Articoli di riviste sul tema "Selling – Collectibles – Computer network resources"

In this paper, we propose a game-theoretic model of the mobile network market. The market is presented by three sides: primary mobile network operators (MNO), mobile virtual network operators (MVNO) and consumers of the services. MVNO are mobile operators without their own infrastructure. They buy resources from MNO and compete with other MVNO for the consumers selling a service in the mobile network market. We construct a two-stage game. In the first stage, MVNO (players) select the MNO, one or several, and then announce the price for their service for the consumers in this MNO. After the profile of prices is determined, the consumers are distributed among MVNOs following the logistic function. The equilibrium in this two-stage game is constructed. For identical consumers, the analytic formulas for the solution are derived.

Research in Intelligent Agents has yielded interesting results, some of which have been translated into commer­cial ventures. Intelligent Agents are executable software components that represent the user, perform tasks on behalf of the user and when the task terminates, the Agents send the result to the user. Intelligent Agents are best suited for the Internet: a collection of computers connected together in a world-wide computer network. Swarm and HYDRA computer architectures for Agents’ execution were developed at the University of Surrey, UK in the 90s. The objective of the research was to develop a software-based computer architecture on which Agents execution could be explored. The combination of Intelligent Agents and HYDRA computer architecture gave rise to a new computer concept: the NET-Computer in which the comput­ing resources reside on the Internet. The Internet computers form the hardware and software resources, and the user is provided with a simple interface to access the Internet and run user tasks. The Agents autonomously roam the Internet (NET-Computer) executing the tasks. A growing segment of the Internet is E-Commerce for online shopping for products and services. The Internet computing resources provide a marketplace for product suppliers and consumers alike. Consumers are looking for suppliers selling products and services, while suppliers are looking for buyers. Searching the vast amount of information available on the Internet causes a great deal of problems for both consumers and suppliers. Intelligent Agents executing on the NET-Computer can surf through the Internet and select specific information of interest to the user. The simulation results show that Intelligent Agents executing HYDRA computer architecture could be applied in E-Commerce.

Pay-as-you-go access to computer resources is a major selling point of the cloud computing model. Cloud tenants demand complete networking of their dedicated resources to simply implement network functions and services, in addition to the conventional computer resources. The flexibility and convenience of on-demand resource provisioning make cloud computing a compelling computing platform. The key to meeting fluctuating needs and maximizing return on investment from Cloud-supporting infrastructure is dynamic resource allocation and reallocation. For traditional IaaS, we offer an energy-efficient resource allocation strategy based on bin packing. In this paper, we present an accurate energy-conscious method for initial resource allocation by casting the issue of energy-efficient resource allocation as a bin-packing model. The available VMs (virtual machines) employ a modified version of the max-min scheduling technique, which saves money and resources. The results of this study give a framework for comparing and contrasting the many different resource distribution approaches that have been proposed by other researchers. The importance of efficient data centers for the cloud is growing. Power consumption has been a major problem due to its expanding size and widespread usage. The overarching purpose of this effort is to create models and algorithms for resource allocation that are both energy-efficient and take into account a variety of relevant factors

One of the business strategies for selling computer resources with services and technology for better use of computing infrastructures is Cloud computing (CC). Nowadays, every IT company prefers cloud computing because it provides consumers with flexible, pay-per-use services. Due to its open and distributed structure, which is susceptible to attackers, thereby, privacy and security is a key obstacle to its sustainability. The most prevalent approach for detecting assaults on the cloud is known to be Intrusion Detection System (IDS). This article aims to propose a novel intrusion pattern detection system (IPDS) in cloud computing that includes three stages: (1) pre-processing, (2) feature extraction, and (3) classification. At first, pre-processing is performed on the input data via Z-score normalization and then feature extraction is performed along with statistical and higher-order statistical features. Subsequently, the extracted features are given to the classification phases that use the Optimized Quantum Neural Network (QNN) classifier. The hidden neuron optimization is performed by Cubic Chaotic Map integrated Cat and Mouse Based Optimization (CC-CMBO) Algorithm to make the classification more exact. Finally, the results of the proposed work are assessed to those of standard systems with respect to various measures.

During the Covid-19 pandemic, the simplest economic, economic and social activities were restricted in many countries. The introduction of pandemic restrictions particularly affected sports organisations: it was forbidden to provide sports services, organise mass sports events, and restrictions were applied on group training and any social gatherings. Various organisational, technological, marketing, communication, public relations and other innovations allowed sports organisations to discover new operational opportunities, generate cash flows, and maintain the continuity of sports organisations’ activities in crisis conditions. The success of innovation is determined by certain factors, named as innovation implementation planning, strategic leadership, etc. Therefore, it is relevant to study what factors determine the success of a sports organisation implementing crisis innovations. The purpose of the study is to determine the factors determining the success of the implementation of crisis-driven innovations in sports organisations. Work tasks: To examine the theoretical aspects of implementing crisis-driven innovations in sports organisations; 2. To determine what crisis-driven innovations are implemented in the studied sports organisations; 3. To determine what factors led to the success of the implementation of crisis-driven innovations in the studied sports organisations. Research methods: analysis of scientific literature; structured interview; content analysis. Main results. The research results show that during the pandemic, the studied basketball clubs implemented the following crisis-driven innovations: 1. Necessary innovations according to legislation (disinfection innovations, separation of zones, temperature measurement technologies); 2. Marketing innovations (advertising innovations, innovations in the development of social network marketing, e-commerce, including the sale of licensed products); 3. Innovations in remote communication with fans (innovation of match previews on online platforms, "cardboard image" innovation, development of social networks, fans inclusion in the commercialisation of social media, creation of a virtual community of fans, e-sports); 4. Innovations to support the internal work of the club (remote communication within the club using Teams software, online training of basketball players). The most successful crisis-driven innovations were communication within the club and in the office through Teams; content marketing in social networks and its commercialisation, as well as solutions for selling advertising content during pandemics. Conclusion of the work: The success of the implementation of crisis-driven innovations of the basketball clubs studied during the pandemic was determined by the entrepreneurial spirit of the organisation, know-how in the field of innovation, strategic and tactical, quick planning, effective teamwork and having specialists in the organisation, managerial and innovative competence of managers, charismatic and innovative leadership, work with personnel (strengthening microclimate, encouraging the cooperation, psychological support for employees, motivation, openness in communication with employees), sufficient financial and human resources. Keywords: crisis innovation; implementation of innovations; success factors.

TRANSFORM, founded in 2015 by Unilever and the UK’s Department for International Development, supports several social enterprises by combining public sector resources with private sector technical capabilities and networks to support innovative social enterprises. Digital programs have enabled social enterprise partnerships to expand the reach of their initiatives to broader audiences including specifically defined groups that hitherto were untapped or difficult to reach. Unilever partnered with TRANSFORM and Every1Mobile to develop UJoin and UAfya in informal settlements of Nairobi, Kenya. UJoin is a social enterprise initiative for promoting business growth among underserved neighborhood shops called dukas. UAfya focuses on young expectant and new mothers, and women interested in family and maternal health topics. Each initiative uses an online community network to discuss and improve knowledge and behaviors regarding livelihoods and health. Online communities provide opportunities to reach specific groups with targeted behavior change messages and campaigns. However, little systematic knowledge is currently available on how to develop, and scale-up effective behavior change programs for digital communities in low-income markets. There is also little information about key guiding principles and best practices that underlie successful digital and online, social networking models. A systematic and participatory tool known as Net-Map was used to explore and understand potential frameworks for establishing digital-based community-driven partnerships with the private sector for health promotion through behavior change. The Net-Map approach was used to help individuals and groups clarify their view of a situation (including networks and power structures), foster discussion, and develop a strategic approach to their networking activities. Eight Net-Maps were constructed, stratified by groups based on location and digital platform. Each map was constructed by an average of 9-10 people for a total of 76 participants. Seventy-six participants identified actors – stakeholders and groups of people involved - and influential links – ways actors are connected - through the Net-Map activity. Among UAfya participants, local government, family, and friends, and the media were identified as the most important actor types. A comparison of the discussions associated with the creation of the maps by UAfya members shows that the two most important link types are conflict, and collaboration/partnership. Among UJoin participants, the three most important actor types were local government, business and financial institutions, and customers. UJoin members identified regulation, and conflict and competition, collaboration and, information sharing as key links between actors. Recommendations based on findings support a vision for scale-up of the UJoin and UAfya programs through accreditation and branding of a novel type of duka. Shop keepers would be trained and knowledgeable to provide high-quality services to improve customer health while also selling health products that benefit the bottom line.

An virtually infinite number of connected information and communication technology (ICT) resources can be found using a method known as cloud computing. Customers can use these resources on-demand over a network in the form of a public IP because both infrastructure and applications are fully owned and managed by third parties.To enhance staff performance and services in the context of transactions made by parties engaged in the buying and selling industry, a computer-based system is required, particularly for cashiers who handle customer payment transactions. There are still a lot of cashier programs available today that can only be accessed via a device linked to the same network or over the local network.In order to facilitate transactions and enable remote control, this research makes use of cloud computing technology that employs Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) offerings. IaaS is a service that "rents" out fundamental information technology resources, such as storage space, computing power, memory, operating systems, network capacity, and others, so that customers can use them to execute their applications.Azure gives developers access to tools like Visual Studio and the ability to construct applications in a variety of languages, including.NET, Java, and Node.js. Because businesses don't have to worry about the expense of server equipment, implementing cloud computing can make it simpler for them to manage their business apps and finances. The ability for store administrators to use this program remotely (online) may then be aided or made simpler by this IaaS solution.

AbstractThe transformation of the contemporary societies through digital technologies has had a profound effect on all human activities including those that are in the realm of illegal, unlawful, and criminal deeds. Moreover, the affordances provided by the anonymity creating techniques such as the Tor protocol which are beneficial for preserving civil liberties, appear to be highly profitable for various types of miscreants whose crimes range from human trafficking, arms trading, and child pornography to selling controlled substances and racketeering. The Tor similar technologies are the foundation of a vast, often mysterious, sometimes anecdotal, and occasionally dangerous space termed as the Dark Web. Using the features that make the Internet a uniquely generative knowledge agglomeration, with no borders, and permeating different jurisdictions, the Dark Web is a source of perpetual challenges for both national and international law enforcement agencies. The anonymity granted to the wrong people increases the complexity and the cost of identifying both the crimes and the criminals, which is often exacerbated with lack of proper human resources. Technologies such as machine learning and artificial intelligence come to the rescue through automation, intensive data harvesting, and analysis built into various types of web crawlers to explore and identify dark markets and the people behind them. It is essential for an effective and efficient crawling to have a pool of dark sites or onion URLs. The research study presents a way to build a crawling mechanism by extracting onion URLs from malicious executables by running them in a sandbox environment and then analysing the log file using machine learning algorithms. By discerning between the malware that uses the Tor network and the one that does not, we were able to classify the Tor using malware with an accuracy rate of 91% with a logistic regression algorithm. The initial results suggest that it is possible to use this machine learning approach to diagnose new malicious servers on the Tor network. Embedding this kind of mechanism into the crawler may also induce predictability, and thus efficiency in recognising dark market activities, and consequently, their closure.

This project report tries to explore all possible factors that are affecting the competitiveness of e commerce retailers. Competitiveness is one of the popular and yet controversial concepts in the literature. Not only its definition, but also its measurement is on debate. Because the concept has a multifaceted nature, there are some methodological challenges that make measurements difficult. Here, is an exploratory study & in-depth analysis by using an integrated approach to study competitiveness such as resources, abilities, processes, etc. The availability and continued growth of Internet technologies have created great opportunities for users all over the globe to benefit from IT services and use them in a variety of different ways. The use of IT to conduct business online is known as E Commerce (Electronic Commerce). According to me globalization is one of the biggest reasons for the rise of E commerce industry due to globalisation now our reach is extended. E commerce simply refers to buying & selling of products, services & information via computer network including internet. E commerce is a very vast industry in which there are different types of e commerce business exists i.e., B2B, B2C, C2B, C2C, G2B, G2C, C2G, B2G. they all the working or can be worked on an e commerce business model. And with the help of an e commerce their operations are so smooth & effective. There are many big players exists when it comes to an e commerce industry for example, Amazon, Flipkart, Udaan, Zomato, etc. E commerce industry is an emerging industry which is growing every day by some percentage, but with the growth percentage the competition, problems & challenges is also increasing. For that the analysis of the industry as well as the competitor is very crucial thing to do. We have to observe the industry very closely to understand the factors that are affecting the competitiveness of e commerce retailers.

Introduction The trope of food is often used in the humanities to discuss aspects of a culture that are customarily overlooked by a textualist approach, for food embodies a kind of knowledge that comes from the direct engagement with materials and processes, and involves taste as an aesthetics that exceeds the visual concept of the “beautiful.” Moreover, cooking is one of the most ancient cultural practices, and is considered the habit that defines us as humans in comparison to other animals—not only culturally, but also physiologically (Wrangham). Today we have entered a post-human age in which technological augmentations, while promoting the erasure of embodiment in favour of intelligence (Hayles), create new assemblages between the organic and the digital, thus redefining what it means to be human. In this context, a reassessment of the practice of cooking as the manipulation of what constitutes food—both for thought and for the body—may promote a more nuanced approach to contemporary culture, in which the agency of the non-human (from synthetic materials to the digital) affects our modes of being and reflects on our aesthetic sensibility. In the 1980s, Guy Debord observed that the food industry's standardisation and automation of methods of production and consumption have anaesthetised the consumer palate with broader political and cultural implications. Today the Internet has extended the intertwinement of food and technology to the social and aesthetic spheres, thus further impacting on taste. For instance, cultural trends such as “foodism” and “slow food” thrive on blogs and social networks and, while promoting an artisanal style in food preparation and presentation, they paradoxically may also homogenise cooking techniques and the experience of sharing a meal. This leads to questions regarding the extent to which the digitalisation of culture might be hindering our capacity to taste. Or, given the new possibilities for connectivity, can this digitalisation also foster an aesthetic sensibility associated with different attitudes and approaches to food—one that transgresses both the grand narratives and the standardisation promoted by such gastronomic fashions? It also leads to the question of how such activities reflect on the collective sphere, considering the contagious character of networked communication. While foodism thrives online, the Internet has nevertheless prompted a renewed interest in DIY (do-it-yourself) cooking techniques. As a recent issue of M/C Journal testifies, today cookbooks are produced and consulted at an unprecedented rate—either in print or online (Brien and Wessell). Taking the example of the online diffusion of DIY cheese-making recipes, I will below trace the connections between cooking, computer culture, and taste with the support of Gilbert Simondon's metaphysics of technics. Although Simondon never extensively discussed food in relation to technology, the positioning of technicity at the heart of culture allows his work to be used to address the multifaceted nature of taste in the light of recent technological development, in particular of the Network. As a matter of fact, today cooking is not only a technical activity, in the sense that it requires a certain practical and theoretical skilfulness—it is also a technological matter, for the amount of networked machines that are increasingly used for food production and marketing. Specifically, this paper argues that by disentangling the human—albeit partially—from the capitalist cycle of production-marketing-consumption and by triggering an awareness of the increasingly dominant role technology plays in food processing and manufacturing, the online sharing of home-cooking advice may promote a reconfiguration of taste, which would translate into a more nuanced approach to contemporary techno-culture. In the first part of this discussion, I introduce Simondon’s philosophy and foreground the technical dimension of cooking by discussing cheese-making as a process of individuation. In the second, I focus on Simondon’s definition of technical objects and technical ensembles to position Internet culture in relation to cooking, and highlight how technicity folds back on taste as aesthetic impression. Ultimately, I conclude with some reflections on how such a culinary-aesthetic approach may find application in other techno-cultural fields by promoting an aesthetic sensibility that extends beyond the experience of the “social” to encompass an ethical component. Cooking as Individuation: The Networked Dimension of Taste Simondon is known as the thinker, and “tinkerer”, of technics. His project is concerned with ontogenesis—that is, the becoming of objects in relation to the terms that constitute them as individual. Simondon’s philosophy of individuation allows for a better understanding of how the Internet fosters certain attitudes to food, for it is grounded on a notion of “energetic materiality in movement” (Deleuze and Guattari 408) that explains how “immaterial” algorithms can affect individual experience and cultural production. For Simondon, individuation is the process that arises from objects being out-of-phase with themselves. Put differently, individuation allows for “the conservation of being through becoming” (Genesis 301). Likewise, individualisation is “the individuation of an individuated being, resulting from an individuation, [and creating] a new structuration within the individual” (L’Individuation 132). Individuation and individualisation are processes common to all kinds of being. Any individual operates an internal and an external resonance within the system in which it is enmeshed, and produces an “associated milieu” capable of entering into relation with other individuals within the system. Simondon maintains that nature consists of three regimes of individuation, that is, three possible phases of every being: the physical, the biological, and the psycho-social—that develop from a metastable pre-individual field. Technology traverses all three regimes and allows for further individualisation via transductive operations across such phases—that is, via operations of conversion of energy from one form to another. The recent online diffusion of DIY cheese-making recipes lends itself to be analysed with the support of Simondon’s philosophy. Today cheese dominates degustation menus beside the finest wines, and constitutes a common obsession among “foodies.” Although, as an object, cheese defies more traditional canons of beauty and pleasure—its usual pale yellow colour is not especially inviting and, generally speaking, the stinkier and mouldier it is, the more exclusive and expensive it usually is—it has played a sizeable role in the collective imagination since ancient times. Although the genesis of cheese predates archival memory, it is commonly assumed to be the fruit of the chemical reaction naturally occurring in the interaction of milk with the rennet inherently contained in the bladders made of ruminants’ stomachs in which milk was contained during the long transits undertaken by the nomadic cultures of Central Asia. Cheese is an invention that reportedly occurred without human intervention, and only the technical need to preserve milk in high temperature impelled humans to learn to produce it. Since World War II its production is most exclusively factory-based, even in the case of artisanal cheese (McGee), which makes the renewed concern for homemade cheese more significant from a techno-cultural perspective. Following Simondon, the individualisation of cheese—and of people in relation to cheese—depends on the different objects involved in its production, and whose associated milieu affects the outcome of the ontogenetic process via transductive operations. In the specific case of an industrial block of cheese, these may include: the more or less ethical breeding and milking of cows in a factory environment; the types of bacteria involved in the cheese-making process; the energy and costs inherent in the fabrication of the packaging material and the packaging process itself; the CO2 emissions caused by transportations; the physical and intellectual labour implied in marketing, retailing and selling; and, last but not least, the arguable nutritional value of the factory-produced cheese—all of which, in spite of their “invisibility” to the eyes of the consumer, affect physical conditions and moods when they enter into relation with the human body (Bennet). To these, we may add, with specific reference to the packaging: the RFID tags that electronically index food items into databases for a more efficient management of supplies, and the QR codes used for social media marketing purposes. In contrast, the direct engagement with the techno-material conditions at the basis of the home cookery process allows one to grasp how different operations may affect the outcome of the recipe. DIY cheese-making recipes are specifically addressed to laypeople and, because they hardly demand professional equipment, they entail a greater attunement with, and to, the objects and processes required by the recipe. For instance, one needs to “feel” when milk has reached the right temperature (specifically, 82 degrees centigrade, which means that the surface of the milk should be slightly bubbly but not fully boiling) and, with practice, one learns how the slightest movement of the hand can lead to different results, in terms of consistency and aspect. Ultimately, DIY cheese-making allows the cook to be creative with moulding, seasonings, and marinading. Indeed, by directly engaging with the undiscovered properties and potentials of ingredients, by understanding the role that energy (both in the sense of induction and “transduction”) plays on form and matter, and by developing—often via processes of trial and error—technics for stirring, draining, moulding, marinading, canning, and so forth, making cheese at home an exercise in speculative pragmatics. An experimental approach to cooking, as the negotiation between the rigid axioms that make up a recipe and the creative and experimental components inherent in the operations of mixing and blending, allows one to feel the ultimate outcome of the cooking process as an event. The taste of a homemade cheese is linked to a new kind of knowledge—that is, an epistemology based on continuous breakages that allow for the cooking process to carry on until the ultimate result. It is a knowledge that comes from a commitment to objects being out-of-phase, and from the acknowledgement of the network of technical operations that bring cheese to our tables. The following section discusses how another kind of object may affect the outcome of a recipe, with important implications for aesthetics, that is, technical objects. The Internet as Ingredient: Technical Objects, Aesthetics, and Invention The notion of technical objects complements Simondon’s theory of individuation to define the becoming of technology in relation to culture. To Simondon: “the technical object is not this or that thing, given hic et nunc, but that of which there is a genesis” (Du Mode 20). Technical objects, therefore, are not simply technological artifacts but are constituted by a series of events that determine their evolution (De Vries). Analogously to other kinds of individuals, they are constituted by transductive operations across the three aforementioned phases of being. The evolution of technical objects extends from the element to the individual, and ultimately to the technical ensemble. Elements are less than individualised technical objects, while individuals that are in a relation of interconnection are called ensembles. According to Simondon, technical ensembles fully individualise with the realisation of the cybernetic project. Simondon observes that: “there is something eternal in a technical ensemble [...] and it is that which is always present, and can be conserved in a thing” (Les Cahiers 87). The Internet, as a thing-network, could be regarded as an instance of such technical ensembles, however, a clarification needs to be made. Simondon explains that “true technical ensembles are not those that use technical individuals, but those that are a network of technical individuals in a relation of interconnection” (Du mode 126). To Simondon, humankind has ceased to be a technical individual with the industrialisation and automation of methods of production, and has consigned this function to machines (128). Expanding this line of thought, examples such as the viral spreading of memes, and the hypnotic power of online marketing campaigns, demonstrate how digital technology seems to have intensified this process of alienation of people from the functioning of the machine. In short, no one seems to know how or why things happen on the Internet, but we cannot help but use it. In order to constitute “real” technical ensembles, we need to incorporate technics again into culture, in a relation of reciprocity and complementarity with machines, under the aegis of a technical culture. Simondon specifies that such a reconfiguration of the relation between man and machines can only be achieved by means of an invention. An invention entails the individualisation of the technical ensemble as a departure from the mind of the inventor or designer that conceived it, in order to acquire its own autonomous existence (“Technical Mentality”). It refers to the origin of an operative solidarity between individual agents in a network, which provides the support for a human relation based on the “model of transidividuality” (Du Mode 247). A “transindividual relation” is a relation of relations that puts the individual in direct contact with a real collective. The notion of real collective is opposed to that of an interindividual community or social sphere, which is poisoned by the anxieties that stem from a defected relation with the technical ensemble culture is embedded in. In the specific context of the online sharing of DIY cheese-making recipes, rather than a fully individualised technical ensemble per se, the Internet can be regarded as one of the ingredients that make up the final recipe—together with human and the food—for the invention of a true technical ensemble. In such a framework, praxis, as linked to the kind of non-verbal knowledge associated with “making,” defines individuation together with the types of objects that make up the Network. While in the case of foodism, the practice of online marketing and communication homogenises culture by creating “social phenomena,” in the case of DIY cooking advice, it fosters a diversification of tastes, experiences, and flavours linked to individual modes of doing and cooking, that put the cook in a new relation with the culinary process, with food, and with the guests who have the pleasure to taste her meal. This is a qualitative change in the network that constitutes culture, rather than a mere quantitative shift in energy induction. The term “conviviality” (from the Latin con-vivere) specifically means this: a “living together,” rather than a mere dinner party. For Simondon, a real technical ensemble is an assemblage of humans, machines, tools, resources and milieus, which can only be éprouve—i.e., experienced, also in the sense of “experimented with”—rather than represented. A technical ensemble is first and foremost an aesthetic affair—it can only be perceived by experimenting with the different agents involved in the networked operations that constitute it. For Simondon “aesthetics comes after technicity [and] it also returns to us in the heart of technicity” (Michaud in De Boever et al. 122). Therefore, any object bears an aesthetic potential—even something as trivial as a homemade block of cheese. Simondon rejects the idea of an aesthetic object, but affirms the power of technicity to foreground an aesthetic impression, which operates a convergence between the diverging forces that constitute the mediation between man and world, in terms of an ethical treatment of technics. For Simondon, the beautiful is a process: “it is never, properly speaking, the object that is beautiful: it is the encounter operating a propos of the object between a real aspect of the world and a human gesture” (Du Mode 191 emphasis added). If an analysis of cooking as individuation already foregrounds an aesthetics that is both networked and technical, the relational capabilities afforded by networked media have the power to amplify the aesthetic potential of the human gesture implied in a block of homemade cheese—which today extends from searching for (or writing) a recipe online, to pouring the milk and seasoning the cheese, and which entails less environmental waste due to the less intensive processing and the lack of, or certainly a reduction in, packaging materials (Rastogi). The praise of technical creativity resounds throughout Simondon’s thought. By using the Internet in order to create (or indeed cook) something new, the online sharing of DIY cooking techniques like cheese-making, which partially disengages the human (and food itself) from the cycle of production-marketing-consumption that characterises the food industry in capitalist society by fostering an awareness of the networked operations that constitute her as individual, is an invention in its own right. Although the impact of these DIY activities on the global food industry is still very limited, such a hands-on approach, imbued with a dose of technical creativity, partially overcomes the alienation of the individual from the production process, by providing the conditions to “feel” how the individualisation of cheese (and the human) is inscribed in a larger metabolism. This does not stop within the economy of the body but encompasses the techno-cultural ensemble that forms capitalist society as a whole, and in which humans play only a small part. This may be considered a first step towards the reconciliation between humans and technical culture—a true technical ensemble. Indeed, eating involves “experiments in art and technology”—as the name of the infamous 1960s art collective (E.A.T.) evokes. Home-cooking in this sense is a technical-aesthetic experiment in its own right, in which aesthetics acquires an ethical nuance. Simondon’s philosophy highlights how the aesthetics involved in the home cooking process entails a political component, aimed at the disentanglement of the human from the “false” technical ensemble constituted by capitalist society, which is founded on the alienation from the production process and is driven by economic interests. Surely, an ethical approach to food would entail considering the biopolitics of the guts from the perspective of sourcing materials, and perhaps even building one’s own tools. These days, however, keeping a cow or goat in the backyard is unconceivable and/or impossible for most of us. The point is that the Internet can foster inventiveness and creativity among the participants to the Network, in spite of the fixity of the frame in which culture is increasingly inscribed (for instance, the standardised format of a Wordpress blog), and in this way, can trigger an aesthetic impression that comprises an ethical component, which translates into a political stand against the syncopated, schizophrenic rhythms of the market. Conclusion In this discussion, I have demonstrated that cooking can be considered a process of individuation inscribed in a techno-cultural network in which different transductive operations have the power to affect the final taste of a recipe. Simondon’s theory of individuation allows us to account for the impact of ubiquitous networked media on traditionally considered “human” practices, thus suggesting a new kind of humanism—a sort of technological humanism—on the basis of a new model of perception, which acknowledges the non-human actants involved in the process of individuation. I have shown that, in the case of the online sharing of cheese-making recipes, Simondon’s philosophy allows us to uncover a concept of taste that extends beyond the mere gustatory experience provided by foodism, and in this sense it may indeed affirm a reconfiguration of human culture based on an ethical approach towards the technical ensemble that envelops individuals of any kind—be they physical, living, or technical. Analogously, a “culinary” approach to techno-culture in terms of a commitment to the ontogenetic character of objects’ behaviours could be transposed to the digital realm in order to enlighten new perspectives for the speculative design of occasions of interaction among different beings—including humans—in ethico-aesthetic terms, based on a creative, experimental engagement with techniques and technologies. As a result, this can foreground a taste for life and culture that exceeds human-centred egotistic pleasure to encompass both technology and nature. Considering that a worryingly high percentage of digital natives both in Australia and the UK today believe that cheese and yogurt grow on trees (Howden; Wylie), perhaps cooking should indeed be taught in school alongside (rather than separate to, or instead of) programming. References Bennet, Jane. Vibrant Matter: a Political Ecology of Things. 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Introduction In a 2019 report for the International Journal of Communication, Baym et al. positioned distributed blockchain ledger technology, and what would subsequently be referred to as Web3, as a convening technology. Riffing off Barnett, a convening technology “initiates and serves as the focus of a conversation that can address issues far beyond what it may ultimately be able to address itself” (403). The case studies for the Baym et al. research—early, aspirant projects applying the blockchain concept to music publishing and distribution—are described in the piece as speculations or provocations concerning music’s commercial and social future. What is convened in this era (pre-2017 blockchain music discourse and practice) is the potential for change: a type of widespread, broadly discussed, reimagination of the 21st-century music industries, productive precisely because near-future applications suggest the realisation of what Baym et al. call dreams. In this article, we aim to examine the Web3 music field as it lies some years later. Taking the latter half of 2021 as our subject, we present a survey of where music then resided within Web3, focussing on how the dreams of Baym et al. have morphed and evolved, and materialised and declined, in the intervening years. By investigating the discourse and functionality of 2021’s current crop of music NFTs—just one thread of music Web3’s far-reaching aspiration, but a potent and accessible manifestation nonetheless—we can make a detailed analysis of concept-led application. Volatility remains throughout the broader sector, and all of the projects listed here could be read as conditionally short-term and untested, but what they represent is a series of clearly evolved case studies of the dream, rich precisely because of what is assumed and disregarded. WTF Is an NFT? Non-fungible tokens inscribe indelible, unique ledger entries on a blockchain, detailing ownership of, or rights associated with, assets that exist off-chain. Many NFTs take the form of an ERC-721 smart-contract that functions as an indivisible token on the Ethereum blockchain. Although all ERC-721 tokens are NFTs, the inverse is not true. Similar standards exist on other blockchains, and bridges allow these tokens to be created on alternative networks such as Polygon, Solana, WAX, Cardano and Tezos. The creation (minting) and transfer of ownership on the Ethereum network—by far the dominant chain—comes with a significant and volatile transaction cost, by way of gas fees. Thus, even a “free” transaction on the main NFT network requires a currency and time investment that far outweighs the everyday routines of fiat exchange. On a technical level, the original proposal for the ERC-721 standard refers to NFTs as deeds intended to represent ownership of digital and physical assets like houses, virtual collectibles, and negative value assets such as loans (Entriken et al.). The details of these assets can be encoded as metadata, such as the name and description of the asset including a URI that typically points to either a file somewhere on the Internet or a file hosted via IPFS, a decentralised peer-to-peer hosting network. As noted in the standard, while the data inscribed on-chain are immutable, the asset being referred to is not. Similarly, while each NFT is unique, multiple NFTs could, in theory, point to a single asset. In this respect ERC-721 tokens are different from cryptocurrencies and other tokens like stable-coins in that their value is often contingent on their accurate and ongoing association with assets outside of the blockchain on which they are traded. Further complicating matters, it is often unclear if and how NFTs confer ownership of digital assets with respect to legislative or common law. NFTs rarely include any information relating to licencing or rights transfer, and high-profile NFTs such as Bored Ape Yacht Club appear to be governed by licencing terms held off-chain (Bored Ape Yacht Club). Finally, while it is possible to inscribe any kind of data, including audio, into an NFT, the ERC-721 standard and the underpinning blockchains were not designed to host multimedia content. At the time of writing, storing even a low-bandwidth stereo audio file on the ethereum network appears cost-prohibitive. This presents a challenge for how music NFTs distinguish themselves in a marketplace dominated by visual works. The following sections of this article are divided into what we consider to be the general use cases for NFTs within music in 2021. We’ve designated three overlapping cases: audience investment, music ownership, and audience and business services. Audience Investment Significant discourse around NFTs focusses on digital collectibles and artwork that are conceptually, but not functionally, unique. Huge amounts of money have changed hands for specific—often celebrity brand-led—creations, resulting in media cycles of hype and derision. The high value of these NFTs has been variously ascribed to their high novelty value, scarcity, the adoption of NFTs as speculative assets by investors, and the lack of regulatory oversight allowing for price inflation via practices such as wash-trading (Madeline; Das et al.; Cong et al.; Le Pennec, Fielder, and Ante; Fazil, Owfi, and Taesiri). We see here the initial traditional split of discourse around cultural activity within a new medium: dual narratives of utopianism and dystopianism. Regardless of the discursive frame, activity has grown steadily since stories reporting the failure of Blockchain to deliver on its hype began appearing in 2017 (Ellul). Early coverage around blockchain, music, and NFTs echoes this capacity to leverage artificial scarcity via the creation of unique digital assets (cf Heap; Tomaino). As NFTs have developed, this discourse has become more nuanced, arguing that creators are now able to exploit both ownership and abundance. However, for the most part, music NFTs have essentially adopted the form of digital artworks and collectibles in editions ranging from 1:1 or 1:1000+. Grimes’s February 2021 Mars NFT pointed to a 32-second rotating animation of a sword-wielding cherubim above the planet Mars, accompanied by a musical cue (Grimes). Mars sold 388 NFTs for a reported fixed price of $7.5k each, grossing $2,910,000 at time of minting. By contrast, electronic artists Steve Aoki and Don Diablo have both released 1:1 NFT editions that have been auctioned via Sotheby’s, Superrare, and Nifty Gateway. Interestingly, these works have been bundled with physical goods; Diablo’s Destination Hexagonia, which sold for 600 Eth or approximately US$1.2 million at the time of sale, proffered ownership of a bespoke one-hour film hosted online, along with “a unique hand-crafted box, which includes a hard drive that contains the only copy of the high-quality file of the film” (Diablo). Aoki’s Hairy was much less elaborate but still promised to provide the winner of the $888,888 auction with a copy of the 35-second video of a fur-covered face shaking in time to downbeat electronica as an Infinite Objects video print (Aoki). In the first half of 2021, similar projects from high-profile artists including Deadmau5, The Weekend, Snoop Dogg, Eminem, Blondie, and 3Lau have generated an extraordinary amount of money leading to a significant, and understandable, appetite from musicians wanting to engage in this marketplace. Many of these artists and the platforms that have enabled their sales have lauded the potential for NFTs to address an alleged poor remuneration of artists from streaming and/or bypassing “industry middlemen” (cf. Sounds.xyz); the millions of dollars generated by sales of these NFTs presents a compelling case for exploring these new markets irrespective of risk and volatility. However, other artists have expressed reservations and/or received pushback on entry into the NFT marketplace due to concerns over the environmental impact of NFTs; volatility; and a perception of NFT markets as Ponzi schemes (Poleg), insecure (Goodin), exploitative (Purtill), or scammy (Dash). As of late 2021, increased reportage began to highlight unauthorised or fraudulent NFT minting (cf. TFL; Stephen), including in music (Newstead). However, the number of contested NFTs remains marginal in comparison to the volume of exchange that occurs in the space daily. OpenSea alone oversaw over US$2.5 billion worth of transactions per month. For the most part, online NFT marketplaces like OpenSea and Solanart oversee the exchange of products on terms not dissimilar to other large online retailers; the space is still resolutely emergent and there is much debate about what products, including recently delisted pro-Nazi and Alt-Right-related NFTs, are socially and commercially acceptable (cf. Pearson; Redman). Further, there are signs this trend may impact on both the willingness and capacity of rightsholders to engage with NFTs, particularly where official offerings are competing with extant fraudulent or illegitimate ones. Despite this, at the time of writing the NFT market as a whole does not appear prone to this type of obstruction. What remains complicated is the contested relationship between NFTs, copyrights, and ownership of the assets they represent. This is further complicated by tension between the claims of blockchain’s independence from existing regulatory structures, and the actual legal recourse available to music rights holders. Music Rights and Ownership Baym et al. note that addressing the problems of rights management and metadata is one of the important discussions around music convened by early blockchain projects. While they posit that “our point is not whether blockchain can or can’t fix the problems the music industries face” (403), for some professionals, the blockchain’s promise of eliminating the need for trust seemed to provide an ideal solution to a widely acknowledged business-to-business problem: one of poor metadata leading to unclaimed royalties accumulating in “black boxes”, particularly in the case of misattributed mechanical royalties in the USA (Rethink Music Initiative). As outlined in their influential institutional research paper (partnered with music rights disruptor Kobalt), the Rethink Music Initiative implied that incumbent intermediaries were benefiting from this opacity, incentivising them to avoid transparency and a centralised rights management database. This frame provides a key example of one politicised version of “fairness”, directly challenging the interest of entrenched powers and status quo systems. Also present in the space is a more pragmatic approach which sees problems of metadata and rights flows as the result of human error which can be remedied with the proper technological intervention. O’Dair and Beaven argue that blockchain presents an opportunity to eliminate the need for trust which has hampered efforts to create a global standard database of rights ownership, while music business researcher Opal Gough offers a more sober overview of how decentralised ledgers can streamline processes, remove inefficiencies, and improve cash flow, without relying on the moral angle of powerful incumbents holding on to control accounts and hindering progress. In the intervening two years, this discourse has shifted from transparency (cf. Taghdiri) to a practical narrative of reducing system friction and solving problems on the one hand—embodied by Paperchain, see Carnevali —and ethical claims reliant on the concept of fairness on the other—exemplified by Resonate—but with, so far, limited widespread impact. The notion that the need for b2b collaboration on royalty flows can be successfully bypassed through a “trustless” blockchain is currently being tested. While these earlier projects were attempts to either circumvent or fix problems facing the traditional rights holders, with the advent of the NFT in particular, novel ownership structures have reconfigured the concept of a rights holder. NFTs promise fans an opportunity to not just own a personal copy of a recording or even a digitally unique version, but to share in the ownership of the actual property rights, a role previously reserved for record labels and music publishers. New NFT models have only recently launched which offer fans a share of IP revenue. “Collectors can buy royalty ownership in songs directly from their favorite artists in the form of tokens” through the service Royal. Services such as Royal and Vezt represent potentially massive cultural shifts in the traditional separation between consumers and investors; they also present possible new headaches and adventures for accountants and legal teams. The issues noted by Baym et al. are still present, and the range of new entrants into this space risks the proliferation, rather than consolidation, of metadata standards and a need to put money into multiple blockchain ecosystems. As noted in RMIT’s blockchain report, missing royalty payments … would suggest the answer to “does it need a blockchain?” is yes (although further research is needed). However, it is not clear that the blockchain economy will progress beyond the margins through natural market forces. Some level of industry coordination may still be required. (18) Beyond the initial questions of whether system friction can be eased and standards generated without industry cooperation lie deeper philosophical issues of what will happen when fans are directly incentivised to promote recordings and artist brands as financial investors. With regard to royalty distribution, the exact role that NFTs would play in the ownership and exploitation of song IP remains conceptual rather than concrete. Even the emergent use cases are suggestive and experimental, often leaning heavily on off-chain terms, goodwill and the unknown role of existing legal infrastructure. Audience and Business Services Aside from the more high-profile NFT cases which focus on the digital object as an artwork providing a source of value, other systemic uses of NFTs are emerging. Both audience and business services are—to varying degrees—explorations of the utility of NFTs as a community token: i.e. digital commodities that have a market value, but also unlock ancillary community interaction. The music industries have a longstanding relationship with the sale of exclusivity and access tailored to experiential products. Historically, one of music’s most profitable commodities—the concert ticket—contains very little intrinsic value, but unlocks a hugely desirable extrinsic experience. As such, NFTs have already found adoption as tools of music exclusivity; as gateways into fan experiences, digital communities, live events ticketing and closed distribution. One case study incorporating almost all of these threads is the Deathbats club by American heavy metal band Avenged Sevenfold. Conceived of as the “ultimate fan club”, Deathbats is, according to the band’s singer M. Shadows, “every single thing that [fans] want from us, which is our time, our energy” (Chan). At the time of writing, the Deathbats NFT had experienced expected volatility, but maintained a 30-day average sale price well above launch price. A second affordance provided by music NFTs’ ability to tokenise community is the application of this to music businesses in the form of music DAOs: decentralised autonomous organisations. DAOs and NFTs have so far intersected in a number of ways. DAOs function as digital entities that are owned by their members. They utilise smart contracts to record protocols, votes, and transactions on the blockchain. Bitcoin and Ethereum are often considered the first DAOs of note, serving as board-less venture capital funds, also known as treasuries, that cannot be accessed without the consensus of their members. More recently, DAOs have been co-opted by online communities of shared interests, who work towards an agreed