes and hard disk defects, digital memory, on the other hand, is perfect for unlimited periods of time: once entered into a database, newsgroup articles may be stored forever; ephemeral discussions become matters of permanent record. The computer doesn't forget. While its many Internet accolades bear witness to the benefits users have found in Deja News, the ethical questions the service raises have hardly been addressed so far, least of all on the Deja News Website itself. While apparently the inclusion of a header line "X-noarchive: yes" may prevent articles from being archived by Deja News, this isn't advertised anywhere; neither are there any statements justifying the unauthorised archiving of newsgroups, or any easily accessible mechanisms for users to have their own articles deleted from the archives. As has often been the case on the Internet, a private organisation has therefore become a semi-official institution, simply by virtue of having thought of an idea first; ethics and laws are left behind by technological development, and find that they have some catching-up to do. Of course, none of this should be seen as condemning Deja News as a malevolent organisation out to spy on Internet participants -- in fact, the company so far appears to have shown admirable restraint in declining to exploit its database. Deja News is at the centre of this controversy only by virtue of having implemented the idea of a 'memory of Usenet' too perfectly: not Deja News is the problem, but those who would use, to their own and possibly sinister ends, information made available without charge by Deja News. Eventually, in any way, Deja News itself may be overwhelmed by its own creation: with the amount of Internet users still continually increasing, and with newsgroup articles accumulating, it is gradually getting harder to still find the few most important postings amongst a multitude of discussions (in a similar way, search engine users are beginning to have trouble locating the most relevant Websites on any specific topic amongst a large number of less useful 'vanity' homepages). In the end, then, this new 'perfect' digital memory may have to learn an important capability from its analogue human counterpart: Deja News and similar archives may have to learn how to forget articles of lesser significance. A very simple first step towards this process has already been made: since December 1997, junk mail postings ('spam') are being removed from the Deja News archives (Woods, n. pag.). While such articles, whose uselessness is almost universally agreed upon by the Internet community at large, constitute a clear case for removal, however, any further deletions will mean a significant step away from the original Deja News goal of providing a complete archive of Usenet newsgroups, and towards increasingly controversial value-judgments -- who, after all, is to decide which postings are worth archiving, and which are irrelevant? If memory is to be selective, who will do the selecting? Eventually (and even if new memory management technologies help prevent outright deletion by relegating less important information to some sort of second-rate, less accessed memory space), it seems, the problem returns to being an ethical one -- of what is archived where and for how long, of who has access to these data, and of how newsgroup writers can regain control of their articles to protect themselves and prevent abuse. Deja News and the Internet community as a whole would be well-advised to address the problems raised by this perfect memory of originally ephemeral conversations before any major and damaging abuse can occur. References "Company Background." Deja News. 1998. 11 Aug. 1998 <http://www.dejanews.com/emarket/about/background.shtml> "Deja News Invites Internet Users to Search the World's Largest On-Line Newsgroup Archive." Deja News. 30 May 1996. 11 Aug. 1998 <http://www.dejanews.com/emarket/about/pr/1996/dnpr_960530.shtml>. Woods, Bob. "Deja News Cuts, Increases Content." Newsbytes 8 Dec. 1997. Citation reference for this article MLA style: Axel Bruns. "Archiving the Ephemeral: Deja News and the Ethics of Perfect Memory." M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 1.2 (1998). [your date of access] <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/9808/deja.php>. Chicago style: Axel Bruns, "Archiving the Ephemeral: Deja News and the Ethics of Perfect Memory," M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 1, no. 2 (1998), <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/9808/deja.php> ([your date of access]). APA style: Axel Bruns. (1998) Archiving the ephemeral: Deja News and the ethics of perfect memory. M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 1(2). <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/9808/deja.php> ([your date of access]).

A politician’s political and personal selves have been in the spotlight of academic scholarship for hundreds of years, but only in recent years has a political ‘persona’ obtained new modes of mediation via networked media. New advancements in politics, technology, and media brought challenges to the traditional politics and personal self-representation of major leaders. Vladimir Putin’s divorce announcement in June 2013, posed a new challenge for his political self-mediation. A rather reserved leader (Loshak), he nonetheless broadcast his personal news to the large audience and made it in a very peculiar way, causing the media professionals and public to draw parallels with Soviet-era mediated politics and thereby evoke collective memories. This paper studies how Vladimir Putin’s divorce announcement was constructed and presented and also what response and opinion threads—satirical and humorous, ignorant and informed feedback—it achieved via media professionals and the general Twitter audience. Finally, this study aims to evaluate how Vladimir Putin’s political ‘persona’ was represented and perceived via these mixed channels of communication.According to classic studies of mediated political persona (Braudy; Meyrowitz; Corner), any public activity of a political persona is considered a part of their political performance. The history of political marketing can be traced back to ancient times, but it developed through the works of Renaissance and Medieval thinkers. Of particular prominence is Machiavelli’s The Prince with its famous “It is unnecessary for the prince to have all the good qualities I have enumerated, but it is very necessary to appear to have them” (cited in Corner 68). All those centuries-built