Virtual Death of The Human Being - Time and The Ir-Reversibility OfChoice in Digital Media

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ISSUE 4, AUGUST 2009
Fabian Schfer
Virtual Death of the Human Being:

Time and the (Ir)Reversibility of
Choice in Digital Media
Abstract
Digital and virtual forms of culture are intensely choice-based. In the absence of
meta-narrative, one is constantly being solicited (as an agent of choice between alternatives) to follow links. This paper would like to distinguish Japanese cultural critic
Azuma Hirokis concept of human and animal action, and Martin Heideggers authentic and fallen selves in terms of the notions of choice and reversibility, and pose the
question of whether the subject of virtual choice is best understood through the former or the latter. In particular, it tries to shed light on two aspects of new digital media from a philosophical point of view, namely the relationship between human beings
and the virtual/digital world of knowledge databases and online video games.
Materiality of the media:
the annihilation of the traditional space-time continuum
It is a generally accepted assumption that our imagination of reality, in particular our experience of time and space, is strongly influenced by the media by
means of which we perceive this reality. As Benedict Anderson and Wolfgang
Schivelbusch have persuasively argued, new technologies such as the modern
mass press and railroads already contributed to an alteration of the traditional
space-time continuum at the time of their introduction. The newspaper, based
on its daily appearance in the remotest regions of a nation-state and its simultaneous consumption (Anderson, 1983: 35) created the idea of contemporaneity among an imagined community. The railway journey, according to Schivelbusch, brought about an obliteration of the traditional space-time continuum
which characterized the old transport technology, being experienced as an
annihilation of space and time itself by the people (Schivelbusch, 1977: 35-36).
According to German media theorist Sybille Krmer, the idea of the constant
flow and linearity of time was particularly challenged by the gramophone, the
first medium to allow for the recording of music. Krmer argues that the
gramophone did not only preserve a certain tone sequence, but annihilated the
irreversible order of a particular event, since it became possible to repeat,
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suspend, and revisit the singular time course of a musical

sequence at will. (Krmer, 1998: 84) Later, this new interactivity of the user was even emphasized by the introduction of multi-channel cable television. By allowing
the users to zap between different channels, television
created something like an illusionary contemporaneity.
(Nowotny, 1997: 23)
The possibility of interactive navigation of new
digital media such as the Internet obviously alters our
traditional experience of time in a similar way. Even on a
single website (not to speak of complex networked
video games), developers and web designers can establish various simultaneously existing narrative threads
through which the user can move forwards and backwards at will. Based on this illusionary contemporaneity
of different links, the linear narration of, lets say, a book
is replaced by a less determined and more arbitrary
structure.
Internet and knowledge databases: interactivity, reversibility of time, and fallenness
As is well known, the intellectual basis for the interactivity of the Internet was laid by American scientist Vannevar Bush. Already during WWII, in an article entitled As
We May Think published shortly after the war in The
Atlantic in 1945, Bush predicted that in the future wholly
new forms of encyclopedias will appear, ready made with
a mesh of associative trails running through them. The
idea behind the miraculous machine Memex (short for
memory extender) envisaged by Bush was that:
the human mind ... operates by association. With
one item in its grasp, it snaps instantly to the next
that is suggested by the association of thoughts, in
accordance with some intricate web of trails carried by the cells of the brain. (Bush, 1945)
Despite the fact that Memex was never realized, Bushs

article influenced later hypertext theorists such as philosopher and sociologist Ted Nelson, who is also credited with first use of the term hypertext. Nelsons project, Xanadu, which was basically a universal knowledge
management system, pre-empted the development of the
World Wide Web by 25 years. The aim of Nelsons project was to invent a word processor capable of storing
multiple versions of documents and to facilitate nonsequential writing, in which the reader could choose his
or her own path through an electronic document.
To this day, however, it remains questionable
how the interactivity of hypertext, and thus the aforeWWW.ASIASCAPE.NET
mentioned suspension of linear conception of time and