goal, and operate without the need for leadership. Often, access to DAO membership is tokenised, and the more tokens a member has, the more voting rights they possess. All proposals must pass before members, and have been voted for by the majority in order to be enacted, though voting systems differ between DAOs. Proposals must also comply with the DAO’s regulations and protocols. DAOs typically gather in online spaces such as Discord and Zoom, and utilise messaging services such as Telegram. Decentralised apps (dapps) have been developed to facilitate DAO activities such as voting systems and treasury management. Collective ownership of digital assets (in the form of NFTs) has become commonplace within DAOs. Flamingo DAO and PleasrDAO are two well-established and influential examples. The “crypto-backed social club” Friends with Benefits (membership costs between $5,000 and $10,000) serves as a “music discovery platform, an online publication, a startup incubator and a kind of Bloomberg terminal for crypto investors” (Gottsegen), and is now hosting its own curated NFT art platform with work by the likes of Pussy Riot. Musical and cross-disciplinary artists and communities are also exploring the potential of DAOs to empower, activate, and incentivise their communities as an extension of, or in addition to, their adoption and exploration of NFTs. In collaboration with Never Before Heard Sounds, electronic artist and musical pioneer Holly Herndon is exploring ideological questions raised by the growing intelligence of AI to create digital likeness and cloning through voice models. Holly+ is a custom voice instrument that allows users to process pre-existing polyphonic audio through a deep neural network trained by recordings of Holly Herndon’s voice. The output is audio-processed through Holly Herndon’s distinct vocal sound. Users can submit their resulting audio to the Holly+ DAO, to whom she has distributed ownership of her digital likeness. DAO token-holders steward which audio is minted and certified as an NFT, ensuring quality control and only good use of her digital likeness. DAO token-holders are entitled to a percentage of profit from resales in perpetuity, thereby incentivising informed and active stewardship of her digital likeness (Herndon). Another example is LA-based label Leaving Records, which has created GENRE DAO to explore and experiment with new levels of ownership and empowerment for their pre-existing community of artists, friends, and supporters. They have created a community token—$GENRE—for which they intend a number of uses, such as “a symbol of equitable growth, a badge of solidarity, a governance token, currency to buy NFTs, or as a utility to unlock token-gated communities” (Leaving Records). Taken as a whole, the spectrum of affordances and use cases presented by music NFTs can be viewed as a build-up of interest and capital around the technology. Conclusion The last half of 2021 was a moment of intense experimentation in the realms of music business administration and cultural expression, and at the time of writing, each week seemed to bring a new high-profile music Web3 project and/or disaster. Narratives of emancipation and domination under capitalism continue to drive our discussions around music and technology, and the direct link to debates on ecology and financialisation make these conversations particularly polarising. High-profile cases of music projects that overstep norms of existing IP rights, such as Hitpiece’s attempt to generate NFTs of songs without right-holders’ consent, point to the ways in which this technology is portrayed as threatening and subversive to commercial musicians (Blistein). Meanwhile, the Water and Music research DAO promises to incentivise a research community to “empower music-industry professionals with the knowledge, network and skills to do more collaborative and progressive work with technology” through NFT tokens and a DAO organisational structure (Hu et al.). The assumption in many early narratives of the ability of blockchain to provide systems of remuneration that musicians would embrace as inherently fairer is far from the reality of a popular discourse marked by increasing disdain and distrust, currently centred on NFTs as lacking in artistic merit, or even as harmful. We have seen all this talk before, of course, when jukeboxes and player pianos, film synchronisation, radio, recording, and other new communication technologies steered new paths for commercial musicians and promised magical futures. All of these innovations were met with intense scrutiny, cries of inauthentic practice, and resistance by incumbent musicians, but all were eventually sustained by the emergence of new forms of musical expression that captured the interest of the public. On the other hand, the road towards musical nirvana passes by not only the more prominent corpses of the Digital Audio Tape, SuperAudio, and countless recording formats, but if you squint and remember that technology is not always about devices or media, you can see the Secure Download Music Initiative, PressPlay, the International Music Registry, and Global Repertoire Databases in the distance, wondering if blockchain might correct some of the problems they dreamed of solving in their day. The NFT presents the artistic and cultural face of this dream of a musical future, and of course we are first seeing the emergence of old models within its contours. While the investment, ownership, and service phenomena emerging might not be reminiscent of the first moment when people were able to summon a song recording onto their computer via a telephone modem, it is important to remember that there were years of text-based chat rooms before we arrived at music through the Internet. It is early days, and there will be much confusion, anger, and experimentation before music NFTs become either another mundane medium of commercial musical practice, or perhaps a memory of another attempt to reach that goal. References Aoki, Steve. “Hairy.” Nifty Gateway 2021. 16 Feb. 2022 <https://niftygateway.com/marketplace/collection/0xbeccd9e4a80d4b7b642760275f60b62608d464f7/1?page=1>. Baym, Nancy, Lana Swartz, and Andrea Alarcon. "Convening Technologies: Blockchain and the Music Industry." International Journal of Communication 13.20 (2019). 13 Feb. 2022 <https://ijoc.org/index.php/ijoc/article/view/8590>. 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Introduction 2021 was the year that NFTs got big—not just in value but also in terms of the cultural consciousness. When digital artist Beeple sold the portfolio of his 5,000 daily images at Christie’s for US$69 million, the art world was left intrigued, confused, and outraged in equal measure. Depending on who you asked, non-fungible tokens (NFTs) seemed to be either a quick cash-grab or the future of the art market (Bowden and Jones; Smee). Following the Beeple sale, articles started to appear indicating that the film industry was abuzz for NFTs. Independent filmmaker Kevin Smith was quick to announce that he planned to release his horror film Killroy Was Here as an NFT (Alexander); in September 2021 the James Bond film No Time to Die also unveiled a series of collectibles to coincide with the film’s much-delayed theatrical release (Natalee); the distribution and collectible platforms Vuele, NFT Studios, and Mogul Productions all emerged, and the industry rumour mill suggests more start-ups are en route (CurrencyWorks; NFT Studios; NewsBTC). Blockchain disciples say that the technology will solve all the problems of the Internet (Tewari; Norton; European Business Review); critics say it will only perpetuate existing accessibility and equality issues (Davis and Flatow; Klein). Those more circumspect will doubtless sit back until the dust settles, waiting to see what parts of so-called web3 will be genuinely integrated into the architecture of the Internet. Pamela Hutchinson puts it neatly in terms of the arts sector: “the NFT may revolutionise the art market, film funding and distribution. Or it might be an ecological disaster and a financial bubble, in which few actual movies change hands, and fraudsters get rich from other people’s intellectual property” (Hutchinson). There is an uptick in the literature around NFTs and blockchain (see Quiniou; Gayvoronskaya & Meinel); however, the technology remains unregulated and unstandardised (Yeung 212-14; Dimitropoulos 112-13). Similarly, the sheer amount of funding being put into fundamental technical, data, and security-related issues speaks volumes to the nascency of the space (Ossinger; Livni; Gayvoronskaya & Meinel 52-6). Put very briefly, NFTs are part of a given blockchain system; think of them, like cryptocurrency coins, as “units of value” within that system (Roose). NFTs were initially rolled out on Ethereum, though several other blockchains have now implemented their own NFT frameworks. NFTs are usually not the artwork itself, but rather a unique, un-copyable (hence, non-fungible) piece of code that is attached, linked, or connected to another digital file, be that an image, video, text, or something else entirely. NFTs are often referred to as a digital artwork’s “certificate of authenticity” (Roose). At the time of writing, it remains to be seen how widely blockchain and NFT technology will be implemented across the entertainment industries. However, this article aims to outline the current state of implementation in the film trade specifically, and to attempt to sort true potential from the hype. Beginning with an overview of the core issues around blockchain and NFTs as they apply to film properties and adjacent products, current implementations of the technology are outlined, before finishing with a hesitant glimpse into the potential future applications. The Issues and Conversation At the core of current conversations around blockchain are three topics: intellectual property and ownership, concentrations of power and control, and environmental impact. To this I would like to add a consideration of social capital, which I begin with briefly here. Both the film industry and “crypto” — if we take the latter to encompass the various facets of so-called ‘web3’ — are engines of social capital. In the case of cinema, its products are commodified and passed through a model that begins with exclusivity (theatrical release) before progressing to mass availability (home media, streaming). The cinematic object, i.e., an individual copy of a film, is, by virtue of its origins as a mass product of the twentieth century, fungible. The film is captured, copied, stored, distributed, and shared. The film-industrial model has always relied on social phenomena, word of mouth, critical discourse, and latterly on buzz across digital social media platforms. This is perhaps as distinct from fine art, where — at least for dealers — the content of the piece does not necessarily matter so much as verification of ownership and provenance. Similarly, web3, with its decentralised and often-anonymised processes, relies on a kind of social activity, or at least a recorded interaction wherein the chain is stamped and each iteration is updated across the system. Even without the current hype, web3 still relies a great deal on discourse, sharing, and community, particularly as it flattens the existing hierarchies of the Internet that linger from Web 2.0. In terms of NFTs, blockchain systems attach scarcity and uniqueness to digital objects. For now, that scarcity and uniqueness is resulting in financial value, though as Jonathan Beller argues the notion of value could — or perhaps should — be reconsidered as blockchain technology, and especially cryptocurrencies, evolve (Beller 217). Regardless, NFT advocates maintain that this is the future of all online activity. To questions of copyright, the structures of blockchain do permit some level of certainty around where a given piece of intellectual property emerged. This is particularly useful where there are transnational differences in recognition of copyright law, such as in France, for instance (Quiniou 112-13). The Berne Convention stipulates that “the subsistence of copyright does not rest on the compliance with formal requirements: rights will exist if the work meets the requirements for protection set out by national law and treaties” (Guadamuz 1373). However, there are still no legal structures underpinning even the most transparent of transactions, when an originator goes out of their way to transfer rights to the buyer of the accompanying NFT. The minimum requirement — even courtesy — for the assignment of rights is the identification of the work itself; as Guadamuz notes, this is tricky for NFTs as they are written in code (1374). The blockchain’s openness and transparency are its key benefits, but until the code can explicitly include (or concretely and permanently reference) the ‘content’ of an NFT, its utility as a system of ownership is questionable. Decentralisation, too, is raised consistently as a key positive characteristic of blockchain technology. Despite the energy required for this decentralisation (addressed shortly), it is true that, at least in its base code, blockchain is a technology with no centralised source of truth or verification. Instead, such verification is performed by every node on the chain. On the surface, for the film industry, this might mean modes of financing, rights management, and distribution chains that are not beholden to multinational media conglomerates, streamers like Netflix, niche intermediaries, or legacy studios. The result here would be a flattening of the terrain: breaking down studio and corporate gatekeeping in favour of a more democratised creative landscape. Creators and creative teams would work peer-to-peer, paying, contracting, servicing, and distribution via the blockchain, with iron-clad, publicly accessible tracking of transactions and ownership. The alternative, though, is that the same imbalances persist, just in a different form: this is outlined in the next section. As Hunter Vaughan writes, the film industry’s environmental impact has long been under-examined. Its practices are diverse, distributed, and hard to quantify. Cinematic images, Vaughan writes, “do not come from nothing, and they do not vanish into the air: they have always been generated by the earth and sun, by fossil fuels and chemical reactions, and our enjoyment of them has material consequences” (3). We believe that by watching a “green” film like Avatar we are doing good, but it implicates us in the dirty secret, an issue of “ignorance and of voluntary psychosis” where “we do not see who we are harming or how these practices are affecting the environment, and we routinely agree to accept the virtual as real” (5). Beyond questions of implication and eco-material conceptualisation, however, there are stark facts. In the 1920s, the Kodak Park Plant in New York drew 12 million gallons of water from Lake Ontario each day to produce film stock. As the twentieth century came to a close, this amount — for a single film plant — had grown to 35-53 million gallons per day. The waste water was perfunctorily “cleaned” and then dumped into surrounding rivers (72-3). This was just one plant, and one part of the filmmaking process. With the shift to digital, this cost might now be calculated in the extraction of precious metals used to make contemporary cameras, computers, or storage devices. Regardless, extrapolate outwards to a global film industry and one quickly realises the impact is almost beyond comprehension. Considering — let alone calculating — the carbon footprint of blockchain requires outlining some fundamentals of the technology. The two primary architectures of blockchain are Proof of Work (PoW) and Proof of Stake (PoS), both of which denote methods of adding and verifying new blocks to a chain. PoW was the first model, employed by Bitcoin and the first iteration of Ethereum. In a PoW model, each new block has a specific cryptographic hash. To confirm the new block, crypto miners use their systems to generate a target hash that is less than or equal to that of the block. The systems process these calculations quickly, as the goal is to be “the first miner with the target hash because that miner is the one who can update the blockchain and receive crypto rewards” (Daly). The race for block confirmation necessitates huge amounts of processing power to make these quick calculations. The PoS model differs in that miners are replaced by validators (or staking services where participants pool validation power). Rather than investing in computer power, validators invest in the blockchain’s coins, staking those coins (tokens) in a smart contract (think of this contract like a bank account or vault). When a new block is proposed, an algorithm chooses a validator based on the size of their stake; if the block is verified, the validator receives further cryptocurrency as a reward (Castor). Given the ubiquity and exponential growth of blockchain technology and its users, an accurate quantification of its carbon footprint is difficult. For some precedent, though, one might consider the impact of the Bitcoin blockchain, which runs on a PoW model. As the New York Times so succinctly puts it: “the process of creating Bitcoin to spend or trade consumes around 91 terawatt-hours of electricity annually, more than is used by Finland, a nation of about 5.5 million” (Huang, O’Neill and Tabuchi). The current Ethereum system (at time of writing), where the majority of NFT transactions take place, also runs on PoW, and it is estimated that a single Ethereum transaction is equivalent to nearly nine days of power consumption by an average US household (Digiconomist). Ethereum always intended to operate on a PoS system, and the transition to this new model is currently underway (Castor). Proof of Stake transactions use significantly less energy — the new Ethereum will supposedly be approximately 2,000 times more energy efficient (Beekhuizen). However, newer systems such as Solana have been explicit about their efficiency goals, stating that a single Solana transaction uses less energy (1,837 Joules, to be precise) than keeping an LED light on for one hour (36,000 J); one Ethereum transaction, for comparison, uses over 692 million J (Solana). In addition to energy usage, however, there is also the question of e-waste as a result of mining and general blockchain operations which, at the time of writing, for Bitcoin sits at around 32 kilotons per year, around the same as the consumer IT wastage of the Netherlands (de Vries and Stoll). How the growth in NFT awareness and adoption amplifies this impact remains to be seen, but depending on which blockchain they use, they may be wasting energy and resources by design. If using a PoW model, the more valuable the cryptocurrency used to make the purchase, the more energy (“gas”) required to authenticate the purchase across the chain. Images abound online of jerry-rigged crypto data centres of varying quality (see also efficiency and safety). With each NFT minted, sold, or traded, these centres draw — and thus waste, for gas — more and more energy. With increased public attention and scrutiny, cryptocurrencies are slowly realising that things could be better. As sustainable alternatives become more desirable and mainstream, it is safe to predict that many NFT marketplaces may migrate to Cardano, Solana, or other more efficient blockchain bases. For now, though, this article considers the existing implementations of NFTs and blockchain technology within the film industry. Current Implementations The current applications of NFTs in film centre around financing and distribution. In terms of the former, NFTs are saleable items that can raise capital for production, distribution, or marketing. As previously mentioned, director Kevin Smith launched Jay & Silent Bob’s Crypto Studio in order to finish and release Killroy Was Here. Smith released over 600 limited edition tokens, including one of the film itself (Moore). In October 2021, renowned Hong Kong director Wong Kar-wai sold an NFT with unreleased footage from his film In the Mood for Love at Sotheby’s for US$550,000 (Raybaud). Quentin Tarantino entered the arena in January 2022, auctioning uncut scenes from his 1994 film Pulp Fiction, despite the threat of legal action from the film’s original distributor Miramax (Dailey). In Australia, an early adopter of the technology is director Michael Beets, who works in virtual production and immersive experiences. His immersive 14-minute VR film Nezunoban (2020) was split into seven different chapters, and each chapter was sold as an NFT. Beets also works with artists to develop entry tickets that are their own piece of generative art; with these tickets and the chapters selling for hundreds of dollars at a time, Beets seems to have achieved the impossible: turning a profit on a short film (Fletcher). Another Australian writer-producer, Samuel Wilson, now based in Canada, suggests that the technology does encourage filmmakers to think differently about what they create: At the moment, I’m making NFTs from extra footage of my feature film Miles Away, which will be released early next year. In one way, it’s like a new age of behind-the-scenes/bonus features. I have 14 hours of DV tapes that I’m cutting into a short film which I will then sell in chapters over the coming months. One chapter will feature the dashing KJ Apa (Songbird, Riverdale) without his shirt on. So, hopefully that can turn some heads. (Wilson, in Fletcher) In addition to individual directors, a number of startup companies are also seeking to get in on the action. One of these is Vuele, which is best understood as a blockchain-based streaming service: an NFT Netflix, if you like. In addition to films themselves, the service will offer extra content as NFTs, including “behind the scenes content, bonus features, exclusive Q&As, and memorabilia” (CurrencyWorks). Vuele’s launch title is Zero Contact, directed by Rick Dugdale and starring Anthony Hopkins. The film is marketed as “the World’s First NFT Feature Film” (as at the time of writing, though, both Vuele and its flagship film have yet to launch). Also launching is NFT Studios, a blockchain-based production company that distributes the executive producer role to those buying into the project. NFT Studios is a decentralised administrative organisation (DAO), guided by tech experts, producers, and film industry intermediaries. NFT Studios is launching with A Wing and a Prayer, a biopic of aeronaut Brian Milton (NFT Studios), and will announce their full slate across festivals in 2022. In Australia, Culture Vault states that its aim is to demystify crypto and champion Australian artists’ rights and access to the space. Co-founder and CEO Michelle Grey is well aware of the aforementioned current social capital of NFTs, but is also acutely aware of the space’s opacity and the ubiquity of often machine-generated tat. “The early NFT space was in its infancy, there was a lot of crap around, but don’t forget there’s a lot of garbage in the traditional art world too,” she says (cited in Miller). Grey and her company effectively act like art dealers; intermediaries between the tech and art worlds. These new companies claim to be adhering to the principles of web3, often selling themselves as collectives, DAOs, or distributed administrative systems. But the entrenched tendencies of the film industry — particularly the persistent Hollywood system — are not so easily broken down. Vuele is a joint venture between CurrencyWorks and Enderby Entertainment. The former is a financial technology company setting up blockchain systems for businesses, including the establishment of branded digital currencies such as the controversial FreedomCoin (Memoria); the latter, Enderby, is a production company founded by Canadian film producer (and former investor relations expert in the oil and uranium sectors) Rick Dugdale (Wiesner). Similarly, NFT Studios is partnered with consulting and marketing agencies and blockchain venture capitalists (NFT Investments PLC). Depending on how charitable or cynical one is feeling, these start-ups are either helpful intermediaries to facilitate legacy media moving into NFT technology, or the first bricks in the capitalist wall to bar access for entry to other players. The Future Is… Buffering Marketplaces like Mintable, OpenSea, and Rarible do indeed make the minting and selling of NFTs fairly straightforward — if you’ve ever listed an item for sale on eBay or Facebook, you can probably mint an NFT. Despite this, the current major barrier for average punters to the NFT space remains technical knowledge. The principles of blockchain remain fairly opaque — even this author, who has been on a deep dive for this article, remains sceptical that widespread adoption across multiple applications and industries is feasible. Even so, as Rennie notes, “the unknown is not what blockchain technology is, or even what it is for (there are countless ‘use cases’), but how it structures the actions of those who use it” (235). At the time of writing, a great many commentators and a small handful of scholars are speculating about the role of the metaverse in the creative space. If the endgame of the metaverse is realised, i.e., a virtual, interactive space where users can interact, trade, and consume entertainment, the role of creators, dealers, distributors, and other brokers and players will be up-ended, and have to re-settle once again. Film industry practitioners might look to the games space to see what the road might look like, but then again, in an industry that is — at its best — somewhat resistant to change, this may simply be a fad that blows over. Blockchain’s current employment as a get-rich-quick mechanism for the algorithmic literati and as a computational extension of existing power structures suggests nothing more than another techno-bubble primed to burst (Patrickson 591-2; Klein). Despite the aspirational commentary surrounding distributed administrative systems and organisations, the current implementations are restricted, for now, to startups like NFT Studios. In terms of cinema, it does remain to be seen whether the deployment of NFTs will move beyond a kind of “Netflix with tchotchkes” model, or a variant of crowdfunding with perks. Once Vuele and NFT Studios launch properly, we may have a sense of how this all will play out, particularly alongside less corporate-driven, more artistically-minded initiatives like that of Michael Beets and Culture Vault. It is possible, too, that blockchain technology may streamline the mechanics of the industry in terms of automating or simplifying parts of the production process, particularly around contracts, financing, licensing. This would obviously remove some of the associated labour and fees, but would also de-couple long-established parts and personnel of the industry — would Hollywood and similar industrial-entertainment complexes let this happen? As with any of the many revolutions that have threatened to kill or resurrect the (allegedly) long-suffering cinematic object, we just have to wait, and watch. References Alexander, Bryan. “Kevin Smith Reveals Why He’s Auctioning Off New His Film ‘Killroy Was Here’ as an NFT.” USA TODAY, 15 Apr. 2021. <https://www.usatoday.com/story/entertainment/movies/2021/04/15/kevin-smith-auctioning-new-film-nft-killroy-here/7244602002/>. Beekhuizen, Carl. “Ethereum’s Energy Usage Will Soon Decrease by ~99.95%.” Ethereum Foundation Blog, 18 May 2021. <https://blog.ethereum.org/2021/05/18/country-power-no-more/>. Beller, Jonathan. “Economic Media: Crypto and the Myth of Total Liquidity.” Australian Humanities Review 66 (2020): 215-225. Beller, Jonathan. The Cinematic Mode of Production: Attention Economy and the Society of the Spectacle. Hanover, NH: Dartmouth College P, 2006. Bowden, James, and Edward Thomas Jones. “NFTs Are Much Bigger than an Art Fad – Here’s How They Could Change the World.” The Conversation, 26 Apr. 2021. <http://theconversation.com/nfts-are-much-bigger-than-an-art-fad-heres-how-they-could-change-the-world-159563>. Cardano. “Cardano, Ouroboros.” 