developments and patterns of political self-representation have now taken on new forms as a result of the development of media industry and technology. Russian mediated politics has seen various examples of new ways of self-representation exercised by major politicians in the 2010s. For instance, former president Dmitry Medvedev was known as the “president with an iPad” (Pronina), as he was advocating technology and using social networks in order to seem more approachable and appear to be responsive to collecting feedback from the nation. Traditional media constantly highlighted Medvedev’s keen interest in Facebook and Twitter, which resulted in a growing public assumption that this new modern approach to self-representation may signify a new approach to governance (see Asmolov).Goffman’s classic study of the distinction between public and private life helps in linking political persona to celebrity persona. In his view the political presentation of self differs from the one in popular culture because politicians as opposed to entertainers have to conform to a set of ideals, projections, social stereotypes and cultural/national archetypes for their audience of voters (Goffman; Corner). A politician’s public persona has to be constantly reaffirming and proving the values he or she is promoting through their campaigns. Mediations of a political personhood can be projected in three main modes: visual, vocal, and kinetic (Ong; Mayhew; Corner). Visual representation follows the iconic paintings and photography in displaying the position, attitude, and associative contexts related to that. Vocal representation covers both content and format of a political speech, it is not only the articulated message, but also more important the persona speaking. Ong describes this close relation of the political and personal along with the interrelation of the message and the medium as “secondary orality”—voice, tone and volume make the difference. The third mode is kinetic representation and means the political persona in action and interaction. Overlapping of different strategies and structures of political self-representation fortifies the notion of performativity (Corner and Pels) in politics that becomes a core feature of the multidimensional representation of a mediated political self.The advancement of electronic media and interactive platforms has influenced political communication and set the new standard for the convergence of the political and personal life of a politician. On its own, the President Clinton/Monica Lewinsky affair raised the level of public awareness of the politician’s private life. It also allowed for widely distributed, contested, and mediated judgments of a politician’s personal actions. Lawrence and Bennett in their study of Lewinsky case’s academic and public response state that although the majority of American citizens did not expect the president to be the moral leader, they expressed ambivalence in their rendition of the importance of “moral leadership” by big politicians (438). The President Clinton/Lewinsky case adds a new dimension to Goffman and Corner’s respective discussions on the significance of values in the political persona self-representation. This case proves that values can not only be reinforced by one’s public persona, but those values can be (re)constructed by the press or public opinion. Values are becoming a contested trait in the contemporary mediated political persona. This view can be supported by Dmitry Medvedev’s case: although modern technology was known as his personal passion, it was publicised only with reference to his role as a public politician and specifically when Medvedev appeared with an iPad talking about modernisation at major meetings (Pronina). However, one can argue that one’s charisma can affect the impact of values in public self-representation of the politician. In addition, social networks add a new dimension to personified publicity. From Barack Obama’s ‘Yes We Can’ networked campaign in 2008 and through many more recent examples, we are witnessing the continuing process of the personalisation of politics (Corner and Pels). From one point of view, audiences tend to have more interest and sympathy in political individuals and their lifestyles rather than political parties and their programmes (Lawrence and Bennett; Corner and Pels). It should be noted that the interest towards political individuals does not fall apart from the historical logics of politics; it is only mediated in a new way. Max Weber’s notion of “leadership democracy” proves that political strategy is best distributed through the charismatic leadership imposing his will on the audience. This view can be strengthened by Le Bon’s concept of emotive connection of the leader and his crowd, and Adorno’s writings on the authoritarian personality also highlight the significance of the leader’s own natural and mediated persona in politics. What is new is the channels of mediation—modern audiences’ access to a politician’s private life is facilitated by new forms of media interactivity (Corner and Pels). This recent development calls for the new understanding of “persona” in politics. On one hand, the borderline between private and public becomes blurred and we are more exposed to the private self of a leader, but on the other hand, those politicians aware of new media literacy can create new structures of proximity and distance and construct a separate “persona” online, using digital media for their benefit (Corner and Pels). Russian official politics has developed a cautious attitude towards social networks in the post-Medvedev era - currently, President Vladimir Putin is not known for using social networks personally and transmits his views via his spokesperson. However, his personal charisma makes him overly present in digital media - through the images and texts shared both by his supporters and rivals. As opposed to Medvedev’s widely publicised “modernisation president” representation, Putin’s persona breaks the boundaries of limited traditional publicity and makes him recognised not only for his political activity, but looks, controversial expression, attitude to employees, and even personal life. That brings us back to Goffman, Corner and Lawrence and Bennett’s discussions on the interrelation of political values and personal traits in one’s political self-representation, making it evident that one’s strong personality can dominate over his political image and programme. Moreover, an assumption can be made that a politician’s persona may be more powerful