PC

Weekend Reading: Phantom Limbs and Ghosts in the Shell

While we at Kill Screen love to bring you our own crop of game critique and perspective, there are many articles on games, technology, and art around the web that are worth reading and sharing. So that is why this weekly reading list exists, bringing light to some of the articles that have captured our attention, and should also capture yours.

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Feel Me, Adam Gopnik, The New Yorker

Touch is one of the senses, but it isn’t one thing. Touch can hurt, relax, itch, feel the ground you stand on, and have the sensation of things that aren’t there. Technology, too, wants to wield touch, from virtual reality to prosthetics, technology wants to simulate it. Adam Gopnik writes just how complicated a pursuit that is.

1979 Revolution and the Politics of Choice, Cameron Kunzelman, Paste

Politics are at play in almost every game, but few drop players into key moments in history. 1979 Revolution: Black Friday uses methods similar to those in The Walking Dead games to portray one of the tensest, most influential affairs in the last century. But compared to Telltale’s work, as Cameron Kunzelman elaborates, there are takeaways from the player’s choices, and the ramifications in a setting far larger than one person.

1979 Revolution

The Computer Virus That Haunted Early AIDS Researchers, Kaveh Waddell, The Atlantic

It’s a nuisance to have your personal computer attacked by malware and viruses, but it’s a bigger crisis when some of these bugs root themselves into medical and hospital tech. Curiously, many of the viruses floating around today resemble one that sabotaged early AIDS research, created and delivered for petty reasons.

Ghost in the Shell and anime’s troubled history with representation, Emily Yoshida, The Verge

Hollywood adaptations of beloved anime series always seemed like veiled threats that never actually materialize. Recently, that threat followed with a Scarlett Johannson vehicle based on Ghost in the Shell, reigniting a public discussion about whitewashed casting. That discussion, however, as Emily Yoshida will explain, is more complicated and historically coarse in Japan, the country where Ghost in the Shell originates.