14 Feb. 2022 <https://cardano.org/ouroboros/>. Castor, Amy. “Why Ethereum Is Switching to Proof of Stake and How It Will Work.” MIT Technology Review, 4 Mar. 2022. <https://www.technologyreview.com/2022/03/04/1046636/ethereum-blockchain-proof-of-stake/>. CurrencyWorks. “Vuele - CurrencyWorks™.” 3 Feb. 2022 <https://currencyworks.io/project/vuele/>. Dailey, Natasha. “Quentin Tarantino Will Sell His ‘Pulp Fiction’ NFTs This Month despite a Lawsuit from the Film’s Producer Miramax.” Business Insider, 5 Jan. 2022. <https://www.businessinsider.com.au/quentin-tarantino-to-sell-pulp-fiction-nft-despite-miramax-lawsuit-2022-1>. 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What NFTs Mean for Film.” BFI, 22 July 2021. <https://www.bfi.org.uk/sight-and-sound/features/nfts-non-fungible-tokens-blockchain-film-funding-revolution-hype>. Klein, Ezra. “A Viral Case against Crypto, Explored.” The Ezra Klein Show, n.d. 7 Apr. 2022 <https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/05/opinion/ezra-klein-podcast-dan-olson.html>. Livni, Ephrat. “Venture Capital Funding for Crypto Companies Is Surging.” The New York Times, 1 Dec. 2021. <https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/01/business/dealbook/crypto-venture-capital.html>. Memoria, Francisco. “Popular Firearms Marketplace GunBroker to Launch ‘FreedomCoin’ Stablecoin.” CryptoGlobe, 30 Jan. 2019. <https://www.cryptoglobe.com/latest/2019/01/popular-firearm-marketplace-gunbroker-to-launch-freedomcoin-stablecoin/>. 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IntroductionThe tagline for the 2008 Game On exhibition at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image in Melbourne invites visitors to “play your way through the history of videogames.” The Melbourne hosting follows on from exhibitions that have included the Barbican (London), the Royal Museum (Edinburgh) and the Science Museum (London). The Game On exhibition presents an exemplary instance of how digital games and digital games culture are recovered, organised and presented. The Science Museum exhibition offered visitors a walkthrough from the earliest to the latest consoles and games (Pong to Wii Sports) with opportunities for game play framed by curatorial plaques. This article will explore some of the themes and narratives embodied within the exhibition that see digital games technologies enrolled within a media teleology that emphasises technological advancement and upgrade. Narratives of Technological Upgrade The Game On exhibition employed a “social contextualisation” approach, connecting digital gaming developments with historical events and phenomena such as the 1969 moon landing and the Spice Girls. Whilst including thematic strands such as games and violence and games in education, the exhibition’s chronological ordering highlighted technological advancement. In doing so, the exhibition captured a broader tension around celebrating past technological advancement in gaming, whilst at the same time emphasising the quaint shortfalls and looking to future possibilities. That technological advancements stand out, particularly as a means of organising a narrative of digital gaming, resonates with Stephen Kline, Nick Dyer-Withford and Greig de Peuter’s analysis of digital gaming as a “perpetual innovation economy.” For Kline et al., corporations “devote a growing share of their resources to the continual alteration and upgrading of their products” (66). Technological upgrade and advancement were described by the Game On curator as an engaging aspect of the exhibition: When we had a BBC news presenter come in, she was talking about ‘here we have the PDP 1 and here I have the Nintendo DS’. She was just sort of comparing and contrasting. I know certainly that journalists were very keen on: ‘yeah, but how much processing power does the PDP 1 have?’, ‘what does it compare to today?’ – and it is very hard to compare. How do you compare Space War on the PDP 1 with something that runs on your mobile phone? They are very different systems. (Lee)This account of journalistic interest in technological progression and the curator’s subsequent interpretation raise a significant tension around understanding digital gaming. The concern with situating past gaming technologies and comparing capacities and capabilities, emphasises both the fascination with advancement and technological progress in the field and how the impressiveness of this advancement depends on remembering what has come before. Questions of remembering, recovering and forgetting are clear in the histories that console manufacturers offer when they describe past innovation and pioneering developments. For example, the company history provided by Nintendo on its website is exclusively a history of games technologies with no reference to the proceeding business of playing-card games from the late nineteenth century. Its website-published history only starts with the 1985 release of the NES (Nintendo Entertainment System), “an instant hit [that] over the course of the next two years, it almost single-handedly revitalized the video game industry” (Nintendo, ‘History’), and thereby overlooks the earlier 1983 less successful Famicom system. Past technologies are selectively remembered and recovered as part of the foundations for future success. This is a tension, that can be unpacked in a number of ways, across current industry transformations and strategies that potentially erase the past whilst simultaneously seeking to recover it as part of an evidence-base for future development. The following discussion develops an analysis of how digital gaming history is recovered and constructed.Industry Wind Change and Granny on the WiiThere is “unease, almost embarrassment”, James Newman suggests, “about the videogames industry within certain quarters of the industry itself” (6). Newman goes on to suggest:Various euphemisms have passed into common parlance, all seemingly motivated by a desire to avoid the use of the word ‘game’ and perhaps even ‘computer’, thereby adding a veneer of respectability, distancing the products and experiences from the childish pursuits of game, play and toys, and downplaying the technology connection with its unwanted resonances of nerds in bedrooms hunched over ZX Spectrums and Commodore 64s and the amateurism of hobbyist production. (6-7) The attempted move away from the resonances of “nerds in bedrooms” has been a strategic decision for Nintendo especially. This is illustrated by the naming of consoles: ‘family’ in Famicom, ‘entertainment’ in NES and, more recently, the renaming of the Wii from ‘Revolution’. The seventh generation Nintendo Wii console, released in November and December 2006, may be been seen as industry leading in efforts to broaden gaming demographics. In describing the console for instance, Satoru Iwata, the President of Nintendo, stated, “we want to appeal to mothers who don't want consoles in their living rooms, and to the elderly and to young women. It’s a challenge, like trying to sell cosmetics to men” (Edge Online). This position illustrates a digital games industry strategy to expand marketing to demographic groups previously marginalised.A few examples from the marketing and advertising campaigns for the Nintendo Wii help to illustrate this strategy. The marketing associated with the Wii can be seen as part of a longer lineage of Nintendo marketing with Kline et al. suggesting, “it was under Nintendo’s hegemony that the video game industry began to see the systematic development of a high-intensity marketing apparatus, involving massive media budgets, ingenious event marketing, ground breaking advertising and spin off merchandising” (118). The “First Experiences” show on the Wii website mocks-up domestic settings as the backdrop to the Wii playing experience to present an ideal, potential Wii-play scenario. These advertisements can be seen to position the player within an imagined home and game-play environment and speak for the Wii. As Keith Grint and Steve Woolgar suggest, “technology does not speak for itself but has to be spoken for” (32). As part of their concern with addressing, “the particular regime of truth which surrounds, upholds, impales and represents technology” (32), Grint and Woolgar “analyse the way certain technologies gain specific attributes” (33). Across advertisements for the Wii there are a range of domestic environments and groups playing. Of these, the power to bring the family together and facilitate ease of game-play for the novice is most noticeable. David Morley’s comment that, “‘hi-tech’ discourse is often carefully framed and domesticated by a rather nostalgic vision of ‘family values’” (438) is borne out here.A television advertisement aired on Nickelodeon illustrates the extent to which the Wii was at the forefront in motioning forward a strategy of industry and gaming inclusiveness around the family: “the 60-second spot shows a dad mistaking the Wii Remote for his television remote control. Dad becomes immersed in the game and soon the whole family joins in” (Nintendo World Report). From confused fathers to family bonding, the Wii is presented as the easy-to-use and accessible device that brings the family together. The father confusing the Wii remote with a television remote control is an important gesture to foreground the accessibility of the Wii remotes compared to previous “joypads”, and emphasize the Wii as an accessible device with no bedroom, technical wizardry required. Within the emerging industry inclusivity agenda, the ‘over technological’ past of digital gaming is something to move away from. The forms of ‘geek’ or ‘hardcore’ that epitomise previous dominant representations of gaming have seemingly stood in the way of the industry reaching its full market potential. This industry wind change is captured in the comments of a number of current industry professionals.For Matthew Jeffrey, head of European Recruitment for Electronic Arts (EA), speaking at the London Games Week Career Fair, the shift in the accessibility and inclusivity of digital gaming is closely bound up with Nintendo’s efforts and these have impacted upon EA’s strategy: There is going to be a huge swathe of new things and the great thing in the industry, as you are all easy to identify, is that Nindento DS and the Wii have revolutionised the way we look at the way things are going on.Jeffrey goes on to add, “hopefully some of you have seen that your eighty year old grandparent is quite happy to play a game”, pointing to the figure of the grandparent as a game-player to emphasise the inclusivity shift within gaming.Similarly, at Edinburgh Interactive Festival 2007, the CEO of Ubisoft Yves Guillemot in his “The New Generation of Gaming: Facing the Challenges of a Changing Market” speech outlined the development of a family friendly portfolio to please a new, non-gamer population that would include the recruitment of subject experts for “non-game” titles. This instance of the accessibility and inclusivity strategy being advocated is notable for it being part of a keynote speech at the Edinburgh Interactive Festival, an event associated with the Edinburgh festival that is both an important industry gathering and receives mainstream press coverage. The approaches taken by the other leading console manufacturers Sony and Microsoft, illustrate that whilst this is by no means a total shift, there is nevertheless an industry-wide engagement. The ‘World of Playstation: family and friends’ for example suggests that, “with PlayStation, games have never been more family-friendly” and that “you can even team up as a family to challenge your overseas relatives to a round of online quizzing over the PLAYSTATION Network” (Playstation).What follows from these accounts and transformations is a consideration of where the “geeky” past resides in the future of gaming as inclusive and accessible. Where do these developments leave digital gaming’s “subcultural past” (“subcultural” as it now becomes even within the games industry), as the industry forges on into mainstream culture? Past digital games technologies are clearly important in indicating technological progression and advancement, but what of the bedroom culture of gaming? How does “geek game culture” fit within a maturing future for the industry?Bedroom Programmers and Subcultural Memories There is a tension between business strategy directed towards making gaming accessible and thereby fostering new markets, and the games those in industry would design for people like themselves. This is not to deny the willingness or commitment of games developers to work on a variety of games, but instead to highlight transformation and tension. In their research into games development, Dovey and Kennedy suggest that, the “generation, now nearing middle-age and finding themselves in the driving seat of cultures of new media, have to reconcile a subcultural history and a dominant present” (145). Pierre Bourdieu’s account of symbolic capital is influential in tracing this shift, and Dovey and Kennedy note Bourdieu’s comment around, “the subjective image of the occupational project and the objective function of the occupation” (145). This shift is highly significant for ways of understanding maturation and inclusivity strategies within digital gaming.Bourdieu’s account of the “conservative functions attached” to an occupation for Dovey and Kennedy: Precisely describes the tensions between designers’ sense of themselves as ‘outsiders’ and rebels (‘the subjective image of the occupational project’) on the one hand and their position within a very tight production machine (‘the objective function of the occupation’) on the other. (145) I would suggest the “production machine”, that is to say the broader corporate management structures by which games development companies are increasingly operated, has a growing role in understandings of the industry. This approach was implicit in Iwata’s comments on selling cosmetics to men and broadening demographics, and Jeffrey’s comments pointing to how EA’s outlook would be influenced by the accessibility and inclusivity strategy championed by Nintendo. It may be suggested that as the occupational project of gaming is negotiated and shifts towards an emphasis on accessibility and inclusivity, the subjective image must be similarly reoriented. That previous industry models are being replaced, is highlighted in this excerpt from a Managing Director of a ‘leisure software’ company in the Staying ahead report on the creative industries by the Work Foundation:The first game that came from us was literally two schoolchildren making a game in their bedroom … the game hadn’t been funded, but made for fun … As those days are gone, the biggest challenges nowadays for game developers are finding funding that doesn’t impinge on creativity, and holding onto IP [intellectual property], which is so important if you want a business that is going to have any value. (27)This account suggests a hugely important transition from bedroom production, the days that ‘are gone’, towards Intellectual Property-aware production. The creative industries context for these comments should not be overlooked and is insightful for further recognising the shifts and negotiations taking place in digital gaming, notably, around the maturation of the games industry. The creative industries context is made explicit in creative industries reports such as Staying ahead and in the comments of Shaun Woodward (former Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State at the Department for Culture, Media and Sport) in a keynote speech at the 2006 British Video Games Academy Awards, in which he referred to the games industry as “one of our most important creative industries”. The forms of collaboration between, for instance, The Independent Games Developers Association (TIGA) and the Department of Culture, Media and Sport (see Gamasutra), further indicate the creative industries context to the maturation of the UK games industry.The creative industries context also presents the anchor through which tensions between a subcultural history and professional future and the complex forms of recovery can be more fully engaged with. The Game On curator’s indication that making comparisons between different games technologies systems was a delicate balance insightfully provides cautions to any attempt to mark out a strict departure from the ‘subcultural’ to the ‘professional’. Clearly put, the accessibility and inclusivity strategy that shifts away from geek culture and technical wizardry remains in conversation with geek elements as the foundation for the future. As technologies are recovered within a lineage of technological development and upgrade, the geek bedroom culture of gaming is almost mythologized to offer the industry history creative credentials and future potential. Recovering and Combining: Technologies and Memories for a Professional Future Emphasised thus far has been a shift from the days gone by of bedroom programming towards an inclusive and accessible professional and mature future. This is a teleological shift in the sense that the latest technological developments can be located within a past replete with innovation and pioneering spirit. In relation to the Wii for example, a Nintendo employee states:Nintendo is a company where you are praised for doing something different from everyone else. In this company, when an individual wants to do something different, everyone else lends their support to help them overcome any hurdles. I think this is how we made the challenge of Wii a possibility. (Nintendo)Nintendo’s history, alluded to here and implicit throughout the interviews with Nintendo staff from which this comment is taken, and previous and existing ‘culture’ of experimentation is offered here as the catalyst and enabler of the Wii. A further example may be offered in relation to Nintendo’s competitor Sony.A hugely significant transformation in digital gaming, further to the accessibility and inclusivity agenda, is the ability of players to develop their own games using games engines. For Phil Harrison (Sony), gaming technology is creating a, “‘virtual community’ of collaborative digital production, marking a return to the ‘golden age of video game development, which was at home, on your own with a couple of friends, designing a game yourself’” (Kline et al., 204). Bedroom gaming that in the earlier comments was regarded as days gone by for professionals, takes on a new significance as a form of user-engagement. The previous model of bedroom production, now outmoded compared to industry production, is relocated as available for users and recovered as the ‘golden age of gaming’. It is recovered as a model for users to aspire to. The significance of this for business strategy is made clear by Kline et al. who suggest that, “thousands of bright bulbs have essentially become Sony’s junior development community” (204). An obsolete model of past production is recovered and deployed within a future vision of the games industry that sees users participating and extending forms of games engagement and consumption. Similarly, the potential of ‘bedroom’ production and its recovery in relation to growth areas such as games for mobile phones, is carefully framed by Intellectual Property Rights (Edwards and Coulton). In this respect, forms of bedroom production are carefully situated in terms of industry strategies.The “Scarce Talent Seminars” as part of the London Games Week 2008 “Skills Week” further illustrate this continual recovery of ‘past’, or more accurately alternative, forms of production in line with narratives of professionalisation and industry innovation. The seminars were stated as offering advice on bridging the gap between the “bedroom programmer” and the “professional developer”. The discourse of ‘talent’ framed this seminar, and the bedroom programmer is held up as being (not having) raw talent with creative energies and love and commitment for gaming that can be shaped for the future of the industry. This discourse of bedroom programmers as talent emphasises the industry as an enabler of individual talent through access to professional development and technological resources. This then sits alongside the recovery of historical narratives in which bedroom gaming culture is celebrated for its pioneering spirit, but is ultimately recovered in terms of current achievements and future possibilities. “Skills Week” and guidance for those wanting to work in the industry connects with the recovery of past technologies and ways of making games visible amongst the potential industry workers of the future – students. The professional future of the industry is intertwined with graduates with professional qualifications. Those qualifications need not be, and sometimes preferably should not be, in ‘gaming’ courses. What is important is the love of games and this may be seen through the appreciation of gaming’s history. During research conducted with games design students in higher education courses in the UK, many students professed a love of games dating back to the Spectrum console in the 1980s. There was legitimacy and evidence of professing long-seated interests in consoles. At the same time as acknowledging the significant, embryonic power these consoles had in stimulating their interests, many students engaged in learning games design skills with the latest software packages. Similarly, they engaged in bedroom design activities themselves, as in the days gone by, but mainly as training and to develop skills useful to securing employment within a professional development studio. Broadly, students could be said to be recovering both technologies and ways of working that are then enrolled within their development as professional workers of the future. The professional future of the gaming industry is presented as part of a teleological trajectory that mirrors the technological progression of the industry’s upgrade culture. The days of bedroom programming are cast as periods of incubation and experimentation, and part of the journey that has brought gaming to where it is now. Bedroom programming is incorporated into the evidence-base of creative industries policy reports. Other accounts of bedroom programming, independent production and attempts to explore alternative publishing avenues do not feature as readily.In the 2000 Scratchware Manifesto for example, the authors declare, “the machinery of gaming has run amok”, and say, “Basta! Enough!” (Scratchware). The Scratchware Manifesto puts forward Scratchware as a response: “a computer game, created by a microteam, with pro-quality art, game design, programming and sound to be sold at paperback prices” (Scratchware). The manifesto goes on to say, “we need Scratchware because there is more than one way to develop good computer games” (Scratchware, 2000). Using a term readily associated with the Zapatista Army of National Liberation, the Scratchware Manifesto called for a revolution in gaming and stated, “we will strive for […] originality over the tried and tested” (Scratchware). These are the experiences and accounts of the games industry that seem to fall well outside of the technological and upgrade focused agenda of professional games development.The recovery and framing of past technologies and industry practices, in ways supportive to current models of technological upgrade and advancement, legitimises these models and marginalizes others. A eulogized and potentially mythical past is recovered to point to cultures of innovation and creative vibrancy and to emphasize current and future technological prowess. We must therefore be cautious of the instrumental dangers of recovery in which ‘bright bulbs’ are enrolled and alternative forms of production marginalised.As digital gaming establishes a secure footing with increased markets, the growing pains of the industry can be celebrated and recovered as part of the ongoing narratives of the industry. Recovery is vital to make sense of both the past and future. Within digital gaming, the PDP-1 and the bedroom geek both exist in the past, present and future as part of an industry strategy and trajectory that seeks to move away from them but also relies on them. They are the legitimacy, the evidence and the potential for affirming industry models. The extent to which other narratives can be told and technologies and memories recovered as alternative forms of evidence and potential is a question I, and hopefully others, will leave open.ReferencesDovey, John, and Helen W. Kennedy. Game Cultures. Maidenhead: Open University Press, 2006.Edge-Online. "Iwata: Wii Is 'Like Selling Make-Up to Men.'" Edge-Online 19 Sep. 2006. 29 Sep. 2006 ‹http://www.edge-online.com/news/iwata-wii-like-selling-make-up-men›.Edwards, Reuben, and Paul Coulton. "Providing the Skills Required for Innovative Mobile Game Development Using Industry/Academic Partnerships." Italics e journal 5.3 (2006). ‹http://www.ics.heacademy.ac.uk/italics/vol5iss3/edwardscoulton.pdf›.Gamasutra. "TIGA Pushing for Continued UK Industry Government Support." Gamasutra Industry News 3 July 2007. 8 July 2007 ‹http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=14504›Grint, Keith, and Steve Woolgar. The Machine at Work. London: Blackwell, 1997.Jeffrey, Matthew. Transcribed Speech. 24 October 2007.Kline, Stephen, Nick Dyer-Witheford, and Greig De Peuter. Digital Play. London: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2003.Lee, Gaetan. Personal Interview. 27 July 2007.Morley, David. "What’s ‘Home’ Got to Do with It? Contradictory Dynamics in the Domestication of Technology and the Dislocation of Domesticity." European Journal of Cultural Studies 6.4 (2003): 435-458.Newman, James. Videogames. London: Routledge, 2004.Nintendo. "Company History." Nintendo. 2007. 3 Nov. 2008 ‹http://www.nintendo.com/corp/history.jsp›.Nintendo. "Wii Remote." Nintendo. 2006. 29 Sep. 2008 ‹http://wiiportal.nintendo-europe.com/97.html›.Nintendo World Report. "Nintendo’s Marketing Blitz: Wii Play for All!" Nintendo World Report 13 Nov. 2006. 29 Sep. 2008 ‹http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/newsArt.cfm?artid=12383›.Playstation. "World of Playstation: Family and Friends." Sony Playstation. 3 Nov. 2008 ‹http://uk.playstation.com/home/news/articles/detail/item103208/World-of-PlayStation:-Family-&-Friends/›.Scratchware. "The Scratchware Manifesto." 2000. 14 June 2006 ‹http://www.the-underdogs.info/scratch.php›.Work Foundation. Staying Ahead: The Economic Performance of the UK’s Creative Industries. London: Department of Culture, Media and Sport, 2007.