than the narrative suggested by the constructed self-representation and new connotations may arise on the crossroads of this interaction.Russian President Divorce Announcement and Collective MemoryVladimir Putin’s divorce announcement was broadcast via traditional media on 6 June 2013 as a simple news story. The state broadcasting company Vesti-24 sent a journalist Polina Yermolayeva from their news bulletin to cover Vladimir Putin and Lyudmila Putin’s visit to a ballet production, Esmeralda, at the state Kremlin theatre. The news anchor’s introduction to the interview was ordinarily written and had no hints of the upcoming sensation. After the first couple and the journalist had discussed their opinion of the ballet (“beautiful music,” “flawless and light moves”), the reporter Yermolayeva suddenly asked: “You and Lyudmila are rarely seen together in public. Rumour has it that you do not live together. It is true?” Vladimir Putin and his wife exchanged a number of rather pre-scripted speeches stating that the first couple was getting a divorce as the children had grown old enough, and they would still stay friends and wished each other the best of luck. The whole interview lasted 3:25 minutes and became a big surprise for the country (Loshak; Sobchak).When applying the classification of three modes of political personhood (Corner; Ong) to Vladimir Putin’s divorce announcement, it becomes evident that all three modes—visual, vocal, and kinetic—were used. Television audiences watched their president speak freely to the unknown reporter, explain details of his life in his own words so that body language also was visible and conveyed additional information. The visual self-representation harkens back to classic, Soviet-style announcements: Vladimir Putin and Lyudmila Putina are dressed in classic monochrome suit and costume with a skirt respectively. They pose in front of the rather dull yet somewhat golden decorations of the Kremlin Theatre Hall, the walls themselves reflecting the glory and fanfare of the Soviet leadership and architecture. Vladimir Putin and his wife both talk calmly while Lyudmila appears even more relaxed than her husband (Sobchak). Although the speech looks prepared in advance (Loshak), it uses colloquial expressions and is delivered with emotional pauses and voice changes.However, close examination of not only the message but the medium of the divorce announcement reveals a vast number of intriguing symbols and parallels. First, although living in the era of digital media, Vladimir Putin chose to broadcast his personal news through a traditional television channel. Second, it was broadcast in a news programme making the breaking news of the president’s divorce, paradoxically, quite a mundane news event. Third, the semiotic construction of the divorce announcement bore a lot of connotations and synergies to the conservative, Soviet-style information distribution patterns. There are a few key symbols here that evoke collective memories: ballet, conservative political report on the government, and the stereotype of a patriarchal couple with a submissive wife (see Loshak; Rostovskiy). For example, since the perestroika of the 1990s, ballet has been widely perceived as a symbol of big political change and cause of public anxiety (Kachkaeva): this connotation was born in the 1990s when all channels were broadcasting Swan Lake round the clock while the White House was under attack. Holden reminds us that this practice was applied many times during major crises in Soviet history, thus creating a short link in the public subconscious of a ballet broadcast being symbolic of a political crisis or turmoil.Vladimir Putin Divorce: Traditional and Social Media ReceptionIn the first day after the divorce announcement Russian Twitter generated 180,000 tweets about Vladimir Putin’s divorce, and the hashtag #развод (“divorce”) became very popular. For the analysis that follows, Putin divorce tweets were collected by two methods: retrieved from traditional media coverage of Twitter talk on Putin’s divorce and from Twitter directly, using Topsy engine. Tweets were collected for one week, from the divorce announcement on 6 June to 13 June when the discussion declined and became repetitive. Data was collected using Snob.ru, Kommersant.ru, Forbes.ru, other media outlets and Topsy. The results were then combined and evaluated.Some of those tweets provided a satirical commentary to the divorce news and can be classified as “memes.” An “Internet meme” is a contagious message, a symbolic pattern of information spread online (Lankshear and Knobel; Shifman). Memes are viral texts that are shared online after being adjusted/altered or developed on the way. Starting from 1976 when Richard Dawkins coined the term, memes have been under media scholarship scrutiny and the term has been widely contested in various sciences. In Internet research studies, memes are defined as “condensed images that stimulate visual, verbal, musical, or behavioral associations that people can easily imitate and transmit to others” (Pickerel, Jorgensen, and Bennett). The open character of memes makes them valuable tools for political discourse in a modern highly mediated environment.Qualitative analysis of the most popular and widely shared tweets reveals several strong threads and themes round Putin’s divorce discussion. According to Burzhskaya, many users created memes with jokes about the relationship between Vladimir Putin and Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev. For instance, “He should have tied up his relationship with Dmitry Anatolyevich long ago” or “So actually Medvedev is the case?” were among popular memes generated. Another collection of memework contained a comment that, according to the Russian legislation, Putin’s ex-wife should get half of their wealth, in this case—half of the country. This thread was followed by the discussion whether the separation/border of her share of Russia should use the Ural Mountains as the borderline. Another group of Twitter users applied the Russian president’s divorce announcement to other countries’ politics. Thus one user wrote “Take Yanukovich to the ballet” implying that Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovich (who was still a legitimate president in June 2013) should also be taken to the ballet to trigger changes in the political life in Ukraine. Twitter celebrity and well-known Russian actress and comedian Tatiana Lazareva wrote “In my opinion, it is a scam”, punning on the slang meaning of the word “razvod” (“divorce”) in