Legendary Days – a novel, and the Aspects of Geek Culture in Fiction

This Creative and Critical Writing PhD thesis explores the dialogue between fiction and geek culture. It seeks to understand the definitions and uses of the terms ‘geek’, ‘nerd’ and ‘otaku’ over time. I look for points of commonality and how they have been used in texts since the seventeenth century. After this initial exploration, I move to a close reading of three novels that are representative of geek culture. These texts comment on geek culture though they do not belong to genres traditionally associated with it, such as fantasy or science fiction. Junot Díaz’s The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao makes extensive use of footnotes, intertextuality and hypertextuality. Douglas Coupland’s Microserfs explores the influence of technology, tries to define geeks and nerds, plays with form and language, and touches on the subject of posthumanity. Meanwhile, Nakano Hitori’s Train Man, which began life as a collective online message board thread, challenges common tenants of fiction, especially that of authorship and form. The novels, in the order in which they are discussed, move from the traditional to the innovative. They pose questions about the way in which geek culture interacts with fiction, how this influence plays out in terms of theme, characterisation, format, and the reading experience. Finally, these novels also interrogate ways geek culture might help us understand the future of fiction writing. Both thesis and novel were designed with the idea of ‘play’ in mind, with particular reference to games, flexibility and contestation. The creative element of this thesis, Legendary Days, is a geeky novel about saving memories. The protagonist, after loosing his father, writes down his own memories in a narrative that plays with geek culture and related themes. It follows the same character in three different times and contexts, while also allowing for several intertextual intromissions throughout the text

The experience as a document: designing for the future of collaborative remembering in digital archives

How does it feel when we remember together on-line? Who gets to say what it is worth to be remembered? To understand how the user experience of participation is affecting the formation of collective memories in the context of online environments, first it is important to take into consideration how the notion of memory has been transformed under the influence of the digital revolution. I aim to contribute to the field of User Experience (UX) research theorizing on the felt experience of users from a memory perspective, taking into consideration aspects linked to both personal and collective memories in the context of connected environments.Harassment and hate speech in connected conversational environments are specially targeted to women and underprivileged communities, which has become a problem for digital archives of vernacular creativity (Burgess, J. E. 2007) such as YouTube, Twitter, Reddit and Wikipedia. An evaluation of the user experience of underprivileged communities in creative archives such as Wikipedia indicates the urgency for building a feminist space where women and queer folks can focus on knowledge production and learning without being harassed. The theoretical models and designs that I propose are a result of a series of prototype testing and case studies focused on cognitive tools for a mediated human memory operating inside transactive memory systems. With them, aims to imagine the means by which feminist protocols for UX design and research can assist in the building and maintenance of the archive as a safe/brave space.Working with perspectives from media theory, memory theory and gender studies and centering the user experience of participation for women, queer folks, people of colour (POC) and other vulnerable and underrepresented communities as the main focus of inquiring, my research takes an interdisciplinary approach to interrogate how online misogyny and other forms of abuse are perceived by communities placed outside the center of the hegemonic normativity, and how the user experience of online abuse is affecting the formation of collective memories in the context of online environments

Respawn

In Respawn Colin Milburn examines the connections between video games, hacking, and science fiction that galvanize technological activism and technological communities. Discussing a wide range of games, from Portal and Final Fantasy VII to Super Mario Sunshine and Shadow of the Colossus, Milburn illustrates how they impact the lives of gamers and non-gamers alike. They also serve as resources for critique, resistance, and insurgency, offering a space for players and hacktivist groups such as Anonymous to challenge obstinate systems and experiment with alternative futures. Providing an essential walkthrough guide to our digital culture and its high-tech controversies, Milburn shows how games and playable media spawn new modes of engagement in a computerized world

The Crusader and the Dictator: An Exploration of Ideology and Neurodivergence in Contemporary Technology Practice

A common theme in public discourse is the recognition that technology in general, and digital technology specifically, has an enormous impact on the everyday lives of people from all walks of modern life, in almost every corner of the globe. This thesis interrogates the connection between neurodivergence—the presence of neurological variations considered outside the cognitive norm— and individualistic ideology within the information technology industries. Through the biographies, substantial record of activities, public statements, and writings surrounding two influential figures in the contemporary practice of computer science, Richard Stallman and Linus Torvalds, it conducts an investigation into this convergence and its resulting impact on the surrounding culture

Superhuman, Transhuman, Post/Human: Mapping the Production and Reception of the Posthuman Body