The move from analog distribution to online digital delivery is common in the contemporary mediascape. Music is in the midst of an ipod driven paradigm shift (Levy), television and movie delivery is being reconfigured (Johnson), and newspaper and magazines are confronting the reality of the world wide web and what it means for business models and ideas of journalism (Beecher). In the midst of this change, the book publishing industry remains defiant. While embracing digital production technologies, the vast majority of book content is still delivered in material form, printed and shipped the old-fashioned way—despite the efforts of many technology companies over the last decade. Even the latest efforts from corporate giants such as Sony and Amazon (who appear to have solved many of the technical hurdles of electronic reading devices) have had little visible impact. The idea of electronic books, or e-books, remains the domain of geeky early adopters (“Have”). The reasons for this are manifold, but, arguably, a broader uptake of e-books has not occurred because cultural change is much more difficult than technological change and book readers have yet to be persuaded to change their cultural habits. Electronic reading devices have been around for as long as there have been computers with screens, but serious attempts to replicate the portability, readability, and convenience of a printed book have only been with us for a decade or so. The late 1990s saw the release of a number of e-book devices. In quick succession, the likes of the Rocket e-Book, the SoftBook and the Franklin eBookman all failed to catch on. Despite this lack of market penetration, software companies began to explore the possibilities—Microsoft’s Reader software competed with a similar product from Adobe, some publishers became content providers, and a niche market of consumers began reading e-books on personal digital assistants (PDAs). That niche was sufficient for e-reading communities and shopfronts to appear, with a reasonable range of titles becoming available for purchase to feed demand that was very much driven by early adopters. But the e-book market was and remains small. For most people, books are still regarded as printed paper objects, purchased from a bookstore, borrowed from a library, or bought online from companies like Amazon.com. More recently, the introduction of e-ink technologies (EPDs) (DeJean), which allow for screens with far more book-like resolution and contrast, has provided the impetus for a new generation of e-book devices. In combination with an expanded range of titles (and deals with major publishing houses to include current best-sellers), there has been renewed interest in the idea of e-books. Those who have used the current generation of e-ink devices are generally positive about the experience. Except for some sluggishness in “turning” pages, the screens appear crisp, clear and are not as tiring to read as older displays. There are a number of devices that have embraced the new screen technologies (mobileread) but most attention has been paid to three devices in particular—mainly because their manufacturers have tried to create an ecosystem that provides content for their reading devices in much the same way that Apple’s itunes store provides content for ipods. The Sony Portable Reader (Sonystyle) was the first electronic ink device to be produced by a mainstream consumers electronics company. Sony ties the Reader to its Connect store, which allows the purchase of book titles via a computer; titles are then downloaded to the Reader in the same way that an mp3 player is loaded with music. Sony’s most prominent competition in the marketplace is Amazon’s Kindle, which does not require users to have a computer. Instead, its key feature is a constant wireless connection to Amazon’s growing library of Kindle titles. This works in conjunction with US cellphone provider Sprint to allow the purchase of books via wireless downloads wherever the Sprint network exists. The system, which Amazon calls “whispernet,” is invisible to readers and the cost is incorporated into the price of books, so Kindle users never see a bill from Sprint (“Frequently”). Both the Sony Reader and the Amazon Kindle are available only in limited markets; Kindle’s reliance on a cellphone network means that its adoption internationally is dependent on Amazon establishing a relationship with a cellphone provider in each country of release. And because both devices are linked to e-bookstores, territorial rights issues with book publishers (who trade publishing rights for particular global territories in a colonial-era mode of operation that seems to ignore the reality of global information mobility (Thompson 74–77)) contribute to the restricted availability of both the Sony and Amazon products. The other mainstream device is the iRex Iliad, which is not constrained to a particular online bookstore and thus is available internationally. Its bookstore ecosystems are local relationships—with Dymocks in Australia, Borders in the UK, and other booksellers across Europe (iRex). All three devices use EPDs and share similar specifications for the actual reading of e-books. Some might argue that the lack of a search function in the Sony and the ability to write on pages in the Iliad are quite substantive differences, but overall the devices are distinguished by their availability and the accessibility of book titles. Those who have used the devices extensively are generally positive about the experience. Amazon’s Customer Reviews are full of positive comments, and the sense from many commentators is that the systems are a viable replacement for old-fashioned printed books (Marr). Despite the good reviews—which suggest that the technology is actually now good enough to compete with printed books—the e-book devices have failed to catch on. Amazon has been hesitant to state actual sales figures, leaving it to so-called analysts to guess with the most optimistic suggesting that only 30 to 50,000 have sold since launch in late 2007 (Sridharan). By comparison, a mid-list book title (in the US) would expect to sell a similar number of copies. The sales data for the Sony Portable Reader (which has been on the market for nearly two years) and the iRex iliad are also elusive (Slocum), suggesting that they have not meaningfully changed the landscape. Tellingly, despite the new devices, the e-book industry is still tiny. Although it is growing, the latest American data show that the e-book market has wholesale revenues of around $10 million per quarter (or around $40 million per year), which is dwarfed by the $35 billion in revenues regularly earned annually in the US printed book industry ("Book"). It’s clear that despite the technological advances, e-books have yet to cross the chasm from early adopter to mainstream usage (see IPDF). The reason for this is complex; there are issues of marketing and distribution that need to be considered, as well as continuing arguments about screen technologies, appropriate publishing models, and digital rights management. It is beyond the scope of this article to do justice to those issues. Suffice to say, the book industry is affected by the same debates over content that plague other media industries (Vershbow). But, arguably, the key reason for the minimal market impact is straightforward—technological change is relatively easy, but cultural change is much more difficult. The current generation of e-book devices might be technically very close to being a viable replacement for print on paper (and the next generation of devices will no doubt be even better), but there are bigger cultural hurdles to be overcome. For most people, the social practice of reading books (du Gay et al 10) is inextricably tied with printed objects and a print culture that is not yet commonly associated with “technology” (perhaps because books, as machines for reading (Young 160), have become an invisible technology (Norman 246)). E. Annie Proulx’s dismissive suggestion that “nobody is going to sit down and read a novel on a twitchy little screen. Ever” (1994) is commonly echoed when book buyers consider the digital alternative. Those thoughts only scratch the surface of a deeply embedded cultural practice. The centuries since Gutenberg’s printing press and the vast social and cultural changes that followed positioned print culture as the dominant cultural mode until relatively recently (Eisenstein; Ong). The emerging electronic media forms of the twentieth century displaced that dominance with many arguing that the print age was moved aside by first radio and television and now computers and the Internet (McLuhan; Postman). Indeed, there is a subtext in that line of thought, one that situates electronic media forms (particularly screen-based ones) as the antithesis of print and book culture. Current e-book reading devices attempt to minimise the need for cultural change by trying to replicate a print culture within an e-print culture. For the most part, they are designed to appeal to book readers as a replacement for printed books. But it will take more than a perfect electronic facsimile of print on paper to persuade readers to disengage with a print culture that incorporates bookshops, bookclubs, writing in the margins, touching and smelling the pages and covers, admiring the typesetting, showing off their bookshelves, and visibly identifying with their collections. The frequently made technical arguments (about flashing screens and reading in the bath (Randolph)) do not address the broader apprehension about a cultural experience that many readers do not wish to leave behind. It is in that context that booklovers appear particularly resistant to any shift from print to a screen-based format. One only has to engage in a discussion about e-books (or lurk on an online forum where one is happening) to appreciate how deeply embedded print culture is (Hepworth)—book readers have a historical attachment to the printed object and it is this embedded cultural resistance that is the biggest barrier for e-books to overcome. Although e-book devices in no way resemble television, print culture is still deeply suspicious of any screen-based media and arguments are often made that the book as a physical object is critical because “different types of media function differently, and even if the content is similar the form matters quite a lot” (Weber). Of course, many in the newspaper industry would argue that long-standing cultural habits can change very rapidly and the migration of eyeballs from newsprint to the Internet is a cautionary tale (see Auckland). That specific format shift saw cultural change driven by increased convenience and a perception of decreased cost. For those already connected to the Internet, reading newspapers online represented zero marginal cost, and the range of online offerings dwarfed that of the local newsagency. The advantage of immediacy and multimedia elements, and the possibility of immediate feedback, appeared sufficient to drive many away from print towards online newspapers.For a similar shift in the e-book realm, there must be similar incentives for readers. At the moment, the only advantages on offer are weightlessness (which only appeals to frequent travellers) and convenience via constant access to a heavenly library of titles (Young 150). Amazon’s Kindle bookshop can be accessed 24/7 from anywhere there is a Sprint network coverage (Nelson). However, even this advantage is not so clear-cut—there is a meagre range of available electronic titles compared to printed offerings. For example, Amazon claims 130,000 titles are currently available for Kindle and Sony has 50,000 for its Reader, figures that are dwarfed by Amazon’s own printed book range. Importantly, there is little apparent cost advantage to e-books. The price of electronic reading devices is significant, amounting to a few hundred dollars to which must be added the cost of e-books. The actual cost of those titles is also not as attractive as it might be. In an age where much digital content often appears to be free, consumers demand a significant price advantage for purchasing online. Although some e-book titles are priced more affordably than their printed counterparts, the cost of many seems strangely high given the lack of a physical object to print and ship. For example, Amazon Kindle titles might be cheaper than the print version, but the actual difference (after discounting) is not an order of magnitude, but of degree. For example, Randy Pausch’s bestselling The Last Lecture is available for $12.07 as a paperback or $9.99 as a Kindle edition (“Last”). For casual readers, the numbers make no sense—when the price of the reading device is included, the actual cost is prohibitive for those who only buy a few titles a year. At the moment, e-books only make sense for heavy readers for whom the additional cost of the reading device will be amortised over a large number of books in a reasonably short time. (A recent article in the Wall Street Journal suggested that the break-even point for the Kindle was the purchase of 61 books (Arends).) Unfortunately for the e-book industry, not is only is that particular market relatively small, it is the one least likely to shift from the embedded habits of print culture. Arguably, should e-books eventually offer a significant cost benefit for consumers, uptake would be more dramatic. However, in his study of cellphone cultures, Gerard Goggin argues against purely fiscal motivations, suggesting that cultural change is driven by other factors—in his example, new ways of communicating, connecting, and engaging (205–211). The few market segments where electronic books have succeeded are informative. For example, the market for printed encyclopedias has essentially disappeared. Most have reinvented themselves as CD-ROMs or DVD-ROMs and are sold for a fraction of the price. Although cost is undoubtedly a factor in their market success, added features such as multimedia, searchability, and immediacy via associated websites are compelling reasons driving the purchase of electronic encyclopedias over the printed versions. The contrast with the aforementioned e-book devices is apparent with encyclopedias moving away from their historical role in print culture. Electronic encyclopedias don’t try to replicate the older print forms. Rather they represent a dramatic shift of book content into an interactive audio-visual domain. They have experimented with new formats and reconfigured content for the new media forms—the publishers in question simply left print culture behind and embraced a newly emerging computer or multimedia culture. This step into another realm of social practices also happened in the academic realm, which is now deeply embedded in computer-based delivery of research and pedagogy. Not only are scholarly journals moving online (Thompson 320–325), but so too are scholarly books. For example, at the Macquarie University Library, there has been a dramatic increase in the number of electronic books in the collection. The library purchased 895 e-books in 2005 and 68,000 in 2007. During the same period, the number of printed books purchased remained relatively stable with about 16,000 bought annually (Macquarie University Library). The reasons for the dramatic increase in e-book purchases are manifold and not primarily driven by cost considerations. Not only does the library have limited space for physical storage, but Macquarie (like most other Universities) emphasises its e-learning environment. In that context, a single e-book allows multiple, geographically dispersed, simultaneous access, which better suits the flexibility demanded of the current generation of students. Significantly, these e-books require no electronic reading device beyond a standard computer with an internet connection. Users simply search for their required reading online and read it via their web browser—the library is operating in a pedagogical culture that assumes that staff and students have ready access to the necessary resources and are happy to read large amounts of text on a screen. Again, gestures towards print culture are minimal, and the e-books in question exist in a completely different distributed electronic environment. Another interesting example is that of mobile phone novels, or “keitai” fiction, popular in Japan. These novels typically consist of a few hundred pages, each of which contains about 500 Japanese characters. They are downloaded to (and read on) cellphones for about ten dollars apiece and can sell in the millions of copies (Katayama). There are many reasons why the keitai novel has achieved such popularity compared to the e-book approaches pursued in the West. The relatively low cost of wireless data in Japan, and the ubiquity of the cellphone are probably factors. But the presence of keitai culture—a set of cultural practices surrounding the mobile phone—suggests that the mobile novel springs not from a print culture, but from somewhere else. Indeed, keitai novels are written (often on the phones themselves) in a manner that lends itself to the constraints of highly portable devices with small screens, and provides new modes of engagement and communication. Their editors attribute the success of keitai novels to how well they fit into the lifestyle of their target demographic, and how they act as community nodes around which readers and writers interact (Hani). Although some will instinctively suggest that long-form narratives are doomed with such an approach, it is worthwhile remembering that, a decade ago, few considered reading long articles using a web browser and the appropriate response to computer-based media was to rewrite material to suit the screen (Nielsen). However, without really noticing the change, the Web became mainstream and users began reading everything on their computers, including much longer pieces of text. Apart from the examples cited, the wider book trade has largely approached e-books by trying to replicate print culture, albeit with an electronic reading device. Until there is a significant cost and convenience benefit for readers, this approach is unlikely to be widely successful. As indicated above, those segments of the market where e-books have succeeded are those whose social practices are driven by different cultural motivations. It may well be that the full-frontal approach attempted to date is doomed to failure, and e-books would achieve more widespread adoption if the book trade took a different approach. The Amazon Kindle has not yet persuaded bookloving readers to abandon print for screen in sufficient numbers to mark a seachange. Indeed, it is unlikely that any device positioned specifically as a book replacement will succeed. Instead of seeking to make an e-book culture a replacement for print culture, effectively placing the reading of books in a silo separated from other day-to-day activities, it might be better to situate e-books within a mobility culture, as part of the burgeoning range of social activities revolving around a connected, convergent mobile device. Reading should be understood as an activity that doesn’t begin with a particular device, but is done with whatever device is at hand. In much the same way that other media producers make content available for a number of platforms, book publishers should explore the potential of the new mobile devices. Over 45 million smartphones were sold globally in the first three months of 2008 (“Gartner”)—somewhat more than the estimated shipments of e-book reading devices. As well as allowing a range of communications possibilities, these convergent devices are emerging as key elements in the new digital mediascape—one that allows users access to a broad range of media products via a single pocket-sized device. Each of those smartphones makes a perfectly adequate e-book reading device, and it might be useful to pursue a strategy that embeds book reading as one of the key possibilities of this growing mobility culture. The casual gaming market serves as an interesting example. While hardcore gamers cling to their games PCs and consoles, a burgeoning alternative games market has emerged, with a different demographic purchasing less technically challenging games for more informal gaming encounters. This market has slowly shifted to convergent mobile devices, exemplified by Sega’s success in selling 300,000 copies of Super Monkey Ball within 20 days of its release for Apple’s iphone (“Super”). Casual gamers do not necessarily go on to become hardcore games, but they are gamers nonetheless—and today’s casual games (like the aforementioned Super Monkey Ball) are yesterday’s hardcore games of choice. It might be the same for reading. The availability of e-books on mobile platforms may not result in more people embracing longer-form literature. But it will increase the number of people actually reading, and, just as casual gaming has attracted a female demographic (Wallace 8), the instant availability of appropriate reading material might sway some of those men who appear to be reluctant readers (McEwan). Rather than focus on printed books, and book-like reading devices, the industry should re-position e-books as an easily accessible content choice in a digitally converged media environment. This is more a cultural shift than a technological one—for publishers and readers alike. Situating e-books in such a way may alienate a segment of the bookloving community, but such readers are unlikely to respond to anything other than print on paper. Indeed, it may encourage a whole new demographic—unafraid of the flickering screen—to engage with the manifold attractions of “books.” References Arends, Brett. “Can Amazon’s Kindle Save You Money?” The Wall St Journal 24 June 2008. 25 June 2008 ‹http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121431458215899767.html? mod=rss_whats_news_technology>. Auckland, Steve. “The Future of Newspapers.” The Independent 13 Nov. 2008. 24 June 2008 ‹http://news.independent.co.uk/media/article1963543.ece>. Beecher, Eric. “War of Words.” The Monthly, June 2007: 22–26. 25 June 2008 . “Book Industry Trends 2006 Shows Publishers’ Net Revenues at $34.59 Billion for 2005.” Book Industry Study Group. 22 May 2006 ‹http://www.bisg.org/news/press.php?pressid=35>. DeJean, David, “The Future of e-paper: The Kindle is Only the Beginning.” Computerworld 6 June 2008. 