Russian that can also mean “fraud” or “con”. Famous Russian journalist Dmitry Olshansky used his Twitter account to draw a historical parallel between Putin and other Russian and Soviet political leaders’ marital life. He noted that such Russian leaders as Tsar Nikolay the Second and Mikhail Gorbachev who loved their wives and were known to be good husbands were not successful managers of the state. In contrast, lone rulers of Russia such as Joseph Stalin proved to be leaders who loved their country first and gained a lot of support from their electorate because of that lonely love. Popular print and online journalist Oleg Kashin picked up on that specific idea: he quoted Vladimir Putin’s press secretary who explained that the president had declared that he would now spend more time working for the prosperity of the country.Twitter users were exchanging not only 140 symbol texts but also satirical images and other visual memes based on the divorce announcement. Those who suggested that Vladimir Putin should have divorced the country instead portrayed Lyudmila Putina and Vladimir holding candles and wearing funereal black with various taglines discussing how the country would now be split. Other users contributed visual memes jamming the television show Bachelor imagery and font with Vladimir Putin’s face and an announcement that the most desirable bachelor in the country is now its president. A similar idea was put into jammed images of the Let’s Get Married television show using Vladimir Putin’s face or name linked with a humorous comment that he could try those shows to find a new wife. One more thread of Twitter memes on Putin’s divorce used the name of Alina Kabaeva, Olympic gymnast who is rumoured by the press to be in relationship with the leader (Daily Mail Reporter). She was mentioned in plenty of visual and textual memes. Probably, the most popular visual meme (Burzhskaya; Topsy) used the one-liner from a famous Soviet comedy Ivan Vasylievich Menyaet Professiyu: it uses a joyful exclamation of an actress who learns that her love interest, a movie director, is leaving his wife so that the lovers can now fly to a resort together. Alina Kabaeva, the purported love interest of Putin, was jammed to be that actress as she announced the “triumphal” resort vacation plan to a girlfriend over the phone.Vladimir Putin’s 2013 divorce announcement presented new challenges for his personal and political self-representation and revealed new traits of the Russian president’s interaction with the nation. As the news of Vladimir and Lyudmila Putin’s divorce was broadcast via traditional media in a non-interactive television format, commentary on the event advanced only through the following week’s media coverage and the massive activity on social networks. It has still to be examined whether Vladimir Putin’s political advisors intentionally included many symbols of collective memory in the original and staid broadcast announcement. However, the response from traditional and social media shows that both Russian journalists and regular Twitter users were inclined to use humour and satire when discussing the personal life of a major political leader. Despite this appearance of an active counter-political sphere via social networks, the majority of tweets retrieved also revealed a certain level of respect towards Vladimir Putin’s privacy as few popular jokes or memes were aggressive, offensive or humiliating. Most popular memes on Vladimir Putin’s divorce linked this announcement to the political life of Russia, the political situation in other countries, and television shows and popular culture. Some of the memes, though, advanced the idea that Vladimir Putin should have divorced the country instead. The analysis also shows how a charismatic leader can affect or reconstruct the “values” he represents. In Vladimir Putin’s divorce event, his personality is the main focus of discussion both by traditional and new media. However, he is not judged for his personal choices as the online social media users provide rather mild commentary and jokes about them. The event and the subsequent online discourse, images and texts not only identify how Putin’s politics have become personified, the research also uncovers how the audience/citizenry online often see the country as a “persona” as well. Some Internet users suggested Putin’s marriage to the country; this mystified, if not mythologised view reinforces Vladimir Putin’s personal and political charisma.Conclusively, Vladimir Putin’s divorce case study shows how political and private persona are being mediated and merged via mixed channels of communication. The ever-changing nature of the political leader portrayal in the mediated environment of the 2010s opens new challenges for further research on the modes and ways for political persona representation in modern Russia.References Adorno, Theodor W. The Authoritarian Personality. New York, 1969 (1950).Ankersmit, Franklin R. Aesthetic Politics: Political Philosophy beyond Fact and Value. Stanford University Press, 1996.Asmolov, Gregory. “The Kremlin’s Cameras and Virtual Potemkin Villages: ICT and the Construction of Statehood.” Bits and Atoms: Information and Communication Technology in Areas of Limited Statehood (2014): 30.Bakhtin, Mikhail Mikhailovich. The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays. University of Texas Press, 1981.Braudy, Leo. The Frenzy of Renown: Fame & Its History. New York: Oxford University Press, 1986.Burzhskaya, Kseniya. “Galochka, Ti Seichas Umryosh!” [“Galochka, You Are Going to Die!”]. Snob.ru 7 June 2013. 