Pixel Cowboys and Silicon Gold Mines: Videogames of the American West

2008 ◽  
Vol 77 (2) ◽  
pp. 273-303 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Wills
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Computer Technology ◽  
American West ◽  
Western History ◽  
Gold Mines ◽  
Buffalo Bill ◽  
Dime Novel ◽  
Late Twentieth ◽  
Wild West ◽  
Late Twentieth Century

This article explores representations of the American West in computer and videogames from the late 1970s through 2006. The article reveals how several titles, including the early Boot Hill (1977), invoked classic nineteenth-century western motifs, employing the six-shooter, wagon train, and iron horse to sell late twentieth-century entertainment technology to a global audience. Such games allowed players, typically adolescent males, to recreate a version of history and to participate actively in the more violent aspects of the ““Wild West.”” The arcade Western emerged as a subgenre within computer entertainment, offering a distinctive, interactive amalgam of popular frontier-based fictions, including the nineteenth-century dime novel, Buffalo Bill Cody’s Wild West show, and the modern Hollywood western. Computer technology thus served established myths surrounding the ““Wild West,”” even as New Western History was challenging their authenticity.

scholarly journals Simulated authenticity: Storytelling and mythic space on the hyper-frontier in Buffalo Bill’s Wild West and Westworld

2020 ◽  
Vol 20 (4) ◽  
pp. 409-428
Author(s):  
Jane Lovell ◽  
Sam Hitchmough
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
United Kingdom ◽  
American West ◽  
Advanced Technology ◽  
Theme Park ◽  
American Frontier ◽  
Frontier Myth ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
Buffalo Bill ◽  
Wild West

This article explores how the mythic, nineteenth-century American frontier is authenticated by postmodern forms of storytelling. The study examines accounts of William Cody’s extensive 1902–1903 Buffalo Bill’ s Wild West tours in the United Kingdom and the futuristic television series, HBO’s Westworld (2016–), which is set in an android-hosted theme park. Comparing the semiotics of the two examples indicates how over a century apart, the authentication of the myth involves repeating motifs of setting, action and character central to tourist fantasies. The research illustrates how some elements of the myth seem to remain fixed but are negotiable. It is suggested that both examples are versions of a ‘hyper-frontier’, a nostalgic yet progressive, intertextual retelling of the American West and its archetypal characters, characterised by advanced technology. The implications for tourism are that simulating the authenticity of the frontier myth creates doubts in its veracity paradoxically due to its lifelikeness.

A Window to Internal and External Change in Banking

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bernardo Bátiz-Lazo
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Computer Technology ◽  
Business Organizations ◽  
Organizational Challenges ◽  
Late Twentieth ◽  
Self Service ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Late Twentieth Century ◽  
Proper Consideration

Chapter 1 (‘A Window to Internal and External Change in Banking’) provides a wide-arch view of the themes in the book. It highlights how in spite of being deeply embedded in our culture as an object of everyday life, the interaction with ATMs is largely inconsequential for most people. This chapter also forwards a case to study the ATM to better understand the possibilities for technological change to bring about a cashless economy. Another argument put forward is that the ATM is essential to appreciate the technological and organizational challenges that gave rise to self-service banking. As a result, the case is made that business histories of the late twentieth century will be incomplete without proper consideration to the impact of computer technology on the different aspects of business organizations.

A Reading of Westcott's Gospel of Creation: An Early Venture into Ecological Theology?

2013 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 185-202
Author(s):  
Duncan Reid
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Natural World ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Ecological Theology ◽  
Late Twentieth ◽  
Science And Theology ◽  
Doctrine Of Creation ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Late Twentieth Century

AbstractIn response to the contemporary ecological movement, ecological perspectives have become a significant theme in the theology of creation. This paper asks whether antecedents to this growing significance might predate the concerns of our times and be discernible within the diverse interests of nineteenth-century Anglican thinking. The means used here to examine this possibility is a close reading of B. F. Westcott's ‘Gospel of Creation’. This will be contextualized in two directions: first with reference to the understanding of the natural world in nineteenth-century English popular thought, and secondly with reference to the approach taken to the doctrine of creation by three late twentieth-century Anglican writers, two concerned with the relationship between science and theology in general, and a third concerned more specifically with ecology.

The Book as Waste: Henry Mayhew and the Fall of Paper Recycling

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Leah Price
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Electronic Media ◽  
Wood Pulp ◽  
The Other ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Pulp Paper ◽  
Late Twentieth ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
Late Twentieth Century

This chapter suggests that two phenomena that usually get explained in terms of the rise of electronic media in the late twentieth century—the dematerialization of the text and the disembodiment of the reader—have more to do with two much earlier developments. One is legal: the 1861 repeal of the taxes previously imposed on all paper except that used for printing bibles. The other is technological: the rise first of wood-pulp paper in the late nineteenth century and then of plastics in the twentieth. The chapter then looks at Henry Mayhew's London Labour and the London Poor (1861–62), the loose, baggy ethnography of the urban underclass that swelled out of a messy series of media. Mayhew's “cyclopaedia of the industry, the want, and the vice of the great Metropolis” so encyclopedically catalogs the uses to which used paper can be turned.