12 June 2008 ‹http://www.computerworld.com/action/article .do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9091118>. du Gay, Paul, Stuart Hall, Linda Janes, Hugh Mackay, and Keith Negus. Doing Cultural Studies: The Story of the Sony Walkman. Thousand Oaks: Sage, 1997. Eisenstein, Elizabeth. The Printing Press as an Agent of Change. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1997. “Frequently Asked Questions about Amazon Kindle.” Amazon.com. 12 June 2008 ‹http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=200127480&#whispernet>. “Gartner Says Worldwide Smartphone Sales Grew 29 Percent in First Quarter 2008.” Gartner. 6 June 2008. 20 June 2008 ‹http://www.gartner.com/it/page.jsp?id=688116>. Goggin, Gerard. Cell Phone Cultures. London: Routledge, 2006. Hani, Yoko. “Cellphone Bards Make Bestseller Lists.” Japan Times Online Sep. 2007. 20 June 2008 ‹http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/fl20070923x4.html>. “Have you Changed your mind on Ebook Readers?” Slashdot. 25 June 2008 ‹http://ask.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/05/08/2317250>. Hepworth, David. “The Future of Reading or the Sinclair C5.” The Word 17 June 2008. 20 June 2008 ‹http://www.wordmagazine.co.uk/content/future-reading-or-sinclair-c5>. IPDF (International Digital Publishing Forum) Industry Statistics. 24 June 2008 ‹http://www.openebook.org/doc_library/industrystats.htm>. iRex Technologies Press. 12 June 2008 ‹http://www.irextechnologies.com/about/press>. Johnson, Bobbie. “Vince Cerf, AKA the Godfather of the Net, Predicts the End of TV as We Know It.” The Guardian 27 Aug. 2008. 24 June 2008 ‹http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2007/aug/27/news.google>. Katayama, Lisa. “Big Books Hit Japan’s Tiny Phones.” Wired Jan. 2007. 24 June 2008 ‹http://www.wired.com/culture/lifestyle/news/2007/01/72329>. “The Last Lecture.” Amazon.com. 24 June 2008 ‹http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1401323251/ref=amb_link_3359852_2? pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_s=right-1&pf_rd_r=07NDSWAK6D4HT181CNXD &pf_rd_t=101&pf_rd_p=385880801&pf_rd_i=549028>.Levy, Steven. The Perfect Thing. London:Ebury Press, 2006. Macquarie University Library Annual Report 2007. 24 June 2008 ‹http://senate.mq.edu.au/ltagenda/0308/library_report%202007.doc>. Marr, Andrew. “Curling Up with a Good EBook.” The Guardian 11 May 2007. 23 May 2007 ‹http://technology.guardian.co.uk/news/story/0,,2077278,00.html>. McEwan, Ian. “Hello, Would you Like a Free Book?” The Guardian 20 Sep. 2005. 28 June 2008 ‹http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2005/sep/20/fiction.features11>. McLuhan, Marshall. The Gutenberg Galaxy. Toronto: U of Toronto P, 1962. Mobileread. E-book Reader Matrix, Mobileread Wiki. 30 May 2008 ‹http://wiki.mobileread.com/wiki/E-book_Reader_Matrix>. Nelson, Sara. “Warming to Kindle.” Publishers Weekly 10 Dec. 2007. 31 Jan. 2008 ‹http://www.publishersweekly.com/article/CA6510861.htm.html>. Nielsen, Jakob. “Concise, Scannable and Objective, How to Write for the Web.” 1997. ‹20 June 2008 ‹http://www.useit.com/papers/webwriting/writing.html>. Norman, Don. The Invisible Computer: Why Good Products Can Fail. Cambridge, MA: MIT P, 1998. Ong, Walter. Orality & Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word. New York: Methuen, 1988. Postman, Neil. Amusing Ourselves to Death. New York: Penguin, 1986. Proulx, E. Annie. “Books on Top.” The New York Times 26 May 1994. 28 June 2008 ‹http://www.nytimes.com/books/99/05/23/specials/proulx-top.html>. Randolph, Eleanor. “Reading into the Future.” The New York Times 18 June 2008. 19 June 2008 ‹http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/18/opinion/18wed3.html?>. Slocum, Mac. “The Pitfalls of Publishing’s E-Reader Guessing Game.” O’Reilly TOC. June 2006. 24 June 2008 ‹http://toc.oreilly.com/2008/06/the-pitfalls-of-publishings-er.html>. Sridharan, Vasanth. “Goldman: Amazon Sold up to 50,000 Kindles in Q1.” Silicon Alley Insider 19 May 2008. 25 June 2008 ‹http://www.alleyinsider.com/2008/5/how_many_kindles_sold_last_quarter_>. “Super Monkey Ball iPhone's Super Sales.” Edge OnLine. 24 Aug. 2008 ‹http://www.edge-online.com/news/super-monkey-ball-iphones-super-sales>. Thompson, John B. Books in the Digital Age. London: Polity, 2005. Vershbow, Ben. “Self Destructing Books.” if:book. May 2005. 4 Oct. 2006 ‹http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/archives/2005/05/selfdestructing_books.html>. Wallace, Margaret, and Brian Robbins. 2006 Casual Games White Paper. IDGA. 24 Aug. 2008 ‹http://www.igda.org/casual/IGDA_CasualGames_Whitepaper_2006.pdf>. Weber, Jonathan. “Why Books Resist the Rise of Novel Technologies.” The Times Online 23 May 2006. 25 June 2008 ‹http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/books/article724510.ece> Young, Sherman. The Book is Dead, Long Live the Book. Sydney: UNSW P, 2007.

In many ways, computers are becoming invisible and will continue to do so. When we reach into our pockets and pull out our cell phones to find a place to eat or message a friend on Facebook, we are no longer consciously aware that we are interacting with a user experience that has been consciously designed for our computer or device screen—but we are.— Andy Pratt and Jason Nunes, Interactive Design In theory, cell phones and other information and communication technologies (ICTs) are just a means for us to interact with people, businesses, and data sources. They have interfaces and, in a larger sense, are interfaces between their users and the networked world. Every day, people spend more time using them to perform more different tasks and find them more indispensable (Smith). As the epigraph above suggests, however, their omnipresence makes them practically invisible and has all but erased any feelings of awe or mystery that their power once generated. There is both a historical and functional dimension to this situation. In the historical advance of technology, it is part of what Kevin Kelly calls the “technium,” the ever-more complex interactions between advancing technology, our cognitive processes, and the cultural forces in which they are enmeshed; ICTs are measurably getting more powerful as time goes on and are, in this sense, worthy of our admiration (Kelly 11-17). In the functional dimension, on the other hand, many scholars and designers have observed how hard it is to hold on to this feeling of enchantment in our digital devices (Nye 185-226; McCarthy and Wright 192-97). As one study of human-computer interfaces observes “when people let the enchanting object [ICTs] do the emotional work of experience for them . . . what could be enchanting interactivity becomes a paradoxically detached interpassivity” (McCarthy et al. 377). ICTs can be ever more powerful, then, but this power will not necessarily be appreciated by their users. This paper analyzes recent narrative representations of ICT use in spy thrillers, with a particular focus on the canon of James Bond films (a sub-genre with a long-standing and overt fascination with advanced technology, especially ICTs), in order to explore how the banality of ICT technology has become the inescapable accompaniment of its power (Willis; Britton 99-123; 195-219). Among many possible recent examples: recall how Bond uses his ordinary cell phone camera to reveal the membership of the sinister Quantum group at an opera performance in Quantum of Solace; how world-wide video surveillance is depicted as inescapable (and amoral) in The Bourne Legacy; and how the anonymous protagonist of Roman Polanski’s Ghost Writer discovers the vital piece of top secret information that explains the entire film—by searching for it on his laptop via Google. In each of these cases, ICTs are represented as both incredibly powerful and tediously quotidian. More precisely, in each case human users are represented as interfaces between ICTs and their stored knowledge, rather than the reverse. Beginning with an account of how the naturalization of ICTs has changed the perceived relations between technology and its users, this essay argues that the promotional rhetoric of human empowerment and augmentation surrounding ICTs is opposed by a persistent cinematic theme of human subordination to technological needs. The question it seeks to open is why—why do the mainstream cinematic narratives of our culture depict the ICTs that enhance our capacities to know and communicate as something that diminishes rather than augments us? One answer (which can only be provisionally sketched here) is the loss of pleasure. It does not matter whether or not technology augments our capacities if it cannot sustain the fantasy of pleasure and/or enhancement at the same time. Without this fantasy, ICTs are represented as usurping position as the knowing subject and users, in turn, become the media connecting them– even when that user is James Bond. The Rhetoric of Augmentation Until the past five years or so, the technologization of the human mind was almost always represented in popular culture as a threat to humanity—whether it be Ira Levin’s robotic Stepford Wives as the debased expression of male wish-fulfillment (Levin), or Jonathan Demme’s brainwashed assassins with computer chip implants in his remake of The Manchurian Candidate. When Captain Picard, the leader and moral centre of the television series Star Trek: The Next Generation, is taken over by the Borg (an alien machine race that seeks to absorb other species into its technologized collective mind) in an episode from 1990, it is described as “assimilation” rather than an augmentation. The Borg version of Picard says to his former comrades that “we only wish to raise quality of life, for all species,” and it is a chilling, completely unemotional threat to the survival of our species (“Best of Both Worlds”). By 2012, on the other hand, the very same imagery is being used to sell smart phones by celebrating the technological enhancements that allegedly make us better human beings. In Verizon’s Droid DNA phone promotions, the product is depicted as an artificial heart for its user, one that enhances memory, “neural speed,” and “predictive intelligence” (thanks to Google Now). The tagline for the Verizon ad claims that “It’s not an upgrade to your phone; it’s an upgrade to yourself”, echoing Borg-Picard’s threat but this time as an aspirational promise (“Verizon Commercial”). The same technologization of the mind that was anathema just a few years ago, is now presented as both a desirable consumer goal and a professional necessity—the final close-up of the Verizon artificial heart shows that this 21st century cyborg has to be at his job in 26 minutes; the omnipresence of work in a networked world is here literally taken to heart. There is, notably, no promise of pleasure or liberation anywhere in this advertisement. We are meant to desire this product very much, but solely because it allows us to do more and better work. Not coincidentally, the period that witnessed this inversion in popular culture also saw an exponential increase in the quantity and variety of digitally networked devices in our lives (“Mobile Cellular”) and the emergence of serious cultural, scientific, and philosophical movements exploring the idea of “enhanced” human beings, whether through digital tool use, biomedical prostheses, drugs, or genetic modifications (Buchanan; Savulescu and Bostrom; “Humanity +”). As the material boundaries of the “human” have become more permeable and malleable, and as the technologies that make this possible become everyday objects, our resistance to this possibility has receded. The discourse of the transhuman and extropian is now firmly established as a philosophical possibility (Lilley). Personal augmentation with the promise of pleasure is still, of course, very much present in the presentation of ICTs. Launching the iPad 2 in 2011, the late Steve Jobs described his new product as a “magical and revolutionary device” with an “incredible magical user interface on a much larger canvas with more resources” and gushing that “it's technology married with liberal arts, married with the humanities, that yields us the result that makes our hearts sing” (“Apple Special Event”). This is the rhetoric of augmentation through technology and, as in the Verizon ad, it is very careful to position the consumer/user at the centre of the experience. The technology is described as wonderful not just in itself, but also precisely because it gives users “a larger canvas” with which to create. Likewise, the lifelogging movement (which encourages people to use small cameras to record every event of daily life) is at great pains to stress that “you, not your desktop’s hard drive, are the hub of your digital belongings” (Bell and Gemmell 10). But do users experience life with these devices as augmented? Is either the Verizon work cyborg or the iPad user’s singing heart representative of how these devices make us feel? It depends upon the context in which the question is asked. Extensive survey data on cell phone use shows that we are more attached than ever to our phones, that they allow us to be “productive” in otherwise dead times (such as while waiting in queues), and that only a minority of users worry about the negative effects of being “permanently connected” (Smith 9-10). Representations of technological augmentation in 21st century popular cinema, however, offer a very different perspective. Even in James Bond films, which (since Goldfinger in 1964) have been enraptured with technological devices as augmentations for its protagonists and as lures for audiences, digital devices have (in the three most recent films) lost their magic and become banal in the same way as they have in the lives of audience members (Nitins 2010; Nitins 2011; “List of James Bond Gadgets”). Rather than focusing on technological empowerment, the post 2006 Bond films emphasize (1) that ICTs “know” things and that human agents are just the media that connect them together; and (2) that the reciprocal nature of networked ICTs means that we are always visible when we use them; like Verizon phone users, our on-screen heroes have to learn that the same technology that empowers them simultaneously empowers others to know and/or control them. Using examples from the James Bond franchise, the remainder of this paper discusses the simultaneous disenchantment and power of ICT technology in the films as a representative sample of the cultural status of ICTs as a whole. “We don’t go in for that sort of thing any more...” From Goldfinger until the end of Pierce Brosnan’s tenure in 2002, technological devices were an important part of the audience’s pleasure in a Bond film (Willis; Nitins 2011). James Bond’s jetpack in Thunderball, to give one of many examples, is a quasi-magical aid for the hero with literary precursors going back to Aeneas’s golden bough; it is utterly enchanting and, equally importantly, fun. In the most recent Bond film, Skyfall, however, Q, the character who has historically made Bond’s technology, reappears after a two-film hiatus, but in the guise of a computer nerd who openly disdains the pleasures and possibilities of technological augmentation. When Bond complains about receiving only a gun and a radio from him, Q replies: “What did you expect? An exploding pen? We don’t really go in for that sort of thing any more.” Technology is henceforth to be banal and invisible albeit (as the film’s computer hacker villain Silva demonstrates) still incredibly powerful. The film’s pleasures must come from elsewhere. The post-credit sequence in Casino Royale, which involves the pursuit and eventual death of a terrorist bomb-maker, perfectly embodies the diminished importance of human agents as bearers of knowledge. It is bracketed at the beginning by the bomber looking at a text message while under surveillance by Bond and a colleague and at the end by Bond looking at the same message after having killed him. Significantly, the camera angle and setup of both shots make it impossible to distinguish between Bond’s hand and the bomber’s as they see the same piece of information on the same phone. The ideological, legal, racial, and other differences between the two men are erased in pursuit of the data (the name “Ellipsis” and a phone number) that they both covet. As digitally-transmitted data, it is there for anyone, completely unaffected by the moral or legal value attached to its users. Cell phones in these films are, in many ways, better sources of information than their owners—after killing a phone’s owner, his or her network traces can show exactly where s/he has been and to whom s/he has been talking, and this is how Bond proceeds. The bomber’s phone contacts lead Bond to the Bahamas, to the next villain in the chain, whom Bond kills and from whom he obtains another cell phone, which allows the next narrative location to be established (Miami Airport) and the next villain to be located (by calling his cell phone in a crowded room and seeing who answers) (Demetrios). There are no conventional interrogations needed here, because it is the digital devices that are the locus of knowledge rather than people. Even Bond’s lover Vesper Lynd sends her most important message to him (the name and cell phone number of the film’s arch villain) in a posthumous text, rather than in an actual conversation. Cell phones do not enable communication between people; people connect the important information that cell phones hold together. The second manifestation of the disenchantment of ICT technology is the disempowering omnipresence of surveillance. Bond and his colleague are noticed by the bomber when the colleague touches his supposedly invisible communication earpiece. With the audience’s point of view conflated with that of the secret agent, the technology of concealment becomes precisely what reveals the secret agent’s identity in the midst of a chaotic scene in which staying anonymous should be the easiest thing in the world; other villains identify Bond by the same means in a hotel hallway later in the film. While chasing the bomber, Bond is recorded by a surveillance camera in the act of killing him on the grounds of a foreign embassy. The secret agent is, as a result, made into an object of knowledge for the international media, prompting M (Bond’s boss) to exclaim that their political masters “don’t care what we do, they care what we get photographed doing.” Bond is henceforth part of the mediascape, so well known as a spy that he refuses to use the alias that MI6 provides for his climactic encounter with the main villain LeChiffre on the grounds that any well-connected master criminal will know who he is anyway. This can, of course, go both ways: Bond uses the omnipresence of surveillance to find another of his targets by using the security cameras of a casino. This one image contains many layers of reference—Bond the character has found his man; he has also found an iconic image from his own cultural past (the Aston Martin DB V car that is the only clearly delineated object in the frame) that he cannot understand as such because Casino Royale is a “reboot” and he has only just become 007. But the audience knows what it means and can insert this incarnation of James Bond in its historical sequence and enjoy the allusion to a past of which Bond is oblivious. The point is that surveillance is omnipresent, anonymity is impossible, and we are always being watched and interpreted by someone. This is true in the film’s narrative and also in the cultural/historical contexts in which the Bond films operate. It may be better to be the watcher rather than the watched, but we are always already both. By the end of the film, Bond is literally being framed by technological devices and becomes the organic connection between different pieces of technology. The literal centrality of the human agent in these images is not, in this disenchanted landscape, an indication of his importance. The cell phones to which Bond listens in these images connect him (and us) to the past, the back story or context provided by his masters that permits the audience to understand the complex plot that is unfolding before them. The devices at which he looks represent the future, the next situation or person that he must contain. He does not fully understand what is happening, but he is not there to understand – he is there to join the information held in the various devices together, which (in this film) usually means to kill someone. The third image in this sequence is from the final scene of the film, and the assault rifle marks this end—the chain of cell phone messages (direct and indirect) that has driven Casino Royale from its outset has been stopped. The narrative stops with it. Bond’s centrality amid these ICTS and their messages is simultaneously what allows him to complete his mission and what subjects him to their needs. This kind of technological power can be so banal precisely because it has been stripped of pleasure and of any kind of mystique. The conclusion of Skyfall reinforces this by inverting all of the norms that Bond films have created about their climaxes: instead of the technologically-empowered villain’s lair being destroyed, it is Bond’s childhood home that is blown up. Rather than beating the computer hacker at his own game, Bond kills him with a knife in a medieval Scottish church. It could hardly be less hi-tech if it tried, which is precisely the point. What the Bond franchise and the other films mentioned above have shown us, is that we do not rely on ICTs for enchantment any more because they are so powerfully connected to the everyday reality of work and to the loss of privacy that our digital devices exact as the price of their use. The advertising materials that sell them to us have to rely on the rhetoric of augmentation, but these films are signs that we do not experience them as empowering devices any more. The deeper irony is that (for once) the ICT consumer products being advertised to us today really do what their promotional materials claim: they are faster, more powerful, and more widely applicable in our lives than ever before. Without the user fantasy of augmentation, however, this truth has very little power to move us. We depict ourselves as the medium, and it is our digital devices that bear the message.References“Apple Special Event. March 2, 2011.” Apple Events. 21 Sep. 2013 ‹http://events.apple.com.edgesuite.net/1103pijanbdvaaj/event/index.html›. Bell, Gordon, and Jim Gemmell. Total Recall: How the E-Memory Revolution Will Change Everything. New York: Dutton, 2009.