illusionary contemporaneity, affects its users and how far
they are capable of handling the simultaneous existence
and accessibility of documents or websites. According to
German information scientist Rainer Kuhlen (1991: 182),
one might assume that hypertext seems to be cognitively reasonable on the supposition that the brain organizes knowledge in cross-linked, topological, and
non-linear structures. Accordingly, knowledge absorption based on comparable organizational patterns, as it is
given with hypertext, might be more efficient than accumulation via the detour of linear forms of presentation.
On the other hand, however, Kuhlen (1991: 56) insists
that it is also well known that the integration of two
networks, especially if they are polyhierarchically structured, is more difficult than to integrate a linear structure into an existing network.
Obviously, the problems of the integration of
linear and networked knowledge structures described by
Kuhlen also lie at the bottom of the most recent popular
debates on the dangers and possibilities of the Internet.
In their August 2008 issues, the German news magazine
Der Spiegel and the American journal The Atlantic almost
simultaneously published cover stories on the dangers of
internet-based communication and knowledge. The two
magazines posed the question if Google (The Atlantic) or,
more general, the Internet (Der Spiegel) is Making us
Stupid? The tenor of their reporting is ambivalent. Similar to the introduction of other new communication
technologies such as radio broadcasting or television in
the past, the discourse splits into two camps of Internet
critics and Internet enthusiasts. On the one hand, it is
emphasized that the Internet is leading to the occurrence of new simultaneous modes of perception, a democratization of knowledge, and a unprecedented creativity of its users; on the other hand, the loss of critical
reason or the capacity for remembering, rising attention
deficit, the loss of a common culture existing through
the reading of books, and the intellectual passivity of
internet users is harshly criticized. Moreover, the critical
camp often psychopathologizes the effects of the use of
the Internet. Proponents of this faction agree that spending 5-6 hours on the Internet per day, searching through
a cornucopia of texts, videos or music or writing Emails
and instant messages, can cause social behavioral disorders such as an anti-social attitude or an unwillingness to
communicate.
Besides this panic-mongering and exaggerated
psychopathologization of Internet users, it is particularly
the effects of the Internet on our cognitive abilities and
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reading capabilities that unsettles the camp of Internet

critics. In his editorial at the The Atlantic, American writer
Nicholas Carr complains that the persistent use of the
Internet is already having an influence on his capacity for
concentration and contemplation. According to Carr, he
was once a scuba diver in the sea of words. Now [he]
zip[s] along the surface like a guy on a Jet Ski (Carr,
2008). The reason for this effect upon our cognition is
based on the most important feature of the Internet or
electronic databases the fact that they are based on
interactivity or HTML (Hypertext Markup Language) in
particular.
To this day, it remains questionable how the
interactivity of hypertext affects its users and in how far
they are capable of handling the simultaneous existence
and accessibility of documents or websites. It is particularly the inner restlessness that users feel when they are
faced with the decision between two or more possibilities that complicates the absorption of knowledge by
means of interactive digital media. Links might be compared to junctions or options, or, as Martin Heidegger
once put it, to possibilities onto which Dasein can project
itself. In this sense, the networked structure of the Internet might thus be described as a miniature of the
possibilities-for-Being (Seinknnen) of Dasein. As in real
life, deciding in favor of one possibility (namely a link)
necessarily means to negate others. According to Heidegger:
authenticity (Eigentlichkeit) but in one of fallenness (Verfallenheit).
Dasein is its basis existently (existierend) that is,

in such a manner that it understands (verstehen)
itself in terms of possibilities (Mglichkeiten) ... But
this implies that in having a potentiality-for-Being
(seinknnend) it always stands in one possibility or
another: it constantly is not other possibilities, and
it has waived these in its existential projection
(existentieller Entwurf). Not only is the projection, as
one that has been thrown, determined by the nullity of Being-a-basis (Nichtigkeit des Grundseins); as
projection it is itself essentially null (nichtig). (Heidegger, 1993 [1927]: 285)
Game over? Super Smash Bros, Nintendo, 1999
Nevertheless, it is only in what Heidegger called the

authentic (eigentlich) mode of Being (Seinsweise) that
Dasein can choose [or] win itself and thereby be itself
(Selbstsein, Being-ones-Self) through an existential projection in the choice of its ownmost possibilities. (Heidegger, 1993 [1927]: 42, 68) Most of the time, Heidegger
admits, the Dasein is determined by the possibilities given
by the Man and is therefore not situated in the mode of
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The possibility of falling seems to be relatively high in