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Introduction In October 2008, the UK’s National Videogame Archive became a reality and after years of negotiation, preparation and planning, this partnership between Nottingham Trent University’s Centre for Contemporary Play research group and The National Media Museum, accepted its first public donations to the collection. These first donations came from Sony’s Computer Entertainment Europe’s London Studios who presented the original, pre-production PlayStation 2 EyeToy camera (complete with its hand-written #1 sticker) and Harmonix who crossed the Atlantic to deliver prototypes of the Rock Band drum kit and guitar controllers along with a slew of games. Since then, we have been inundated with donations, enquiries and volunteers offering their services and it is clear that we have exciting and challenging times ahead of us at the NVA as we seek to continue our collecting programme and preserve, conserve, display and interpret these vital parts of popular culture. This essay, however, is not so much a document of these possible futures for our research or the challenges we face in moving forward as it is a discussion of some of the issues that make game preservation a vital and timely undertaking. In briefly telling the story of the genesis of the NVA, I hope to draw attention to some of the peculiarities (in both senses) of the situation in which videogames currently exist. While considerable attention has been paid to the preservation and curation of new media arts (e.g. Cook et al.), comparatively little work has been undertaken in relation to games. Surprisingly, the games industry has been similarly neglectful of the histories of gameplay and gamemaking. Throughout our research, it has became abundantly clear that even those individuals and companies most intimately associated with the development of this form, do not hold their corporate and personal histories in the high esteem we expected (see also Lowood et al.). And so, despite the well-worn bluster of an industry that proclaims itself as culturally significant as Hollywood, it is surprisingly difficult to find a definitive copy of the boxart of the final release of a Triple-A title let alone any of the pre-production materials. Through our journeys in the past couple of years, we have encountered shoeboxes under CEOs’ desks and proud parents’ collections of tapes and press cuttings. These are the closest things to a formalised archive that we currently have for many of the biggest British game development and publishing companies. Not only is this problematic in and of itself as we run the risk of losing titles and documents forever as well as the stories locked up in the memories of key individuals who grow ever older, but also it is symptomatic of an industry that, despite its public proclamations, neither places a high value on its products as popular culture nor truly recognises their impact on that culture. While a few valorised, still-ongoing, franchises like the Super Mario and Legend of Zelda series are repackaged and (digitally) re-released so as to provide continuity with current releases, a huge number of games simply disappear from view once their short period of retail limelight passes. Indeed, my argument in this essay rests to some extent on the admittedly polemical, and maybe even antagonistic, assertion that the past business and marketing practices of the videogames industry are partly to blame for the comparatively underdeveloped state of game preservation and the seemingly low cultural value placed on old games within the mainstream marketplace. Small wonder, then, that archives and formalised collections are not widespread. However antagonistic this point may seem, this essay does not set out merely to criticise the games industry. Indeed, it is important to recognise that the success and viability of projects such as the NVA is derived partly from close collaboration with industry partners. As such, it is my hope that in addition to contributing to the conversation about the importance and need for formalised strategies of game preservation, this essay goes some way to demonstrating the necessity of universities, museums, developers, publishers, advertisers and retailers tackling these issues in partnership. The Best Game Is the Next Game As will be clear from these opening paragraphs, this essay is primarily concerned with ‘old’ games. Perhaps surprisingly, however, we shall see that ‘old’ games are frequently not that old at all as even the shiniest, and newest of interactive experiences soon slip from view under the pressure of a relentless industrial and institutional push towards the forthcoming release and the ‘next generation’. More surprising still is that ‘old’ games are often difficult to come by as they occupy, at best, a marginalised position in the contemporary marketplace, assuming they are even visible at all. This is an odd situation. Videogames are, as any introductory primer on game studies will surely reveal, big business (see Kerr, for instance, as well as trade bodies such as ELSPA and The ESA for up-to-date sales figures). Given the videogame industry seems dedicated to growing its business and broadening its audiences (see Radd on Sony’s ‘Game 3.0’ strategy, for instance), it seems strange, from a commercial perspective if no other, that publishers’ and developers’ back catalogues are not being mercilessly plundered to wring the last pennies of profit from their IPs. Despite being cherished by players and fans, some of whom are actively engaged in their own private collecting and curation regimes (sometimes to apparently obsessive excess as Jones, among others, has noted), videogames have, nonetheless, been undervalued as part of our national popular cultural heritage by institutions of memory such as museums and archives which, I would suggest, have largely ignored and sometimes misunderstood or misrepresented them. Most of all, however, I wish to draw attention to the harm caused by the videogames industry itself. Consumers’ attentions are focused on ‘products’, on audiovisual (but mainly visual) technicalities and high-definition video specs rather than on the experiences of play and performance, or on games as artworks or artefact. Most damagingly, however, by constructing and contributing to an advertising, marketing and popular critical discourse that trades almost exclusively in the language of instant obsolescence, videogames have been robbed of their historical value and old platforms and titles are reduced to redundant, legacy systems and easily-marginalised ‘retro’ curiosities. The vision of inevitable technological progress that the videogames industry trades in reminds us of Paul Duguid’s concept of ‘supersession’ (see also Giddings and Kennedy, on the ‘technological imaginary’). Duguid identifies supersession as one of the key tropes in discussions of new media. The reductive idea that each new form subsumes and replaces its predecessor means that videogames are, to some extent, bound up in the same set of tensions that undermine the longevity of all new media. Chun rightly notes that, in contrast with more open terms like multimedia, ‘new media’ has always been somewhat problematic. Unaccommodating, ‘it portrayed other media as old or dead; it converged rather than multiplied; it did not efface itself in favor of a happy if redundant plurality’ (1). The very newness of new media and of videogames as the apotheosis of the interactivity and multimodality