Timothy Welsh and I co-wrote a little piece for In Media Res’s “Posthumanism and Media” week. Our meditation “Would You Kindly” (working with the editorial requirements of being less than 400 words) is on Bioshock, video games as cyborg media, and posthuman choice:
The video game Bioshock (Irrational Games, 2007) takes place in Rapture, an underwater utopian community modeled on the tenets of Ayn Rand’s objectivist philosophy. When the player-protagonist, Jack, arrives in Rapture, however, the city is near collapse after the introduction of biohacking technologies lead to an all-out civil war fought by genetically “enhanced” splicers. With this as its central conceit, Bioshock stages and disrupts self-determinist, laissez-faire ideology through and against posthumanism agency via the cyborg medium of video gaming.
Full text and comments here: http://mediacommons.futureofthebook.org/imr/2011/03/10/would-you-kindly-bioshock-and-posthuman-choice