the case of the interlinked structure of the Internet or
databases if compared with the reading of a linearstructured book. This fallenness can assume two forms
distraction and procrastination in the case of the
Internet. Regarding the former, re-reading Walter Benjamins well-known essay The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproducibility not as a pessimistic media criticism, as it is often read, but as an ontological inquiry of
new modes of media reception appears to be valuable.
At the end of his essay, Benjamin, who anticipated McLuhans perception that media are not just passive channels
of information but also influence the ways we perceive
things transmitted through the media, observes that during long periods of history, the mode of human sense
perception changes with humanitys entire mode of existence and that the manner in which human sense perception is organized, the medium in which it is accom-
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plished, is determined not only by nature but by historical circumstances as well (Benjamin, 1977 [1936]: 14).
This seems to be particularly true for the Internet. Surfing the Internet can be described as what Benjamin termed reception in a state of distraction (Rezeption in der Zerstreuung). (Benjamin, 1977 [1936]: 41) This
mode of perception, according to Benjamin, is based on
the tactile quality (taktile Qualitt) of the object of perceptionwhich were, in Benjamins case, movies and
photographs (Benjamin, 1977 [1936]: 38). The tactility of
the new media is even emphasized by the interactivity of
the Internet or databases. As Nicholas Carrs editorial in
the aforementioned issue of The Atlantic rightly asserted,
hyperlinks, unlike footnotes, don't merely point to related works; they propel you toward them (Carr, 2008).
The perception of the Internet is, to use the words of
Benjamin, one of tactile appropriation (taktile Rezeption)
that is based on habitualization rather than on attention1 (Benjamin, 1977 [1936]: 41). To Heidegger, who
used the term distraction (Zerstreuung) in a comparable
way, distraction is based on curiosity (Neugier), a mode
of fallenness.2 Other than Verstehen (understanding) as
the self-projection of the being on its ownmost possibilities, curiosity is merely based on seeing (Sehen). In this
mode of being, Dasein seeks what is far away simply in
order to bring it close to itself in the way it looks.
Dasein lets itself be taken along [mitnehmen] solely by
the looks of the world (Heidegger, 1993 [1927]: 216).
The dangers of fallen or distracted ways of
Internet use can be substantialized by the findings of a
recently published study of online research habits, conducted by scholars from University College London
(Rowlands & Nicholas, 2008). As part of a five-year research program, the researchers analyzed the behavior of
visitors to two popular research sites, one operated by
the British Library and one by a U.K. educational consortium, which provide access to journal articles, e-books,
and other sources of written information. The results of
their research showed that people using the sites exhibited a form of skimming activity, hopping from one
source to another and rarely returning to any source
they had already visited. They typically read merely one
or two pages of an article or book before they would
jump to another site. Sometimes they saved a long article, but theres no evidence that they ever went back and
actually read it. Obviously, the aforementioned annihilation of the linear and non-contemporaneous time-space
continuum that was established by the non-determined
structure of the Internet is counteracted by the restricted cognitive abilities of human beings. Despite users
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potentially have the possibility to jump back to an earlier

link and choose a different alternative they only rarely
make use of that possibility.
Reversibility of time obviously seems not to go
properly with human cognition. Apparently, many Internet users seem to react to links as possibilities in Heideggers sense or the flood of information provided by
the Internet with an individual databasification of information retrieved from larger databasesthe scholars of
the University College London who conducted the
aforementioned study call this behavior squirreling. In
medical terms, this fetishization of knowledge can be
described as procrastination. Procrastination, which
should be treated through therapy according to some
psychologists [sic!], is characterized by deferment of
actions or tasks to a later time, may result in stress, a
sense of guilt, the loss of personal productivity, the creation of crisis and the disapproval of others for not fulfilling one's responsibilities or commitments.3 Not only
that this work undone seems to leave traces in our subconsciousness, it also does harm to our computers because we clutter up our hard disks often in a very unorganized way with downloaded and yet unread texts.4
However, it is important to add here that even
Heideggers or Benjamins perspective on distracted or
habitualized perception is not as pessimistic as I have
described it here. In fact, they agree that curiosity and
tactile apperception arent necessarily something that
should be condemned from the outset. According to
Heidegger, the temporality (Zeitlichkeit) of curiosity,
which is non-anticipatory (namely non-self-projecting)
and thus merely awaiting (gewrtigend), has its natural
justification ... and belongs to the everyday kind of being
of Da-Sein and to the understanding of being initially
prevalent. (Heidegger, 1993 [1927]: 478) Similarly, Benjamin asserts in the conclusion of his essay that perception in a state of distraction in certain circumstances
acquires canonical value, since the tasks which face the
human apparatus of perception at the turning points of
history cannot be solved by optical means, that is, by
contemplation, alone. They are mastered gradually by
habit, under the guidance of tactile appropriation (Benjamin, 1977 [1936]: 41). Obviously, if applied to our cognition of the interactive structure of the Internet, Heideggers and Benjamins perspectives refer to two ways
of dealing with electronic and interlinked texts. First, the
authentic Seinsweise of understanding and contemplation, one that, to borrow hypertext theorist Jay D. Bolters words, looks through the text and thus grasps and
understands the meaning of the narration behind the
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text; secondly, a fallen mode, in which the user has to

look at the text, as a series of possibilities [or links, F.S.]
that he or she can activate (Bolter, 1991: 167). Accordingly, they are to a lesser extent two modes of usageone being active and authentic and one being passive and in-authenticrather than two different strategies of dealing with electronic and networked informationnamely explorative browsing (also called power
browsing) on the one hand and the purposeful search
for a particular document and its subsequent contemplative reading on the other.
As for the latter, it is important for the user not
to lose sight of hisin Heideggers wordsownmost
projection that has to guide the search; for the former, it
is even necessary to let oneself be taken away by ones
curiosity, governed merely by the possibilities given by
the structure of homepages or databases. This is because
the versatility and complexity of the Internet also has its
positive side, sometimes called the serendipity effect. In
general, serendipity refers to the accidental discovery of
something fortunate one was in fact originally not looking for. The Internet, with its many possibilities and multifold layers emphasizes this form of information retrieval
that was originally only possible on a stroll through the
shelves of an open stack library.
hyperreality due to the technological developments of