they promise (Newman, "In Search"), their gleam and shine, is quickly tarnished as they are replaced by ever-newer, ever more exciting, capable and ‘revolutionary’ technologies whose promise and moment in the limelight is, in turn, equally fleeting. As Franzen has noted, obsolescence and the trail of abandoned, superseded systems is a natural, even planned-for, product of an infatuation with the newness of new media. For Kline et al., the obsession with obsolescence leads to the characterisation of the videogames industry as a ‘perpetual innovation economy’ whose institutions ‘devote a growing share of their resources to the continual alteration and upgrading of their products. However, it is my contention here that the supersessionary tendency exerts a more serious impact on videogames than some other media partly because the apparently natural logic of obsolescence and technological progress goes largely unchecked and partly because there remain few institutions dedicated to considering and acting upon game preservation. The simple fact, as Lowood et al. have noted, is that material damage is being done as a result of this manufactured sense of continual progress and immediate, irrefutable obsolescence. By focusing on the upcoming new release and the preview of what is yet to come; by exciting gamers about what is in development and demonstrating the manifest ways in which the sheen of the new inevitably tarnishes the old. That which is replaced is fit only for the bargain bin or the budget-priced collection download, and as such, it is my position that we are systematically undermining and perhaps even eradicating the possibility of a thorough and well-documented history for videogames. This is a situation that we at the National Videogame Archive, along with colleagues in the emerging field of game preservation (e.g. the International Game Developers Association Game Preservation Special Interest Group, and the Keeping Emulation Environments Portable project) are, naturally, keen to address. Chief amongst our concerns is better understanding how it has come to be that, in 2009, game studies scholars and colleagues from across the memory and heritage sectors are still only at the beginning of the process of considering game preservation. The IGDA Game Preservation SIG was founded only five years ago and its ‘White Paper’ (Lowood et al.) is just published. Surprisingly, despite the importance of videogames within popular culture and the emergence and consolidation of the industry as a potent creative force, there remains comparatively little academic commentary or investigation into the specific situation and life-cycles of games or the demands that they place upon archivists and scholars of digital histories and cultural heritage. As I hope to demonstrate in this essay, one of the key tasks of the project of game preservation is to draw attention to the consequences of the concentration, even fetishisation, of the next generation, the new and the forthcoming. The focus on what I have termed ‘the lure of the imminent’ (e.g. Newman, Playing), the fixation on not only the present but also the as-yet-unreleased next generation, has contributed to the normalisation of the discourses of technological advancement and the inevitability and finality of obsolescence. The conflation of gameplay pleasure and cultural import with technological – and indeed, usually visual – sophistication gives rise to a context of endless newness, within which there appears to be little space for the ‘outdated’, the ‘superseded’ or the ‘old’. In a commercial and cultural space in which so little value is placed upon anything but the next game, we risk losing touch with the continuities of development and the practices of play while simultaneously robbing players and scholars of the critical tools and resources necessary for contextualised appreciation and analysis of game form and aesthetics, for instance (see Monnens, "Why", for more on the value of preserving ‘old’ games for analysis and scholarship). Moreover, we risk losing specific games, platforms, artefacts and products as they disappear into the bargain bucket or crumble to dust as media decay, deterioration and ‘bit rot’ (Monnens, "Losing") set in. Space does not here permit a discussion of the scope and extent of the preservation work required (for instance, the NVA sets its sights on preserving, documenting, interpreting and exhibiting ‘videogame culture’ in its broadest sense and recognises the importance of videogames as more than just code and as enmeshed within complex networks of productive, consumptive and performative practices). Neither is it my intention to discuss here the specific challenges and numerous issues associated with archival and exhibition tools such as emulation which seek to rebirth code on up-to-date, manageable, well-supported hardware platforms but which are frequently insensitive to the specificities and nuances of the played experience (see Newman, "On Emulation", for some further notes on videogame emulation, archiving and exhibition and Takeshita’s comments in Nutt on the technologies and aesthetics of glitches, for instance). Each of these issues is vitally important and will, doubtless become a part of the forthcoming research agenda for game preservation scholars. My focus here, however, is rather more straightforward and foundational and though it is deliberately controversial, it is my hope that its casts some light over some ingrained assumptions about videogames and the magnitude and urgency of the game preservation project. Videogames Are Disappearing? At a time when retailers’ shelves struggle under the weight of newly-released titles and digital distribution systems such as Steam, the PlayStation Network, Xbox Live Marketplace, WiiWare, DSiWare et al bring new ways to purchase and consume playable content, it might seem strange to suggest that videogames are disappearing. In addition to what we have perhaps come to think of as the ‘usual suspects’ in the hardware and software publishing marketplace, over the past year or so Apple have, unexpectedly and perhaps even surprising themselves, carved out a new gaming platform with the iPhone/iPod Touch and have dramatically simplified the notoriously difficult process of distributing mobile content with the iTunes App Store. In the face of this apparent glut of games and the emergence and (re)discovery of new markets with the iPhone, Wii and Nintendo DS, videogames seem an ever more a vital and visible part of popular culture. Yet, for all their commercial success and seemingly penetration the simple fact is that they are disappearing. And at an alarming rate. Addressing the IGDA community of game developers and producers, Henry Lowood makes the point with admirable clarity (see also Ruggill and McAllister): If we fail to address the problems of game preservation, the games you are making will disappear, perhaps within a few decades. You will lose access to your own intellectual property, you will be unable to show new developers the games you designed or that inspired you, and you may even find it necessary to re-invent a bunch of wheels. (Lowood et al. 1) For me, this point hit home most persuasively a few years ago when, along with Iain Simons, I was invited by the British Film Institute to contribute a book to their ‘Screen Guides’ series. 