Conclusion: the emergence of Tasso’s psychobiography

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jason Lawrence
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Leigh Hunt ◽  
Late Twentieth ◽  
Absent Mother ◽  
Late Twentieth Century

The conclusion traces how the psychoanalytical approach utilised in late twentieth-century Freudian interpretations of Tasso’s life and work, by Margaret Ferguson and Giampiero Giamperi for example, had been pre-empted in English biographical accounts of the poet from the second half of the nineteenth century. J. A. Symonds and Leigh Hunt both focus on the same autobiographical poem, the unfinished Canzone al Metauro, as these later psycho-biographical readings to try to account for Tasso’s troubled relationships with his absent mother and particularly his father Bernardo. The conclusion argues that the absence of a clearly defined vocabulary for psychoanalytical discourse pre-Freud does not diminish the acuity of these earlier biographical observations on the poet.

Introduction

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-44
Author(s):  
Gavin Miller
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Science Fiction ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Late Twentieth ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
Psychological Knowledge ◽  
Reflexive Function ◽  
And Function ◽  
Late Twentieth Century

For the purposes of this book, science fiction is defined broadly in the terms advanced by Darko Suvin, with a focus on the genre from the late nineteenth century onwards. Psychology is conceived as the modern Western discipline, running from the origins of experimental psychology in the late nineteenth century to the ascendance of neuroscience as a disciplinary rival in the late twentieth century. Five different functions for psychological discourses in science fiction are proposed. The didactic-futurological function educates the non-specialist through extrapolation of psychological technologies, teaching within the context of futurological forecasting. The utopian function anchors in historical possibility the imagining of a currently non-existent society, whether utopian or dystopian. The cognitive-estranging function defamiliarizes and denaturalizes social reality by extrapolating current social tendencies and/or construct unsettling fictional analogues of the reader’s world. The metafictional function self-consciously thematizes within narrative fiction the psychological origins, nature, and function of science fiction as a genre. The reflexive function addresses the construction of individuals and groups who have reflexively adopted the ‘truth’ of psychological knowledge.

The folk’ish heritage in Nordic democracy: Examples from Denmark and Norway

2019 ◽  
Vol 17 (4) ◽  
pp. 432-447 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeppe Nevers ◽  
Jesper Lundsby Skov
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
European Integration ◽  
Reference Point ◽  
The People ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Late Twentieth ◽  
1960S And 1970S ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Late Twentieth Century

Drawing on examples from Danish and Norwegian history, this article traces the ideological origins of Nordic democracy. It takes as its starting point the observation that constitutional theories of democracy were rather weak in the Nordic countries until the mid-twentieth century; instead, a certain Nordic tradition of popular constitutionalism rooted in a romantic and organic idea of the people was central to the ideological foundations of Nordic democracy. This tradition developed alongside agrarian mobilization in the nineteenth century, and it remained a powerful ideological reference-point through most of the twentieth century, exercising, for instance, an influence on debates about European integration in the 1960s and 1970s. However, this tradition was gradually overlaid by more institutional understandings of democracy from the mid-twentieth century onwards, with the consequence that the direct importance of this folk’ish heritage declined towards the late twentieth century. Nevertheless, clear echoes of this heritage remain evident in some contemporary Nordic varieties of populism, as well as in references to the concept of folkestyre as the pan-Scandinavian synonym for democracy.

When Western History Tried to Reinvent Itself: Revisionism, Controversy, and the Reception of the New Western History

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nathalie Massip
Keyword(s):  
Central Place ◽  
Culture Wars ◽  
American Identity ◽  
Press Coverage ◽  
The West ◽  
Western History ◽  
Creation Myth ◽  
Late Twentieth ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Late Twentieth Century

Abstract This article reviews the reception of the New Western History, whose emergence coincided with the history and culture wars of the late twentieth century. I analyze debates and arguments created by revisionists’ writings, both within the walls of academia and beyond. The discussions which the movement triggered within the historical profession led to exceptional press coverage that attested to the central place the West occupies in the American imagination. Similarly, the uproar generated by the 1991 Smithsonian’s West as America exhibition further demonstrated Americans’ singular attachment to the story of the West as the creation myth of the nation. Just as the culture wars of the period hinged on a definition of an American identity, the reappraisal of the western past was perceived, by some, as questioning what it meant to be a westerner and, ultimately, an American.

scholarly journals Technology and the Era of the Mass Army

2014 ◽  
Vol 74 (2) ◽  
pp. 449-481 ◽  
Author(s):  
Massimiliano Gaetano Onorato ◽  
Kenneth Scheve ◽  
David Stasavage
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
French Revolution ◽  
Great Powers ◽  
Set Covering ◽  
Data Set ◽  
Military Forces ◽  
Explosive Force ◽  
Late Twentieth ◽  
Late Twentieth Century

We investigate how technology has influenced the size of armies. During the nineteenth century, the development of the railroad made it possible to field and support mass armies, significantly increasing the observed size of military forces. During the late twentieth century, further advances in technology made it possible to deliver explosive force from a distance and with precision, making mass armies less desirable. We find support for our technological account using a new data set covering thirteen great powers between 1600 and 2000. We find little evidence that the French Revolution was a watershed in terms of levels of mobilization.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document