the mass media.
The complexity of this relationship becomes
even more obvious with regard to the term virtual reality. Virtual reality, generally understood as the representation and simultaneous perception of reality and its
physical characteristics in a real-time, computergenerated, and interactive environment, refers not only
to exact copies of real environments (i.e. flight simulators
for pilot training), but also to imagined virtual worlds
(such as the online-game World of Warcraft). In general, it
is the three-dimensional and high-resolution representation of reality that is regarded as the most important
factor for the creation of virtual realities. Despite the
fact that in practice, it is currently very difficult to create
a multi-sensory and high-definition virtual reality experience due to technical limitations, these limitations are
expected to be overcome eventually. However, despite
this fact, sensory information other than the visual
(namely tactile, olfactory, or auditory sensations) is considered to be of equal importance for the experience of
a virtual space, it is the experience of irreversible choice
(and its relationship to time) that has been totally disregarded as an important factor for the creation of virtual
reality.
Internet and video games: irreversibility of

time and virtual death
Reality is generally contrasted with the concepts of nonexistence and mere possibility in traditional philosophy.
Things are real if they are there or if they have been accomplished. The virtual, if understood as the potential, is
often understood as the opposite of the real. According
to philosopher Wolfgang Welsch, however, this would
mean that the virtual has no worth of its own and that
its only destiny is to become actualized and thus to vanish as virtual (Welsch, 2000). Hence, their relationship
seems to be much more complex. From a social constructivist perspective, perception of reality has never
been original and direct but schematized by cultural
standards and social norms. Reality thus always implies
virtual or imaginary constituents. Radical constructivists
even argued that there is no reality (or at least not one
we can definitively know about) because reality only
exists as a perceived reality and therefore as an imagination or construction. Postmodern thinkers like Jean Baudrillard have even gone so far to argue that reality is
increasingly replaced by virtuality or a self-referential
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Counter-Strike,Valve Software, 2004
Other than the aforementioned undetermined structure

of webpages that created a non-linear and reversible
experience of time, decisions in online-videogames are
necessarily real-time decisions. Whereas one is able to
pause or save a game in regular videogames, in onlinegames or even chat forums this is impossible. Once a
game has started or I have posted a message, it is impossible to jump back to an earlier point on the linear time
axis since all information is sent instantly to all other
participants of a game or a chat forum.
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The extremely popular videogame Counter-Strike

can be taken as a good example to explain this assumption. The game, a so-called a tactical first-person shooter
videogame, attempts to simulate realistically the combat
between a group of terrorists and a counter-terrorist
team. Similar to other first-person shooter games, each
team attempts to complete their mission objective and/
or eliminate the opposing team. However, one important
feature distinguishes this game from other games of this
genre, namely that killed players are not able to respawn
(come alive again), but turn into spectators for the remaining time of the round. Originally, it was the aim of
the developers to encourage strategic gaming among the
players of each of the two groups. The game is criticized
by its own users for this feature because it causes long
waiting periods for eliminated players; however, one can
also argue that this is the most important reason why
this game attracts so many users. Here, virtual death becomes something to be much more afraid of than in
other video games. Death is much more real because it is
irreversible (at least for the duration of a single round).
Heidegger described this anticipation of death
as the authentic temporality of Dasein. Heidegger opposed this dimensional conception of time to the ordinary representation of time. Other than the latter, which
is, according to Heidegger, characterized as an endless,
irreversible sequence of nows which passes away [Heidegger 1993: 478], he describes the former as the existential and basic structure of temporality as a double
movement (and thus dimensional) in that Dasein brings
itself into its Da. The first movement is the anticipation
(Vorlaufen) into its future (Zu-kunft). The second movement consists of a coming back understandingly to ones
ownmost been [Gewesen] (Heidegger, 1993 [1927]:
373). As we have already seen, Dasein exists through the
authentic projection of its ownmost possibilities. According to Heidegger, it is anxiety (Angst), not of something
that is in the world but of the being-in-the-world of
Dasein as such. It is only in this state of anxiety that
Dasein is projected upon itself, liberated from the domination of the Man, being free to be itself. This however,
presents Dasein to its own finitude and nullity by experiencing itself as a being-toward-death (Sein zum Tode).
(Heidegger, 1993 [1927]: 304-312) Put differently, beingtoward-death is not an orientation that brings Dasein
closer to its physical end, in terms of clinical death, but is
rather a way of being. It is the anticipation of ones death
that brings one into an authentic mode of being. If applied to the particular character of online-games, what
makes the experience of online-computer games so real
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or authentic may be to a lesser extent the technical

perfection of the simulation of three-dimensional space,
sound, or haptic sensation, but the anticipation (and in
some instances irreversibility) of ones death and thus
the experience of a dimensional structure of time. Based
on this Heideggerian interpretation, one might argue that
online-games are in fact more than just games. Different
from conventional games, which are commonly defined
as non-productive entertainment, being played because
of their function to detach oneself from the burdens of
ones everyday life, online-games such as Counter-Strike
successfully simulate the most feared and at the same
time existential feature of human life, namely mortality.
Conclusion: animalization, new subjectivities,