100 Videogames (Newman and Simons) was an intriguing prospect that provided us with the challenge and opportunity to explore some of the key moments in videogaming’s forty year history. However, although the research and writing processes proved to be an immensely pleasurable and rewarding experience that we hope culminated in an accessible, informative volume offering insight into some well-known (and some less-well known) games, the project was ultimately tinged with a more than a little disappointment and frustration. Assuming our book had successfully piqued the interest of our readers into rediscovering games previously played or perhaps investigating games for the first time, what could they then do? Where could they go to find these games in order to experience their delights (or their flaws and problems) at first hand? Had our volume been concerned with television or film, as most of the Screen Guides are, then online and offline retailers, libraries, and even archives for less widely-available materials, would have been obvious ports of call. For the student of videogames, however, the choices are not so much limited as practically non-existant. It is only comparatively recently that videogame retailers have shifted away from an almost exclusive focus on new releases and the zeitgeist platforms towards a recognition of old games and systems through the creation of the ‘pre-owned’ marketplace. The ‘pre-owned’ transaction is one in which old titles may be traded in for cash or against the purchase of new releases of hardware or software. Surely, then, this represents the commercial viability of classic games and is a recognition on the part of retail that the new release is not the only game in town. Yet, if we consider more carefully the ‘pre-owned’ model, we find a few telling points. First, there is cold economic sense to the pre-owned business model. In their financial statements for FY08, ‘GAME revealed that the service isn’t just a key part of its offer to consumers, but its also represents an ‘attractive’ gross margin 39 per cent.’ (French). Second, and most important, the premise of the pre-owned business as it is communicated to consumers still offers nothing but primacy to the new release. That one would trade-in one’s old games in order to consume these putatively better new ones speaks eloquently in the language of obsolesce and what Dovey and Kennedy have called the ‘technological imaginary’. The wire mesh buckets of old, pre-owned games are not displayed or coded as treasure troves for the discerning or completist collector but rather are nothing more than bargain bins. These are not classic games. These are cheap games. Cheap because they are old. Cheap because they have had their day. This is a curious situation that affects videogames most unfairly. Of course, my caricature of the videogame retailer is still incomplete as a good deal of the instantly visible shopfloor space is dedicated neither to pre-owned nor new releases but rather to displays of empty boxes often sporting unfinalised, sometimes mocked-up, boxart flaunting titles available for pre-order. Titles you cannot even buy yet. In the videogames marketplace, even the present is not exciting enough. The best game is always the next game. Importantly, retail is not alone in manufacturing this sense of dissatisfaction with the past and even the present. The specialist videogames press plays at least as important a role in reinforcing and normalising the supersessionary discourse of instant obsolescence by fixing readers’ attentions and expectations on the just-visible horizon. Examining the pages of specialist gaming publications reveals them to be something akin to Futurist paeans dedicating anything from 70 to 90% of their non-advertising pages to previews, interviews with developers about still-in-development titles (see Newman, Playing, for more on the specialist gaming press’ love affair with the next generation and the NDA scoop). Though a small number of publications specifically address retro titles (e.g. Imagine Publishing’s Retro Gamer), most titles are essentially vehicles to promote current and future product lines with many magazines essentially operating as delivery devices for cover-mounted CDs/DVDs offering teaser videos or playable demos of forthcoming titles to further whet the appetite. Manufacturing a sense of excitement might seem wholly natural and perhaps even desirable in helping to maintain a keen interest in gaming culture but the effect of the imbalance of popular coverage has a potentially deleterious effect on the status of superseded titles. Xbox World 360’s magnificently-titled ‘Anticip–O–Meter’ ™ does more than simply build anticipation. Like regular features that run under headings such as ‘The Next Best Game in The World Ever is…’, it seeks to author not so much excitement about the imminent release but a dissatisfaction with the present with which unfavourable comparisons are inevitably drawn. The current or previous crop of (once new, let us not forget) titles are not simply superseded but rather are reinvented as yardsticks to judge the prowess of the even newer and unarguably ‘better’. As Ashton has noted, the continual promotion of the impressiveness of the next generation requires a delicate balancing act and a selective, institutionalised system of recall and forgetting that recovers the past as a suite of (often technical) benchmarks (twice as many polygons, higher resolution etc.) In the absence of formalised and systematic collecting, these obsoleted titles run the risk of being forgotten forever once they no longer serve the purpose of demonstrating the comparative advancement of the successors. The Future of Videogaming’s Past Even if we accept the myriad