Channels, Fall 2016

Channels • 2016 • Volume 1 • Number 1 Page 53 always impact the product or message they create. And modern technology is all encompassing. Every task of modern life uses technology in one form or another. In his essay Why Do Typewriters Go Click? Flusser (1999) exposed the hierarchy that results from mechanized communication. The question is not simply “why do typewriters go click?” but also what impact that has on the user of the typewriter. The reason they go click is because machines stutter; they aren't organic and fluid like humans (p. 62). Machines stutter because they must quantify everything. The world of cold calculations does not allow room for the same type of creativity that formerly permeated culture. Everything is determined by what machines can or cannot do in the same way that the player’s actions in The Stanley Parable are determined by what the narrator and game will allow the player to do. Technique is a defining influence on life in the modern era. Even mundane communication is now defined by text messages and computer key boards. Quantitative analysis demands conformance (Flusser, 1999, p. 64), much like all communication on some level. But technological conformity leaves little room for challenging the dominant medium. It is a zero sum game. The Illusion of Choice In The Stanley Parable , the player discovers that the company Stanley works for has a room called mind control facility. What is interesting about this mind control facility is that it doesn't appear to have any operational use. Nothing is directly inserted into the minds of the employees. The machine there functions as a Panopticon , a prison described by Jeremy Bentham. The cells are arranged in a circular pattern around a watch tower. Guards can see the prisoners from the watch tower, but the prisoners cannot see the guards. In this way, prisoners internalize the watchmen. Foucault (1978) used the Panopticon as a metaphor for modern life. He explained, “Hence the major effect of the Panopticon: to induce in the inmate a state of conscious and permanent visibility that assures the automatic functioning of power” (p. 201). Individuals within a Panopticon-like institution continue to do what social norms expect them to do because they never know whether or not they are being watched. For Heidegger, this is the epitome of the they-self. People regulate their own behavior according to the expectations of the watchmen (in the modern case technicians and managers) and do not make their own choices. The Stanley Parable makes a not-so-subtle reference to this same concept, critiquing the modern state of constant supervision and implying that this practice strips agency from individuals. The facility is a circular room with monitors on the wall that are visible from a central interface. The facility does two things: First, it sends instructions to employees telling them what to press. Second, its camera watches the employees work in their cubicle. The mind control of the Stanley Parable is not so different from the modern work environment. Employers can track how their employees are using computers and require that they use them for the job, creating a Panopticon-like environment. Although the Panopticon may indeed increase efficiency, for the makers of the Stanley Parable, efficiency is not the end goal; agency is.