and pedagogy
With regard to the fallenness of Dasein into a tactile
and habitualized information-seeking behavior in the
digital age (or the behavior exhibited when playing
videogames), it is valuable to take into account the contemporary philosophical discourse on the phenomenon
of otaku culture in Japan, since much of the public debate
on the positive and negative sides of the Internet or
videogames parallels the discourse on otaku culture in
Japan. Other than previous discourses on the otakua
Japanese term that refers to people with obsessive interests in various Japanese subcultures, particularly
manga, anime, science fiction, or computer games
which either psychopathologized the otaku as anti-social,
uncommunicative, self-absorbed or even perverted5especially after the so-called Miyazaki incident in 1989
(when the police arrested the 26-year old serial child
killer Miyazaki Tsutomu, who collected piles of manga
and anime, some of it of pornographic or violent)or
tried to understand this phenomenon psychoanalytically,
it was particularly the two cultural critics Okada Toshio
(1995) and Azuma Hiroki (2001) who analyzed the otaku
from the perspective of their pioneering role in the socalled information society.6
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In his book Dbutsuka suru posutomodan: Otaku

kara mita Nihon shakai (2001, Animalizing Postmodern:
Japanese Society as Seen from the Perspective of Otaku),
Azuma Hiroki considers the otaku phenomenon not as a
particularly Japanese phenomenon, but as an inflection of
the global trend of postmodernization and thus as a new
subject position within this trend (Azuma, 2001: 19).
With regard to French philosopher Alexandre Kojves
neo-Hegelian distinction between two forms of posthistorical existencethe animalization of American
society based on consumerism and the highly formalized
and aesthetisized snobbism of the Japanese7Azuma
asserts that otaku culture consists of a two-tiered (nijka) mode of consumption that reflects the two-layered
structure of the postmodern itself (Azuma, 2001: 76-78).
Other than the two layers of the modern worldimagethe depth of grand narratives (namely ideals
and ideology) and a surface of many small narrativesAzuma claims that, with reference to Lyotards
notion of the end of grand narratives, the latter were
replaced by a grand database in the postmodern worldimage (sekaiz). Whereas the modern era formed a
structure in which a single grand narrative/ideal controlled diverse small narratives, and cultural and social
criticism consisted in analyzing grand narratives (as reflected within various small narratives), in the postmodern world, people may grasp any number of small worldimages (Azuma, 2001: 50-54).
The world-image of the modern age:the tree model. The

shaded circle is labelledDepth and associated with Grand
Narratives.The centre rectangle is labelled Surface and
associated with Small Narratives. The eye-shaped fi gure
(right) is labelled I, which, thefigure notes, is determined
through narratives.(Azuma 2007 [2003]).
Courtesy of Universityof Minnesota Press.
Azuma claims that one can identify two ways in which

the otaku deal with this new world-image. He calls one
the animalesque (dbutsuteki) side of database consumption; that is the solitude and passive consumption of the
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many small narratives of computer games, anime, or

manga that are merely based on combinations (kumiawase) of self-referential elements from the grand database. Moreover, database consumption also has a second,
an active or humanesque (ningenteki) side, because otaku
actively intervene in received commodities by breaking
down the narratives into their compounds (for videogames these elements might be screenplay, character,
background, for manga they may be the single sensitive
elements (moe yso) of which characters are composed),
and thereby get access to the database that lies in the
depth behind the small narrations and recreate (niji
ssaku) from it their own narrations or pictures. 8 It is
this double structure (nis kz) of deconstruction and
reconstruction that prompts Azuma to interpret the
otaku culture as a deconstructivist and, thus, subversive
form of cultural reception that brings it close to a deconstructivist method in contemporary literary theory ,
which offers the subject a position from which to intervene in existing cultural forms or the discourse.9 Azuma
bases this assertion also on the fact that to the otaku it
doesnt matter any longer if the author of the small
narratives they consume is a professionalauthorized
by one of the big manga or anime publishersor an
amateur who publishes his self-made anime or manga in
one of the many fanzines (djinshi) or the Internet.
The world-image of the postmodernage: the database model.

The striped rectangle(left) is labelled Depth. The centre rectangleis labelled Surface and associated with SmallNarratives. The eye on the right is labelledI, and is the one who
reads into (inputs) thenarratives. (Azuma 2007 [2003]).
Courtesy ofUniversity of Minnesota Press.
One can find similarly deconstructive and reconstructive

behavior among the members of the global subcultures
gathering around certain videogames. First-person
shooters, such as the aforementioned Counter-Strike, can
be used by players to produce so-called machinima. Machinima is a conflation of the words machine, cinema and
animation; it refers to 3D-animations created in a realtime virtual environment. Videogames with powerful
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3D-engines (software systems designed for the creation

and development of videogames) are the most inexpensive programs to use to create machinima. Basically, the
easiest way to create machinima is to organise several
players to enact a screenplay in a networked multiplayer-game. By recording the screen of one player, he or
she acts can act as a cameraman. The other players move
their characters within the virtual environment like
movie actors. Afterwards, the movie is cut and sometimes even dubbed. Accordingly, the technological requirements to produce machinima are very low because
one needs only a computer and a videogame. However,
many of the machinima movie productions are much
more sophisticated because they make use of modified
commercial videogames. These modifications range from
mapping and modeling (ie. the creation of ones own
unique virtual environments and characters), to the manipulations of the game software itself (such as lip synchronization, the direct recording of the graphic output
as a movie file, or the programming of complete production frameworks).
Enacting Shakespearean machinima via Halo,