claims of game studies scholars that videogames are worthy of serious interrogation in and of themselves and as part of a multifaceted, transmedial supersystem, we might be tempted to think that the lack of formalised collections, archival resources and readily available ‘old/classic’ titles at retail is of no great significance. After all, as Jones has observed, the videogame player is almost primed to undertake this kind of activity as gaming can, at least partly, be understood as the act and art of collecting. Games such as Animal Crossing make this tendency most manifest by challenging their players to collect objects and artefacts – from natural history through to works of visual art – so as to fill the initially-empty in-game Museum’s cases. While almost all videogames from The Sims to Katamari Damacy can be considered to engage their players in collecting and collection management work to some extent, Animal Crossing is perhaps the most pertinent example of the indivisibility of the gamer/archivist. Moreover, the permeability of the boundary between the fan’s collection of toys, dolls, posters and the other treasured objects of merchandising and the manipulation of inventories, acquisitions and equipment lists that we see in the menus and gameplay imperatives of videogames ensures an extensiveness and scope of fan collecting and archival work. Similarly, the sociality of fan collecting and the value placed on private hoarding, public sharing and the processes of research ‘…bridges to new levels of the game’ (Jones 48). Perhaps we should be as unsurprised that their focus on collecting makes videogames similar to eBay as we are to the realisation that eBay with its competitiveness, its winning and losing states, and its inexorable countdown timer, is nothing if not a game? We should be mindful, however, of overstating the positive effects of fandom on the fate of old games. Alongside eBay’s veneration of the original object, p2p and bittorrent sites reduce the videogame to its barest. Quite apart from the (il)legality of emulation and videogame ripping and sharing (see Conley et al.), the existence of ‘ROMs’ and the technicalities of their distribution reveals much about the peculiar tension between the interest in old games and their putative cultural and economic value. (St)ripped down to the barest of code, ROMs deny the gamer the paratextuality of the instruction manual or boxart. In fact, divorced from its context and robbed of its materiality, ROMs perhaps serve to make the original game even more distant. More tellingly, ROMs are typically distributed by the thousand in zipped files. And so, in just a few minutes, entire console back-catalogues – every game released in every territory – are available for browsing and playing on a PC or Mac. The completism of the collections allows detailed scrutiny of differences in Japanese versus European releases, for instance, and can be seen as a vital investigative resource. However, that these ROMs are packaged into collections of many thousands speaks implicitly of these games’ perceived value. In a similar vein, the budget-priced retro re-release collection helps to diminish the value of each constituent game and serves to simultaneously manufacture and highlight the manifestly unfair comparison between these intriguingly retro curios and the legitimately full-priced games of now and next. Customer comments at Amazon.co.uk demonstrate the way in which historical and technological comparisons are now solidly embedded within the popular discourse (see also Newman 2009b). Leaving feedback on Sega’s PS3/Xbox 360 Sega MegaDrive Ultimate Collection customers berate the publisher for the apparently meagre selection of titles on offer. Interestingly, this charge seems based less around the quality, variety or range of the collection but rather centres on jarring technological schisms and a clear sense of these titles being of necessarily and inevitably diminished monetary value. Comments range from outraged consternation, ‘Wtf, only 40 games?’, ‘I wont be getting this as one disc could hold the entire arsenal of consoles and games from commodore to sega saturn(Maybe even Dreamcast’ through to more detailed analyses that draw attention to the number of bits and bytes but that notably neglect any consideration of gameplay, experientiality, cultural significance or, heaven forbid, fun. “Ultimate” Collection? 32Mb of games on a Blu-ray disc?…here are 40 Megadrive games at a total of 31 Megabytes of data. This was taking the Michael on a DVD release for the PS2 (or even on a UMD for the PSP), but for a format that can store 50 Gigabytes of data, it’s an insult. Sega’s entire back catalogue of Megadrive games only comes to around 800 Megabytes - they could fit that several times over on a DVD. The ultimate consequence of these different but complementary attitudes to games that fix attentions on the future and package up decontextualised ROMs by the thousand or even collections of 40 titles on a single disc (selling for less than half the price of one of the original cartridges) is a disregard – perhaps even a disrespect – for ‘old’ games. Indeed, it is this tendency, this dominant discourse of inevitable, natural and unimpeachable obsolescence and supersession, that provided one of the prime motivators for establishing the NVA. As Lowood et al. note in the title of the IGDA Game Preservation SIG’s White Paper, we need to act to preserve and conserve videogames ‘before it’s too late’.ReferencesAshton, D. ‘Digital Gaming Upgrade and Recovery: Enrolling Memories and Technologies as a Strategy for the Future.’ M/C Journal 11.6 (2008). 13 Jun 2009 ‹http://journal.media-culture.org.au/index.php/mcjournal/article/viewArticle/86›.Buffa, C. ‘How to Fix Videogame Journalism.’ GameDaily 20 July 2006. 13 Jun 2009 ‹http://www.gamedaily.com/articles/features/how-to-fix-videogame-journalism/69202/?biz=1›. ———. ‘Opinion: How to Become a Better Videogame Journalist.’ GameDaily 28 July 2006. 13 Jun 2009 ‹http://www.gamedaily.com/articles/features/opinion-how-to-become-a-better-videogame-journalist/69236/?biz=1. ———. ‘Opinion: The Videogame Review – Problems and Solutions.’ GameDaily 2 Aug. 2006. 13 Jun 2009 ‹http://www.gamedaily.com/articles/features/opinion-the-videogame-review-problems-and-solutions/69257/?biz=1›. ———. ‘Opinion: Why Videogame Journalism Sucks.’ GameDaily 14 July 2006. 13 Jun 2009 ‹http://www.gamedaily.com/articles/features/opinion-why-videogame-journalism-sucks/69180/?biz=1›. 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