The figure of the cyborg, or more latterly, the posthuman body has been an increasingly familiar presence in a number of academic disciplines. The majority of such studies have focused on popular culture, particularly the depiction of the posthuman in science-fiction, fantasy and horror. To date however, few studies have focused on the posthuman and the comic book superhero, despite their evident corporeality, and none have questioned comics’ readers about their responses to the posthuman body. This thesis presents a cultural history of the posthuman body in superhero comics along with the findings from twenty-five, two-hour interviews with readers. By way of literature reviews this thesis first provides a new typography of the posthuman, presenting it not as a stable bounded subject but as what Deleuze and Guattari (1987) describe as a ‘rhizome’. Within the rhizome of the posthuman body are several discursive plateaus that this thesis names Superhumanism (the representation of posthuman bodies in popular culture), Post/Humanism (a critical-theoretical stance that questions the assumptions of Humanism) and Transhumanism (the philosophy and practice of human enhancement with technology). With these categories in mind the thesis explores the development of the posthuman in body in the Superhuman realm of comic books. Exploring the body-types most prominent during the Golden (1938-1945), Silver (1958-1974) and contemporary Ages of superheroes it presents three explorations of what I term the Perfect Body, Cosmic Body and Military-Industrial Body respectively. These body types are presented as ‘assemblages’ (Delueze and Guattari, 1987) that display rhizomatic connections to the other discursive realms of the Post/Human and Transhuman. This investigation reveals how the depiction of the Superhuman body developed and diverged from, and sometimes back into, these realms as each attempted to territorialise the meaning and function of the posthuman body. Ultimately it describes how, in spite of attempts by nationalistic or economic interests to control Transhuman enhancement in real-world practices, the realms of Post/Humanism and Superhumanism share a more critical approach. The final section builds upon this cultural history of the posthuman body by addressing reader’s relationship with these images. This begins by refuting some of the common assumptions in comics studies about superheroes and bodily representations. Readers stated that they viewed such imagery as iconographic rather than representational, whether it was the depiction of bodies or technology. Moreover, regular or committed readers of superhero comics were generally suspicious of the notion of human enhancement, displaying a belief in the same binary categories -artificial/natural, human/non-human - that critical Post/Humanism seeks to problematize. The thesis concludes that while superhero comics remain ultimately too human to be truly Post/Humanist texts, it is never the less possible to conceptualise the relationship between reader, text, producer and so on in Post/Humanist terms as reading-assemblage, and that such a cyborgian fusing of human and comic book allow both bodies to ‘become other’, to move in new directions and form new assemblages not otherwise possible when considered separately

Effect of machining parameters and cutting tool coating on hole quality in dry drilling of fibre metal laminates

Fibre metal laminates (FMLs) are a special type of hybrid materials, which consist of sheets of metallic alloys and prepregs of composite layers stacked together in an alternating sequence and bonded together either mechanically using micro hooks or thermally using adhesive epoxies. The present paper contributes to the current literature by studying the effects of three types of cutting tool coatings namely TiAlN, AlTiN/TiAlN and TiN on the surface roughness and burr formation of holes drilled in an FML commercially known as GLARE®. While the cutting tool geometry is fixed, the study is also conducted for a range of drilling conditions by varying the spindle speed and the feed rate. The obtained results indicate that the spindle speed and the type of cutting tool coating had the most significant influence on the achieved surface roughness metrics, while tool coating had the most significant effect on burr height and burr root thickness. The most important outcome for practitioners is that the best results in terms of minimum roughness and burr formation were obtained for the TiN coated drills. However, such drills outperform the other two types of tools, i.e. with TiAlN and AlTiN/TiAlN coatings, only when used for short series of hole drilling due to rapid tool deterioratio

A world of difference: media translations of fantasy worlds

The modern consumer has access to a massively complex entertainment world. Many of the products available reveal a visible movement of popular fantasy worlds between different media. This transmedia process creates a strong link between film, merchandising and games; with all of these mediums borrowing from each other. This borrowing takes various forms, from licensed adaptations to unofficial copying of ideas, settings and characters as well as exploiting the different aesthetics and techniques of different media. Much of the scholarship on transmedia concentrates on storytelling, where a single overarching narrative unfolds over several different media. This thesis will move away from storytelling to consider how culture producers borrow the aesthetics, narratives and fantasy worlds from other sources, including computer games. This borrowing happens because it enables them to use transmedia functionality to gain market share from an already established audience who have a vested interested in, and enthusiasm for, an established world. Most of this borrowing happens around specific genres – especially fantasy, science fiction and horror. These genres are particularly wide-ranging and emphasise the possibilities of worldbuilding, making then good sources for multi-media franchises. This thesis will examine examples from these genres to examine what elements are translated to a new medium, and what is discarded. This examination will help explain how and why different media and settings work in the way that they do

When Critique Meets Reality: Systemic Violence and the BioShock Games

The procedural rhetoric of the BioShock games has been both lauded as a ludological implementation of social critique and criticised as the continuation of conservative gameplay formulae. At times, this extends to full hypocrisy, with the series simultaneously narratively criticising and mechanically perpetuating capitalism and ethnocentrism. This article will expand on these examples and, as part of the field of cultural legal studies, emphasise the relevance of procedural rhetoric to contemporary Western legal systems. Ultimately, while the series demonstrates a deep hypocrisy, an emphasis on this hypocrisy as an aspect of the franchise is able to produce a new critical reading that emphasises how systemic violence can be rendered invisible through normalisation in what are often perceived as objective and mechanical systems, including many contemporary understandings of law

"Personal Totems": The poetics of the popular in contemporary indigenous popular culture in north america

The main focus of this dissertation is placed squarely on cultural texts and productions by contemporary Indigenous artists that are of popular culture. The aim of this work is to examine closely a selection of contemporary works by Native American and First Nations authors that incorporate various aspects of mainstream Eurowestern popular culture into their creative makeup and/or draw on the archive of popular genre fiction. In doing so, I analyze in what exact ways popular stories and icons become reinterpreted to mirror the issues that concern Indigenous people of today’s North America. I argue that creative works of Indigenous popular culture make use of various conventions and frameworks of the popular in order to interrupt colonial cultural archives. In doing so, they perform cultural works which is simultaneously decolonial and resurgent. For the purposes of this study, I define Indigenous popular culture as a field of cultural production which encompasses cultural texts that make use of specific recurrent tropes, icons, and genres of globalized popular culture and simultaneously are situated in contemporary discourses on indigeneity and Indigenous cultural contexts. I further contend that Indigenous popular culture can be productively conceived of as a unified conceptual and cultural field which needs to be engaged on its own terms under the consideration of its own dynamics and specificities. This dissertation aims at helping consolidate this cultural field and develops one methodological blueprint for critical engagement with texts of Indigenous popular culture.Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG), International Research Training Group (IRTG) Diversity: Mediating Difference in Transcultural Space