Bungie Games, 2001
What can we conclude from Azumas positive remarks

on the new media literacy of the otaku regarding what I
have initially defined rather negatively as the fallenness
of the user of new forms of digital media? In any case,
the frequently posed question of whether Google, the
Internet, electronic databases, videogames, or the new
flood of information in general, is making us stupid per
se, seems to be pointing in the wrong direction. As we
have seen, besides the fallen or animalized mode of
media use, there is also space for a productive and humanesque way of dealing with digitized information or
videogames. In terms of education, pedagogies, or media
literacy, however, it is necessary to teach the users of
these new media the sharp distinction between these
two modes. Particularly with regard to the use of digitalized knowledge and the Internet, it may be important to
teach contemplative and analytic reading to a generation
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of otaku and Google-users who possess a highly developed digital literacy but who may be beginning to lack
basic reading and writing skills.
Even more important than teaching the differences between different ways of handling knowledge in
the digital age, however, is how we can relate Azumas
positive appraisal of the double structure of deconstructive and reconstructive elements of otaku culture or
machinima to teaching and pedagogies. Lets take for instance the case of Japan Studies. I think that it has already become a global phenomenon that an increasing
number of students enrolling in Japan Studies do so because of an interest in Japanese popular culture and
anime or manga in particular. To some of them, calling
themselves otaku is part of their lifestyle and offers them
a subject position and, thus, a self-identity. Many of them,
similar to the otaku in Japan, spend much of their time on
homepages such as fanfiction.net, animexx.de or
quizilla.com, reading, commenting and writing stories or
uploading pictures that are based on existing anime or
manga. In other words, one has to pose the question of
whether it is possible to integrate the existing competences of the new type of students of Japan Studies (that
are comparable to those attributed to the otaku, ie. digital literacy, electronic reading skills, active participation in
the reconstruction or bricolage of media contents published at the Internet or of manga and anime) into the
deconstructivist project in the humanities in general.
References
Agamben, G. (2004). The Open: Man and Animal. Stanford,
CA: Stanford University Press.
Anderson, B. (1983). Imagined Communities: Reflections on
the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. London:
Verso.
Azuma, H. (2001). Dbutsuka suru posutomodan: Otaku
kara mita Nihon shakai (Animalizing Postmodern:
Japanese Society as Seen from the Perspective
of Otaku, Tokyo: Kdansha). An English translation appeared recently under the rather inappropriate title Otaku: Japan's Database Animals,
University of Minnesota Press.
Benjamin, W. (1977 [1936]). Das Kunstwerk im Zeitalter
seiner technischen Reproduzierbarkeit, Frankfurt:
Suhrkamp. An English translation appeared in
The Work of Art in the Age of its Technological Re-
PAGE: 8

