record

Thesis Info

LABS ID
00151
Thesis Title
Videogames: toys of the posthuman
Author
Roger Tavares (Rogério Jr. Correia Tavares)
2nd Author
3rd Author
Degree
PhD
Year
2006
Number of Pages
317
University
PUC-SP - Pontificia Catholic University in São Paulo, Brazil
Thesis Supervisor
Lucia Santaella
Supervisor e-mail
lbraga AT pucsp.br
Other Supervisor(s)
Language(s) of Thesis
Brazilian Portuguese (english translation in progress)
Department / Discipline
Communication and Semiotics
Languages Familiar to Author
English, Spanish, Portuguese
URL where full thesis can be found
www.gamecultura.com.br/thesis
Keywords
Posthuman, cyborg, videogame, body, communication, cyberculture, gameculture, gameart
Abstract: 200-500 words
Videogames: toys of the posthuman, have the objective to show how the new technologies and the current communication medias, especially the videogames, are powerful interactive models of entertainment capable to produce cognitive effects, or better defining them: toys, capable of driving the humanity to a posthuman condition. Although many authors work the post-human subject, the necessary theoretical framework for this concept is still in development. Our hypothesis is that this concept could be very improved by the recent Systems Theory expansion, after its specific treatment made by Niklas Luhmann' Systemtheorie, that remake this theory using approaches from the human sciences. As such theory one still reveals incomplete in some features, we use the Semiotics theory of Charles Sanders Peirce, especially the semiosis and synechism concepts, in order to supplant the almost dualistic vision the Systems Theory still needs to solve. From this theoretical framework, and some critics about the careless use of the posthuman concept, this work aims to show how this condition is not only a faraway promise founded in prometheic technologies, that, maybe, they never come to light, but this research show us this condition is already between us, and it goes far beyond this technocratic way of thinking. Therefore if some technology can be made responsible for this condition today, it is not that faraway, on the contrary, it already can be found in each living room in the form of a toy: the videogame.