“The Best of Both Worlds: Part Two.” Star Trek: The Next Generation. Dir. Cliff Bole. Paramount, 2013. The Bourne Legacy. Dir. 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IntroductionCroquembouche, blast chillers, and plating up—these terms have become normal to ordinary Australians despite Adriano Zumbo’s croquembouche recipe taking more than two hours to complete and blast chillers costing thousands of dollars. Network Ten’s reality talent quest MasterChef Australia (MCA) has brought fine dining and “foodie” culture to a mass audience who have responded enthusiastically. Vicariously “tasting” this once niche lifestyle is empowering viewers to integrate aspects of “foodie” culture into their everyday lives. It helps them become “everyday foodies.” “Everyday foodies” are individuals who embrace and incorporate an appreciation of gourmet food culture into their existing lifestyles, but feel limited by time, money, health, or confidence. So while a croquembouche and blast chiller may be beyond a MCA viewer’s reach, these aspects of “foodie” culture can still be enjoyed via the program. The rise of the “everyday foodie” challenges criticisms of vicarious consumption and negative discourses about reality and lifestyle television. Examining the very different and specific ways in which three MCA-viewing households vicariously experience gourmet food in their adoption of the “everyday foodie” lifestyle will demonstrate the positive value of vicarious consumption through reality and lifestyle programming. A brief background on the MCA phenomenon will be provided before a review of existing literature regarding vicarious consumption and tensions in the reality and lifestyle television field. Three case studies of MCA-viewing households who use vicarious consumption to satisfy “foodie” cravings and broaden their cultural tastes will be presented. Adapted from the United Kingdom’s MasterChef, which has aired since 1990, MCA has proven to be a catalyst for the “cheffing up” of the nation’s food culture. Twenty-odd amateur cooks compete in a series of challenges, guided, and critiqued by judges George Calombaris, Gary Mehigan, and Matt Preston. Contestants are eliminated as they move through a series of challenges, until one cook remains and is crowned the Master Chef of that series. Network Ten’s launch of MCA in 2009 capitalised on the popularity of reality talent quests that grew throughout the 2000s with programs such as Popstars (2000–2002), Australian Idol (2003–2009), X Factor (2005, 2010–) and Australia’s Got Talent (2007–). MCA also captures Australian viewers’ penchant for lifestyle shows including Better Homes and Gardens (1995–), Burke’s Backyard (1987-2004), The Living Room (2012–) and The Block (2003–2004, 2010–). The popularity of these shows, however, does not match the heights of MCA, which has transformed the normal cooking show audience of 200,000 into millions (Greenwood). MCA’s 2010 finale is Australia’s highest rating non-sporting program since OzTAM ratings were introduced in 2001 (Vickery). Anticipating this episode’s popularity, the 2010 Federal Election debate was moved to 6.30pm from its traditional Sunday 7.30pm timeslot (Coorey; Malkin). As well as attracting extensive press coverage and attention in opinion pieces and blogs, the level of academic attention MCA has already received underscores the show’s significance. So far, Lewis (Labours) and Seale have critiqued the involvement of ordinary people as contestants on the show while Phillipov (Communicating, Mastering) explores tensions within the show from a public health angle. While de Solier (TV Dinners, Making the Self, Foodie Makeovers) and Rousseau’s research does not focus on MCA itself, their investigation of Australian foodies and the impact of food media respectively provide relevant discussion about audience relationships with food media and food culture. This article focuses on how audiences use MCA and related programs. Vicarious consumption is presented as a negative practice where the leisure class benefit from another’s productivity (Veblen). Belk presents the simple example that “if our friend lives in an extravagant house or drives an extravagant car, we feel just a bit more extravagant ourselves” (157). Therefore, consuming through another is viewed as a passive activity. In the context of vicariously consuming through MCA, it could be argued that audiences are gaining satisfaction from watching others develop culinary skills and produce gourmet meals. What this article will reveal is that while MCA viewers do gain this satisfaction, they use it in a productive way to discipline their own eating and spending habits, and to allow them to engage with “foodie” culture when it may not otherwise be possible. Rather than embrace the opportunity to understand a new culture or lifestyle, critics of reality and lifestyle television dismiss the empowering qualities of these programs for two reasons. The practice of “advertainment” (Deery 1)—fusing selling and entertainment—puts pressure on, or excludes, the aspirational classes who want, but lack the resources to adopt, the depicted lifestyle (Ouellette and Hay). Furthermore, such programs are criticised for forcing bourgeois consumption habits on its viewers (Lewis, Smart Living) Both arguments have been directed at British celebrity chef Jamie Oliver. Oliver’s latest cookbook Save with Jamie has been criticised as it promotes austerity cooking, but costs £26 (approx. 48AUD) and encourages readers to purchase staple ingredients and equipment that total more than £500 (approx. 919AUD) (Ellis-Petersen). Ellis-Petersen adds that the £500 cost uses the cheapest available options, not Oliver’s line of Tefal cooking equipment, “which come at a hefty premium” (7). In 2005, Oliver’s television series Jamie’s School Dinners, which follows his campaign for policy reform in the provision of food to students was met with resistance. 2008 reports claim students preferred to leave school to buy junk food rather than eat healthier fare at school (Rousseau). Parents supported this, providing money to their children rather than packing healthy lunches that would pass school inspections (Rousseau). Like the framing of vicarious consumption, these criticisms dismiss the potential benefits of engaging with different lifestyles and cultures. These arguments do not recognise audiences as active media consumers who use programs like MCA to enhance their lifestyles through the acquisition of cultural capital. Ouellette and Hay highlight that audiences take advantage of a multitude of viewing strategies. One such strategy is playing the role of “vicarious expert” (Ouellette and Hay 117) who judges participants and has their consumption practices reinforced through the show. While audiences are invited to learn, they can do this from a distance and are not obliged to feel as though they must be educated (Ouellette and Hay). Viewers are simply able to enjoy the fantasy and spectacle of food shows as escapes from everyday routines (Lewis, Smart Living). In cases like Emeril Live where the host and chef, Emeril Lagasse “favors [sic] showmanship over instruction” (Adema 115–116) the vicarious consumption of viewing a cooking show is more satisfying than cooking and eating. Another reason vicarious consumption provides pleasure for audiences is because “culinary television aestheticises food,” transforming it “into a delectable image, a form of ‘gastro-porn’ […] designed to be consumed with the eyes” (de Solier, TV Dinners 467). Audiences take advantage of these viewing strategies, using a balance of actual and vicarious consumption in order to integrate gourmet food culture into their pre-existing lifestyle, budget, and cooking ability. The following case studies emerged from research conducted to understand MCA’s impact on households. After shopping with, and interviewing, seven households, the integration of vicarious and actual food consumption habits was evident across three households. Enjoying food images onscreen or in cookbooks is a suitable substitute when actual consumption is unhealthy, too expensive, time consuming, or daunting. It is this balance between adopting consumption habits of a conventional “foodie” and using vicarious consumption in contexts where the viewer sees actual consumption as unreasonable or uncomfortable that makes the “everyday foodie.” Melanie—Health Melanie is 38 years old and works in the childcare industry. She enjoys the “gastro-porn” of MCA and other food media. Interestingly she says food media actually helps her resist eating sumptuous and rich foods: Yeah, like my house is just overrun by cookbooks, cooking magazines. I have Foxtel primarily for the Food Network […] But I know if I cooked it or baked it, I would eat it and I’ve worked too hard to get where I am physically to do that. So I just, I read about it and I watch it, I just don’t do it. This behaviour supports Boulos et al.’s finding that while the Food Network promotes irresponsible consumption habits, these programs are considered a “window into a wider social and cultural world” rather than food preparation guides (150). Using vicarious consumption in this way means Melanie feels she does not “cook as much as what a true foodie would cook,” but she will “have low fat and healthy [options] whenever I can so I can go out and try all the fancy stuff cooked by fancy people.” MCA and food media for Melanie serves a double purpose in that she uses it to restrict, but also aid in her consumption of gourmet food. In choosing a chef or restaurant for the occasions where Melanie wants to enjoy a “fancy” dining experience, she claims food media serves as an educational resource to influence her consumption of gourmet food: I looked up when I was in Sydney where Adriano Zumbo’s shop was to go and try macarons there […] It [MCA] makes me aware of chefs that I may not have been aware of and I may go and … seek that [their restaurants/establishments] out […] Would Adriano Zumbo be as big as he is without MasterChef? No. And I’m a sucker, I want to go and try, I want to know what everyone’s talking about. Melanie’s attitudes and behaviour with regards to food media and consumption illustrates audiences’ selective nature. MCA and other food media influence her to consume, but also control, her consumption. Curtis and Samantha—Broadening Horizons Time and money is a key concern for many “everyday foodies” including Curtis’ family. Along with his wife Samantha they are raising a one-year-old daughter, Amelia. Curtis expressed a fondness for food that he ate while on holiday in the United States: I guess in the last few weeks I’ve been craving the food that we had when we were in America, in particular stuff like pulled pork, ribs, stuff like that. So I’ve replicated or made our own because you can’t get it anywhere around Brisbane like from a restaurant. When talking about cooking shows more generally, Curtis speaks primarily about cooking shows he watches on Foxtel that have a food tourism angle. Curtis mentions programs including Cheese Slices, The Layover and Man v. Food. The latter of these shows follows Adam Richman around the United States attempting to conquer eating challenges set at famous local establishments. Curtis describes his reaction to the program: I say woah that looks good and then I just want to go back to America. But instead of paying thousands of dollars to go, it’s cheaper to look up a recipe and give it a go at home. Cookbooks and food television provide their viewers not only with a window through which they can escape their everyday routines but, as Curtis points out, inspiration or education to cook new dishes themselves. For money conscious “everyday foodies”, the cooking demonstration or mere introduction of a dish broadens viewers’ culinary knowledge. Curtis highlights the importance of this: Otherwise [without food media] you’d be stuck cooking the same things your mum and dad taught you, or your home economics teacher taught you in high school. You’d just be doing the same thing every day. Unless you went out to a restaurant and fell in love with something, but because you don’t go out to restaurants every day, you wouldn’t have that experience every day […] TV gives you the ability—we could flick over to the food channel right now and watch something completely amazing that we’ve never done before. His wife Samantha does not consider herself an adventurous eater. While she is interested in food, her passion lies in cakes and desserts and she jokes that ordering Nando’s with the medium basting is adventurous for her. Vicarious consumption through food media allows Samantha to experience a wider range of cuisines without consuming these foods herself: I would watch a lot more variety than I would actually try. There’s a lot of things that I would happily watch, but if it was put in front of me I probably wouldn’t eat it. Like with MasterChef, I’m quite interested in cooking and stuff, but the range of things [ingredients and cuisines] […] I wouldn’t go there. Rose and Andrew—Set in Their Ways Rose and her husband Andrew are a “basically retired” couple and the parents of Samantha. While they both enjoy MCA and feel it has given them a new insight on food, they find it easier to have a mediated engagement with gourmet food in some instances. Andrew believes MCA is: Taking food out of this sort of very conservative, meat, and three vegetables thing into […] something that is more exotic, for the want of a better word. And I guess that’s where we’ve—we follow it, I follow it. And saying, ‘Oh, geez it’d be nice to do that or to be able to do that,’ and enjoy a bit of creativity in that, but I think it’s just we’re probably pretty set in our ways probably and it’s a bit hard to put that into action sometimes. Andrew goes on to suggest that a generational gap makes their daughters, Samantha and Elle more likely to cook MCA-inspired meals than they are: See Samantha and Elle probably cook with that sort of thing [herbs] more and I always enjoy when they do it, but we probably don’t […] We don’t think about it when we go shopping. We probably shop and buy the basic things and don’t think about the nicer things. Andrew describes himself as “an extremely lazy reader” who finds following a recipe “boring.” Andrew says if he were tempted to cook an MCA-inspired dish, it is unlikely that the required ingredients would be on-hand and that he would not shop for one meal. Rose says she does buy the herbs, or “nicer things” as Andrew refers to them, but is hesitant to use them. She says the primary barrier is lacking confidence in her cooking ability, but also that she finds cooking tiring and is not used to cooking with the gas stove in her new home: Rose: I also think that I probably leave my run late and by night time I’m really tired and my feet are hurting and I tend to think ‘Oh I’ll just get something ready’ […] I know that probably sounds like a lame excuse, but yeah, it’s probably more the confidence thing I think. I often even buy the things [ingredients] to do it and then don’t make it. I’m not confident with my stovetop either. Researcher: Oh why—can you please explain more about that?Rose: Well it’s a gas stovetop and I used to have the electric. I felt like I could main—I could control the setting—the heat—better on it. Rose, in particular, does not let her lack of confidence and time stop her from engaging with gourmet food. Cookbooks and cooking shows like MCA are a valuable channel for her to appreciate “foodie” culture. Rose talks about her interest in MCA: Rose: I’m not a keen cook, but I do enjoy buying recipe books and looking at lovely food and watching—and I enjoyed watching how they did these beautiful dishes. As for the desserts, yes they probably were very fancy, but it was sort of nice to think if you had a really special occasion, you know […] and I would actually get on the computer afterwards and look for some of the recipes. I did subscribe to their magazine […] because I’m a bit of a magazine junkie.Researcher: What do you get out of the recipe books and magazines if you say you’re not a keen cook?Rose: I’d just dream about cooking them probably. That sounds terrible, doesn’t it? But, and also probably inspire my daughters […] I like to show them “oh, look at this and this” or, you know, and probably quite often they will try it or—and one day I think I will try it, but whether I ever do or not, I don’t know. Rose’s response also treats the generation gap as a perceived barrier to actual consumption. But while the couple feel unable to use the knowledge they have gained through MCA in their kitchen, they credit the show with broadening the range of cuisines they would eat when dining out: Andrew: You know, even when we’ve been to—I like Asian food in Australia, you know, Chinese, Thai, any of those sorts of foods.Rose: Indian. Andrew: Indian, yeah I like that in Australia.Rose: Which we have probably tried more of since the likes of MasterChef.Andrew: Yeah.Rose: You know, you—and even sushi, like you would never have ever […]Andrew: Gone to sushi previously. And I won’t eat sashimi, but the sushi bar is all right. Um […] but [I] did not enjoy Chinese food in places like Hong Kong or Singapore. As the couple does not seek educational information from the show in terms of cooking demonstration, they appear more invested in the progress of the contestants of the show and how they respond to challenges set by the judges. The involvement of amateur cooks makes the show relatable as they identify with contestants who they see as potential extensions of themselves. Rose identifies with season one winner, Julie Goodwin who entered the program as a 38-year-old mother of three and owner of an IT consulting business: Rose: Well Julie of course is a—I don’t like to use the word square, but she’s sort of like a bit of an old fashioned lady, but you know, more like basic grandma cooking. But […]Andrew: She did it well though.Rose: Yes, yeah. Andrew: And she, she probably—she progressed dramatically, you know, from the comments from when she first started […] to winning. In how she presented, how she did things. She must have learnt a lot in the process is the way I would look at it anyway. Rose: And I’ve seen her sort of on things since then and she is very good at like […] talking about and telling you what she’s doing and—for basic sort of cook—you know what I mean, not basic, but […] for a basic person like me. Although Rose and Andrew feel that their life stage prevents has them from changing long established consumption habits in relation to food, their choices while dining out coupled with a keen interest in food and food media still exemplifies the “everyday foodie” lifestyle. Programs like MCA, especially with its focus on the development of amateur cooks, have allowed Rose and Andrew to experience gourmet food more than they would have otherwise. Conclusion Each viewer is empowered to live their version of the “everyday foodie” lifestyle through adopting a balance of actual and vicarious consumption practices. Vicariously tasting “foodie” culture has broadened these viewers’ culinary knowledge and to some extent has broadened their actual tastes. This is evident in Melanie’s visit to Adriano Zumbo’s patisserie, and Rose and Andrew’s sampling of various Asian cuisines while dining out, for example. It also provides pleasure in lieu of actual consumption in instances like Melanie using food images as a disciplinary mechanism or Curtis watching Man v. Food instead of travelling overseas. The attitudes and behaviours of these MCA viewers illustrate that vicarious consumption through food media is a productive and empowering practice that aids audiences to adopt an “everyday foodie” lifestyle. References Adema, Pauline. “Vicarious Consumption: Food, Television and the Ambiguity of Modernity.” Journal of American and Comparative Cultures 23.3 (2000): 113–23. Belk, Russell. “Possessions and the Extended Self.” Journal of Consumer Research 15.2 (1988): 139–68. Boulous, Rebecca, Emily Kuross Vikre, Sophie Oppenheimer, Hannah Chang, and Robin B. Kanarek. “ObesiTV: How Television is influencing the Obesity Epidemic.” Physiology & Behavior 107.1 (2012): 146–53. Coorey, Phillip. “Chefs Win in Ratings Boilover.” Sydney Morning Herald 20 Jul. 2010: n. pag. Deery, June. “Reality TV as Advertainment.” Popular Communication: The International Journal of Media and Culture 2.1 (2005): 1–20. Ellis-Petersen, Hannah. “Jamie’s Idea of Cooking on a Budget—First Buy £500 of Kitchen Utensils and ‘Basics’ (And Yes Most Of Them DO Come From His Own Range).” Mail Online 31 Aug. 2013: n. pag. Greenwood, Helen. “From TV to Table.” Sydney Morning Herald 3 Jul. 2010: n. pag. Lewis, Tania. Smart Living: Lifestyle Media and Popular Expertise. New York: Peter Lang, 2008. -----. “You’ve Put Yourselves on a Plate: The Labours of Selfhood on MasterChef Australia.” Reality Television and Class. Eds. Helen Wood, and Beverly Skeggs. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011. 104–6. Malkin, Bonnie. “Australian Election Debate Makes Way for MasterChef Final.” The Telegraph 20 Jul. 2010: n. pag. Ouellette, Laurie, and James Hay. Better Living through Reality TV. Malden: Blackwell, 2008. Phillipov, Michelle. “Communicating Health Risks via the Media: What can we learn from MasterChef Australia?” The Australasian Medical Journal 5.11 (2012): 593–7. -----. “Mastering Obesity: MasterChef Australia and the Resistance to Public Health Nutrition.” Media, Culture & Society 35.4 (2013): 506–15. Rousseau, Signe. Food Media: Celebrity Chefs and the Politics of Everyday Interference. London: Berg, 2012. Seale, Kirsten. “MasterChef’s Amateur Makeovers.” Media International Australia 143 (2012): 28–35. de Solier, Isabelle. “Foodie Makeovers: Public Service Television and Lifestyle Guidance.” Exposing Lifestyle Television: The Big Reveal. Ed. Gareth Palmer. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008. 65–81. -----. “Making the Self in a Material World: Food and Moralities of Consumption.” Cultural Studies Review 19.1 (2013): 9–27. -----. “TV Dinners: Culinary Television, Education and Distinction.” Continuum: Journal of Media and Cultural Studies 19.4 (2005): 465–81. Vickery, Colin. “Adam Liaw Wins MasterChef as Ratings Soar for Channel 10.” Herald Sun 25 Jul. 2010: n. pag. Veblen, Thorstein. The Theory of the Leisure Class. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2007.