producibility, and other Writings on Media, Harvard

University Press 2009).
Bolter, J. D. (1991). Writing Space:The Computer, Hypertext,
and the History of Writing. Hillsdale, N.J.: L. Erlbaum Associates.
Bush,V. (1945). As We May Think. The Atlantic, (July). Retrieved from
http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/194507/bush
Carr, N. (2008). Is Google Making Us Stupid? The Atlantic, July/August. Retrieved from
http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/print/200807/go
ogle
Grassmuck,V. (2000). Man, Nation & Machine: The Otaku
Answer to Pressing Problems of the Media Society. Retrieved from
http://waste.informatik.hu-berlin.de/grassmuck/
Texts/otaku00_e.html)
Heidegger, M. (1993 [1927]). Being and Time: A Translation
of Sein und Zeit. Oxford: Blackwell.
Kojve, A. (1969). Introduction to the Reading of Hegel: Lectures on the Phenomenology of Spirit. New York:
Basic Books.
Krmer, S. (1998). Das Medium als Spur und Apparat (The
Medium as Trace and Apparatus). In S. Krmer
(Ed.), Medien, Computer, Realitt.Wirklichkeitsvorstellungen und Neue Medien (Media, Computer,
Reality: Imaginations of Realty and New Media) (1.
Aufl. ed., pp. 73-94). Frankfurt: Suhrkamp.
Kuhlen, R. (1991). Hypertext. Ein nicht-lineares Medium
zwischen Buch und Wissensbank (Hypertext: A
Non-linear Medium in-between the Book and
Knowledge Databases). Berlin, Heidelberg, New
York: Springer.
Moore, W. E., & Tumin, M. M. (1949). Some Social Functions of Ignorance. American Sociological Review,
14, 787-795.
Nowotny, H. (1997). Das Sichtbare und das Unsichtbare.
Die Zeitdimension in the Medien (The Visible and
the Invisible: The Dimension of Time in the Media). In M. Sandbothe & W. C. Zimmerli (Eds.),
Zeit - Medien - Wahrnehmung (Time - Media Perception) (pp. 14-29). Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft.
Okada, T. (1995). Otaku-gaku nymon (Introduction to Otakuology). Tokyo: ta shuppan.
Okonogi, K. (1977). Moratorium ningen no jidai (The Age
of Human Beings in a Moratorium; English
translation published in Japan Echo 5(1) 1987).
Chkron(October).
WWW.ASIASCAPE.NET
Rowlands, I., & Nicholas, D. (2008). Information Behaviour of the Researcher of the Future. Available
from
http://www.ucl.ac.uk/slais/research/ciber/downlo
ads/
Sait, T. (2000). Sent bishjo no seishin bunseki (Psychoanalysis of Fighting Girls). Tokyo: Chikuma bunk.
Schivelbusch, W. (1977). Geschichte der Eisenbahnreise. Zur
Industrialisierung von Raum und Zeit im 19. Jahrhundert. Mnchen: Hanser. (Published in English
as The Railway Journey:The Industrialization of Time
and Space in the 19th Century, University of California Press).
Welsch, W. (2000). Virtual to Begin With? Retrieved
from
http://www2.uni-jena.de/welsch/Papers/VirtualT
BW.html
The tactility of hyperlinks is particularly obvious if a phrase of

a text appears as a hyperlink (namely a blue font colour for
instance) but does not have the respective function. Accordingly, only through the Unzuhandenheit (un-readiness-to-hand)
of a link as a link we become aware of the haptic interactivity
of hypertext described by Benjamin as tactile appropriation.
Heidegger asserts the following: When curiosity has become

free, however, it concerns itself with seeing, not in order to
understand what is seen (that is, to come into a Being towards
it) but just in order to see. It seeks novelty only in order to
leap from it anew to another novelty. In this kind of seeing, that
which is an issue for care does not lie in grasping something
and being knowingly in the truth; it lies rather in its possibilities
of abandoning itself to the world. Therefore, curiosity is characterized by a specific way of not tarrying (Unverweilen) alongside
what is closest. Consequently it does not seek the leisure of
tarrying (Verweilen) observantly, but rather seeks restlessness
and the excitement of continual novelty and changing encounters. In not tarrying, curiosity is concerned with the constant
possibility of distraction. Curiosity has nothing to do with observing entities and marvelling at them To be amazed to the
point of not understanding is something in which it has no
interest (Heidegger 1993 [1927]: 172).
The opposite proposition, namely that information stored in

external electronic databases relieves the mind and thereby
creates capacity for more creative thinking, was proposed for
instance by the two philosophers Vilem Flusser and Peter
Sloterdijk.
PAGE: 9

It was not only Heidegger who hinted at the importance of
oblivion for remembrance but also the sociologists Wilbert E.
Moore and Melvin M. Tumin who considered ignorance of
particular knowledge not simply as a passive or dysfunctional
condition, but as an active and often positive element in operating structures and relations (Moore & Tumin, 1949: 795) and
thus as an important mental function which erases useless
information from our memory.
Other than the general public discourse, Japanese psychiatrist
Sait Tamaki (2000) attributes a rather conservative sexuality

to the otaku despite their preference for homoerotic or violent
and pornographic manga in his book Sent bishjo no seishin
bunseki (Psychoanalysis of Fighting Girls). Cf. also Azuma (2001:
129-130).
According to German media theorist Volker Grassmuck
(2000), it was Okadas concern was to establish otaku as a new
type of expert who focuses on the style, special effects and
signature of individual comic artists. Where Gutenbergschooled readers detect a story, writes Okada, the otaku first
of all refer to the syntactic levels. Their judgment is based on an
extensive knowledge of the particular genre allowing them to
decode quotations, grasp references, and appreciate nuances.
Moreover, he describes otaku as people possessing an advanced
visual sensation and a new type of adaptation to the cultural
condition of advanced consumer and information society. To
Azuma (2001: 8), otaku can thus not be described merely as
youths enjoying a moratorium based on of their juvenile and
passionate collecting. For the idea of a generation in a moratorium see also Okonogi Keigo (1977).
6
According to Kojve, Japan is a society of formalized values,

values that have no meaningful content anymore but are solely
gratuitous (playful, but neither work nor fight for prestige).
Examples snobbery, the Noh Theater, the ceremony of tea,
the art of flower arranging are only formal details, it does not
really matter one way or the other. Kojve says that since animals cannot be snobs, there is hope for some kind of human
existence to persist even into the post-history. Man would not
really be capable anymore of transforming content, but would
only be able to confront one form by another. As Kojve says,
man would oppose himself as a pure form to himself and to
others taken as content of any sort. (Kojve, 1969: 162, ft 6)
Especially in the age of fiction (1970-95), a periodization inspired by Japanese sociologist Mita Munesuke, the otaku had
been well-informed snobs. They possessed all kinds of information; however, the information itself was not of value they
merely used their knowledge to show off in front of other
otaku of the same kind. Thereby, information was fetischized by
the otaku.
WWW.ASIASCAPE.NET

In a series of lectures held in 1929/30, Heidegger also differentiated the human being from the animal in terms of their
different ways of relating to their environments. Animal behaviour can thus be compared to a fallen mode of being of Dasein.
Heidegger, who rejected the traditional metaphysical definition
of man as animal rationale, the living being that has language (or
reason), as if the being of man could be determined by means
of adding something to the simply living being, attempted to
distinguish between animal and man by describing the animals
mode of being as one of poverty in world (Weltarmut) and that
of man as world-forming (weltbildend). According to Heidegger,
this distinction is based on the fact that an animal is essentially
captivated (eingenommen) and wholly absorbed (benommen) by
its environment (its Umgebung, as opposed to the Umwelt of
Dasein) and can thus only behave (sich benehmen); this is distinct
from a human being who acts (handeln) or comports itself (sich
verhalten). Here Heidegger, puts into play the relationship
among the German terms benommen (captivated, stunned, but
also taken away, blocked), eingenommen (taken in, absorbed),
and Benehmen (behavior), which all refer back to the verb nehmen, to take (Agamben, 2004: 52). Accordingly, one might thus
argue that, on an etymological level, the Weltarmut (poverty in
world) of the animal (i.e. its Benommenheit, Eingenommenheit)
bears parallels to the curiosity and fallenness of Dasein that is,
as already mentioned, taken along [mitnehmen] solely by the
looks of the world.
8
It was aforementioned Jay D. Bolter (1991: 163) who emphasized the relationship between Derridarian poststructuralism
and hypertext as well. According to Bolter, based on the rhizomatic structure of the internet or databases, electronic texts
dont have centres or margins because of their deconstructive
reading: the reader can follow paths through the space in any
direction, limited only by constraints established by the author.
No path through the space need be stigmatized as marginal.
PAGE: 10

Established in September 2007,

Asiascape.net is the home of the
Contemporary East Asian Media
Centre (CEAMC). It is an attempt
to build a new international research coalition in the rapidly
emerging fields of cyberculture
(New Media, Convergence Culture,
Video Games and other related
media, such as fan-culture) and animanga (Anime and Manga), especially as they relate to (or originate
from) East Asia.
It is well known that a large
proportion of this type of media
emerges from the East Asian region
(Japan, China and Korea), and Asiascape seeks to sponsor and organize research into the importance of
these media as a series of transformative, cutting edge, transnational
global commodities, and/or as a series of cultural products that reveal
much about East Asia itself.
There is a scattered (and growing) group of international researchers working in this field and, in addition to conducting its own original
research, Asiascape aims to provide
a hub for the organization and direction of this rapidly emerging
field. With an international advisory
board of leading scholars, Asiascape
will sponsor a series of state of the
field conferences and disseminate
research using new and old media,
including via this website and its
associated news- blog, vistas:
http://vistas.asiascape.net
Asiascape is based at Leiden

University and is funded through the
generosity of the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research
(NWO), Toshiba International Foundation (TIFO) and the Modern East
Asia Research Centre (MEARC):
www.mearc.eu.
WWW.ASIASCAPE.NET
2009, Asiascape.net
ABOUT THE
AUTHOR:
Fabian Schfer is a postdoc
at the Modern East Asia Research Centre (MEARC) at Leiden University and a research
associate at the East Asian Institute (Japanese Studies), Leipzig
University.
INTERNATIONAL ADVISORY BOARD:
Prof Wendy Hui Kyong Chun
(Brown University)
Prof Chris Goto-Jones (Leiden
University)
Dr Mark Harrison (Westminster
University, UK)
Dr Sharon Kinsella (Oxford
University, UK)
Prof Tom Lamarre (McGill University, Canada)
Prof Stefan Landsberger (Amsterdam University)
Dr Angus Lockyer (SOAS, UK)
Prof Susan Napier (Tufts University, USA)
Prof Ivo Smits (Leiden University, Netherlands)
Prof Takayuki Tatsumi (Keio University, Japan)
Prof Mark Williams (Leeds University, UK)
Submissions
Please send submissions to the
editors at: ops@asiascape.net
POSTAL ADDRESS
Asiascape.net,
Modern East Asia Research
Centre, Leiden University,
PO Box 9515,
2300RA, Leiden.
The Netherlands
PAGE: 11

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ISSUE 4, AUGUST 2009