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›. Cook, Sarah, Beryl Graham, and Sarah Martin eds. Curating New Media, Gateshead: BALTIC, 2002. Duguid, Paul. ‘Material Matters: The Past and Futurology of the Book.’ In Gary Nunberg, ed. The Future of the Book. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1996. 63–101. French, Michael. 'GAME Reveals Pre-Owned Trading Is 18% of Business.’ MCV 22 Apr. 2009. 13 Jun 2009 ‹http://www.mcvuk.com/news/34019/GAME-reveals-pre-owned-trading-is-18-per-cent-of-business›. Giddings, Seth, and Helen Kennedy. ‘Digital Games as New Media.’ In J. Rutter and J. Bryce, eds. Understanding Digital Games. London: Sage. 129–147. Gillen, Kieron. ‘The New Games Journalism.’ Kieron Gillen’s Workblog 2004. 13 June 2009 ‹http://gillen.cream.org/wordpress_html/?page_id=3›. Jones, S. The Meaning of Video Games: Gaming and Textual Strategies, New York: Routledge, 2008. Kerr, A. The Business and Culture of Digital Games. London: Sage, 2006. Lister, Martin, John Dovey, Seth Giddings, Ian Grant and Kevin Kelly. New Media: A Critical Introduction. London and New York: Routledge, 2003. Lowood, Henry, Andrew Armstrong, Devin Monnens, Zach Vowell, Judd Ruggill, Ken McAllister, and Rachel Donahue. Before It's Too Late: A Digital Game Preservation White Paper. IGDA, 2009. 13 June 2009 ‹http://www.igda.org/wiki/images/8/83/IGDA_Game_Preservation_SIG_-_Before_It%27s_Too_Late_-_A_Digital_Game_Preservation_White_Paper.pdf›. Monnens, Devin. ‘Why Are Games Worth Preserving?’ In Before It's Too Late: A Digital Game Preservation White Paper. IGDA, 2009. 13 June 2009 ‹http://www.igda.org/wiki/images/8/83/IGDA_Game_Preservation_SIG_-_Before_It%27s_Too_Late_-_A_Digital_Game_Preservation_White_Paper.pdf›. ———. ‘Losing Digital Game History: Bit by Bit.’ In Before It's Too Late: A Digital Game Preservation White Paper. IGDA, 2009. 13 June 2009 ‹http://www.igda.org/wiki/images/8/83/IGDA_Game_Preservation_SIG_-_Before_It%27s_Too_Late_-_A_Digital_Game_Preservation_White_Paper.pdf›. Newman, J. ‘In Search of the Videogame Player: The Lives of Mario.’ New Media and Society 4.3 (2002): 407-425.———. ‘On Emulation.’ The National Videogame Archive Research Diary, 2009. 13 June 2009 ‹http://www.nationalvideogamearchive.org/index.php/2009/04/on-emulation/›. ———. ‘Our Cultural Heritage – Available by the Bucketload.’ The National Videogame Archive Research Diary, 2009. 10 Apr. 2009 ‹http://www.nationalvideogamearchive.org/index.php/2009/04/our-cultural-heritage-available-by-the-bucketload/›. ———. Playing with Videogames, London: Routledge, 2008. ———, and I. Simons. 100 Videogames. London: BFI Publishing, 2007. Nutt, C. ‘He Is 8-Bit: Capcom's Hironobu Takeshita Speaks.’ Gamasutra 2008. 13 June 2009 ‹http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/3752/›. Radd, D. ‘Gaming 3.0. Sony’s Phil Harrison Explains the PS3 Virtual Community, Home.’ Business Week 9 Mar. 2007. 13 June 2009 ‹http://www.businessweek.com/innovate/content/mar2007/id20070309_764852.htm?chan=innovation_game+room_top+stories›. Ruggill, Judd, and Ken McAllister. ‘What If We Do Nothing?’ Before It's Too Late: A Digital Game Preservation White Paper. IGDA, 2009. 13 June 2009. ‹http://www.igda.org/wiki/images/8/83/IGDA_Game_Preservation_SIG_-_Before_It%27s_Too_Late_-_A_Digital_Game_Preservation_White_Paper.pdf›. 16-19.

Critique of Ability In July 2008, we could be on the eve of an enormously important shift in disability in Australia. One sign of change is the entry into force on 3 May 2008 of the United Nations convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, which will now be adopted by the Rudd Labor government. Through this, and other proposed measures, the Rudd government has indicated its desire for a seachange in the area of disability. Bill Shorten MP, the new Parliamentary Secretary for Disabilities and Children’s Services has been at pains to underline his commitment to a rights-based approach to disability. In this inaugural speech to Parliament, Senator Shorten declared: I believe the challenge for government is not to fit people with disabilities around programs but for programs to fit the lives, needs and ambitions of people with disabilities. The challenge for all of us is to abolish once and for all the second-class status that too often accompanies Australians living with disabilities. (Shorten, “Address in reply”; see also Shorten, ”Speaking up”) Yet if we listen to the voices of people with disability, we face fundamental issues of justice, democracy, equality and how we understand the deepest aspects of ourselves and our community. This is a situation that remains dire and palpably unjust, as many people with disabilities have attested. Elsewhere I have argued (Goggin and Newell) that disability constitutes a systemic form of exclusion and othering tantamount to a “social apartheid” . While there have been improvements and small gains since then, the system that reigns in Australia is still fundamentally oppressive. Nonetheless, I would suggest that through the rise of the many stranded movements of disability, the demographic, economic and social changes concerning impairment, we are seeing significant changes in how we understand impairment and ability (Barnes, Oliver and Barton; Goggin and Newell, Disability in Australia; Snyder, Brueggemann, and Garland-Thomson; Shakespeare; Stiker). There is now considerable, if still incomplete, recognition of disability as a category that is constituted through social, cultural, and political logics, as well as through complex facets of impairment, bodies (Corker and Shakespeare), experiences, discourses (Fulcher), and modes of materiality and subjectivity (Butler), identity and government (Tremain). Also there is growing awareness of the imbrication of disability and other categories such as sex and gender (Fine and Asch; Thomas), race, age, culture, class and distribution of wealth (Carrier; Cole; Davis, Bending over Backwards, and Enforcing Normalcy; Oliver; Rosenblum and Travis), ecology and war (Bourke; Gerber; Muir). There are rich and wide-ranging debates that offer fundamental challenges to the suffocating grip of the dominant biomedical model of disability (that conceives disability as individual deficit — for early critiques see: Borsay; Walker), as well as the still influential and important (if at times limiting) social model of disability (Oliver; Barnes and Mercer; Shakespeare). All in all,there have been many efforts to transform the social and political relations of disability. If disability has been subject to considerable examination, there has not yet been an extended, concomitant critique of ability. Nor have we witnessed a thoroughgoing recognition of unmarked, yet powerful operations of ability in our lives and thought, and the potential implications of challenging these. Certainly there have been important attempts to reframe the relationship between “ability” and “disability” (for example, see Jones and Mark). And we are all familiar with the mocking response to some neologisms that seek to capture this, such as the awkward yet pointed “differently-abled.” Despite such efforts we lack still a profound critique of ability, an exploration of “able”, the topic that this special issue invites us to consider. If we think of the impact and significance of “whiteness”, as a way to open up space for how to critically think about and change concepts of race; or of “masculinity” as a project for thinking about gender and sexuality — we can see that this interrogation of the unmarked category of “able” and “ability” is much needed (for one such attempt, see White). In this paper I would like to make a small contribution to such a critique of ability, by considering what the concept of innovation and its contemporary rhetorics have to offer for reframing disability. Innovation is an important discourse in contemporary life. It offers interesting possibilities for rethinking ability — and indeed disability. And it is this relatively unexplored prospect that this paper seeks to explore. Beyond Access, Equity & Diversity In this scene of disability, there is attention being given to making long over-due reforms. Yet the framing of many of these reforms, such as the strengthening of national and international legal frameworks, for instance, also carry with them considerable problems. Disability is too often still seen as something in need of remediation, or special treatment. Access, equity, and anti-discrimination frameworks offer important resources for challenging this “special” treatment, so too do the diversity approaches which have supplemented or supplanted them (Goggin and Newell, “Diversity as if Disability Mattered”). In what new ways can we approach disability and policies relevant to it? In a surprisingly wide range of areas, innovation has featured as a new, cross-sectoral approach. Innovation has been a long-standing topic in science, technology and economics. However, its emergence as master-theme comes from its ability to straddle and yoke together previously diverse fields. Current discussions of innovation bring together and extend work on the information society, the knowledge economy, and the relationships between science and technology. We are now familiar for instance with arguments about how digital networked information and communications technologies and their consumption are creating new forms of innovation (Benkler; McPherson; Passiante, Elia, and Massari). Innovation discourse has extended to many other unfamiliar realms too, notably the area of social and community development, where a new concept of social innovation is now proposed (Mulgan), often aligned with new ideas of social entrepreneurship that go beyond earlier accounts of corporate social responsibility. We can see the importance of innovation in the ‘creative industries’ discourses and initiatives which have emerged since the 1990s. Here previously distinct endeavours of arts and culture have become reframed in a way that puts their central achievement of creativity to the fore, and recognises its importance across all sorts of service and manufacturing industries, in particular. More recently, theorists of creative industries, such as Cunningham, have begun to talk about “social network markets,” as a way to understand the new hybrid of creativity, innovation, digital technology, and new economic logics now being constituted (Cunningham and Potts). Innovation is being regarded as a cardinal priority for societies and their governments. Accordingly, the Australian government has commissioned a Review of The National Innovation System, led by Dr Terry Cutler, due to report in the second half of 2008. The Cutler review is especially focussed upon gaps and weaknesses in the Australian innovation system. Disability has the potential to figure very strongly in this innovation talk, however there has been little discussion of disability in the innovation discourse to date. The significance of disability in relation to innovation was touched upon some years ago, in a report on Disablism from the UK Demos Foundation (Miller, Parker and Gillinson). In a chapter entitled “The engine of difference: disability, innovation and creativity,” the authors discuss the area of inclusive design, and make the argument for the “involvement of disabled people to create a stronger model of user design”:Disabled people represented a market of 8.6 million customers at the last count and their experiences aren’t yet feeding through into processes of innovation. But the role of disabled people as innovators can and should be more active; we should include disabled people in the design process because they are good at it. (57) There are two reasons given for this expertise of disabled people in design. Firstly, “disabled people are often outstanding problem solvers because they have to be … life for disabled people at the moment is a series of challenges to be overcome” (57). Secondly, “innovative ideas are more likely to come from those who have a new or different angle on old problems” (57). The paradox in this argument is that as life becomes more equitable for people with disabilities, then these ‘advantages’ should disappear” (58). Accordingly, Miller et al. make a qualified argument, namely that “greater participation of disabled people in innovation in the short term may just be the necessary trigger for creating an altogether different, and better, system of innovation for everyone in the future” (58). The Demos Disablism report was written at a time when rhetorics of innovation were just beginning to become more generalized and mainstream. This was also at a time in the UK, when there was hope that new critical approaches to disability would see it become embraced as a part of the diverse society that Blair’s New Labor Britain had been indicating. The argument Disablism offers about disability and innovation is in some ways a more formalized version of vernacular theory (McLaughlin, 1996). In the disability movement we often hear, with good reason, that people with disability, by dint of their experience and knowledge are well positioned to develop and offer particular kinds of expertise. However, Miller et al. also gesture towards a more generalized account of disability and innovation, one that would intersect with the emerging frameworks around innovation. It is this possibility that I wish to take up and briefly explore here. I want to consider the prospects for a fully-fledged encounter between disability and innovation. I would like to have a better sense of whether this is worth pursuing, and what it would add to our understanding of both disability and innovation? Would the disability perspective be integrated as a long-term part of our systems of innovation rather than, as Miller et al. imply, deployed temporarily to develop better innovation systems? What pitfalls might be bound up with, or indeed be the conditions of, such a union between disability and innovation? The All-Too-Able User A leading area where disability figures profoundly in innovation is in the field of technology — especially digital technology. There is now a considerable literature and body of practice on disability and digital technology (Annable, Goggin, and Stienstra; Goggin and Newell, Digital Disability; National Council on Disability), however for my purposes here I would like to focus upon the user, the abilities ascribed to various kinds of users, and the user with disability in particular. Digital technologies are replete with challenges and opportunities; they are multi-layered, multi-media, and global in their manifestation and function. In Australia, Britain, Canada, the US, and Europe, there have been some significant digital technology initiatives which have resulted in improved accessibility for many users and populations (Annable, Goggin, and Stienstra; National Council on Disability) . There are a range of examples of ways in which users with disability are intervening and making a difference in design. There is also a substantial body of literature that clarifies why we need to include the perspective of the disabled if we are to be truly innovative in our design practices (Annable, Goggin and Stienstra; Goggin and Newell, “Disability, Identity and Interdependence”). I want to propose, however, that there is merit in going beyond recognition of the role of people with disability in technology design (vital and overlooked as it remains), to consider how disability can enrich contemporary discourses on innovation. There is a very desirable cross-over to be promoted between the emphasis on the user-as-expert in the sphere of disability and technology, and on the integral role of disability groups in the design process, on the one hand, and the rise of the user in digital culture generally, on the other. Surprisingly, such connections are nowhere near as widespread and systematic as they should be. It may be that contemporary debates about the user, and about the user as co-creator, or producer, of technology (Haddon et al.; von Hippel) actually reinstate particular notions of ability, and the able user, understood with reference to notions of disability. The current emphasis on the productive user, based as it is on changing understandings of ability and disability, provides rich material for critical revision of the field and those assumptions surrounding ability. It opens up possibilities for engaging more fully with disability and incorporating disability into the new forms and relations of digital technology that celebrate the user (Goggin and Newell, Digital Disability). While a more detailed consideration of these possibilities require more time than this essay allows, let us consider for a moment the idea of a genuine encounter between the activated user springing from the disability movement, and the much feted user in contemporary digital culture and theories of innovation. People with disability are using these technologies in innovative ways, so have much to contribute to wider discussions of digital technology (Annable, Goggin and Stienstra). The Innovation Turn Innovation policy, the argument goes, is important because it stands to increase productivity, which in turn leads to greater international competitiveness and economic benefit. Especially with the emergence of capitalism (Gleeson), productivity has strong links to particular notions of which types of production and produce are valued. Productivity is also strongly conditioned by how we understand ability and, last in a long chain of strong associations, how we as a society understand and value those kinds of people and bodies believed to contain and exercise the ordained and rewarded types of ability, produce, and productivity. Disability is often seen as antithetical to productivity (a revealing text on the contradictions of disability and productivity is the 2004 Productivity Commission Review of the Disability Discrimination Act). When we think about the history of disability, we quickly realize that productivity, and by extension, innovation, are strongly ideological. Ideological, that is, in the sense that these fields of human endeavour and our understanding of them are shaped by power relations, and are built upon implicit ‘ableist’ assumptions about productivity. In this case, the power relations of disability go right to the heart of the matter, highlighting who and what are perceived to be of value, contributing economically and in other ways to society, and who and what are considered as liabilities, as less valued and uneconomical. A stark recent example of this is the Howard government workplace and welfare reforms, which further disenfranchised, controlled, and impoverished people with disability. If we need to rethink our ideas of productivity and ability in the light of new notions of disability, then so too do we need to rethink our ideas about innovation and disability. Here the new discourses of innovation may actually be useful, but also contain limited formulations and assumptions about ability and disability that need to be challenged. The existing problems of a fresh approach to disability and innovation can be clearly observed in the touchstones of national science and technology “success.” Beyond One-Sided Innovation Disability does actually feature quite prominently in the annals of innovation. Take, for instance, the celebrated case of the so-called “bionic ear” (or cochlear implant) hailed as one of Australia’s great scientific inventions of the past few decades. This is something we can find on display in the Powerhouse Museum of Technology and Design, in Sydney. Yet the politics of the cochlear implant are highly controversial, not least as it is seen by many (for instance, large parts of the Deaf community) as not involving people with disabilities, nor being informed by their desires (Campbell, also see “Social and Ethical Aspects of Cochlear Implants”). A key problem with the cochlear implant and many other technologies is that they are premised on the abolition or overcoming of disability — rather than being shaped as technology that acknowledges and is informed by disabled users in their diverse guises. The failure to learn the lessons of the cochlear implant for disability and innovation can be seen in the fact that we are being urged now to band together to support the design of a “bionic eye” by the year 2020, as a mark of distinction of achieving a great nation (2020 Summit Initial Report). Again, there is no doubting the innovation and achievement in these artefacts and their technological systems. But their development has been marked by a distinct lack of consultation and engagement with people with disabilities; or rather the involvement has been limited to a framework that positions them as passive users of technology, rather than as “producer/users”. Further, what notions of disability and ability are inscribed in these technological systems, and what do they represent and symbolize in the wider political and social field? Unfortunately, such technologies have the effect of reproducing an ableist framework, “enforcing normalcy” (Davis), rather than building in, creating and contributing to new modes of living, which embrace difference and diversity. I would argue that this represents a one-sided logic of innovation. A two-sided logic of innovation, indeed what we might call a double helix (at least) of innovation would be the sustained, genuine interaction between different users, different notions of ability, disability and impairment, and the processes of design. If such a two-sided (or indeed many-sided logic) is to emerge there is good reason to think it could more easily do so in the field of digital cultures and technologies, than say, biotechnology. The reason for this is the emphasis in digital communication technologies on decentralized, participatory, user-determined governance and design, coming from many sources. Certainly this productive, democratic, participatory conception of the user is prevalent in Internet cultures. Innovation here is being reshaped to harness the contribution and knowledge of users, and could easily be extended to embrace pioneering efforts in disability. Innovating with Disability In this paper I have tried to indicate why it is productive for discourses of innovation to consider disability; the relationship between disability and innovation is rich and complex, deserving careful elaboration and interrogation. In suggesting this, I am aware that there are also fundamental problems that innovation raises in its new policy forms. There are the issues of what is at stake when the state is redefining its traditional obligations towards citizens through innovation frameworks and discourses. And there is the troubling question of whether particular forms of activity are normatively judged to be innovative — whereas other less valued forms are not seen as innovative. By way of conclusion, however, I would note that there are now quite basic, and increasingly accepted ways, to embed innovation in design frameworks, and while they certainly have been adopted in the disability and technology area, there is much greater scope for this. However, a few things do need to change before this potential for disability to enrich innovation is adequately realized. Firstly, we need further research and theorization to clarify the contribution of disability to innovation, work that should be undertaken and directed by people with disability themselves. Secondly, there is a lack of resources for supporting disability and technology organisations, and the development of training and expertise in this area (especially to provide viable career paths for experts with disability to enter the field and sustain their work). If this is addressed, the economic benefits stand to be considerable, not to mention the implications for innovation and productivity. Thirdly, we need to think about how we can intensify existing systems of participatory design, or, better still, introduce new user-driven approaches into strategically important places in the design processes of ICTs (and indeed in the national innovation system). Finally, there is an opportunity for new approaches to governance in ICTs at a general level, informed by disability. New modes of organising, networking, and governance associated with digital technology have attracted much attention, also featuring recently in the Australia 2020 Summit. Less well recognised are new ideas about governance that come from the disability community, such as the work of Queensland Advocacy Incorporated, Rhonda Galbally’s Our Community, disability theorists such as Christopher Newell (Newell), or the Canadian DIS-IT alliance (see, for instance, Stienstra). The combination of new ideas in governance from digital culture, new ideas from the disability movement and disability studies, and new approaches to innovation could be a very powerful cocktail indeed.Dedication This paper is dedicated to my beloved friend and collaborator, Professor Christopher Newell AM (1964-2008), whose extraordinary legacy will inspire us all to continue exploring and questioning the idea of able. 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