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This essay, focusing on a slice of Swedish prose fiction from the
1960-70's, raises some questions concerning the artificial subject,
along with discussions of game theory and automation. Torsten Ekbom's
"strategic model theatre" Spelmatriser för Operation Albatross
[1966; Game Matrices for Operation Albatross] is the main object
of study. The (often very bizarre) text fragments in this book are,
fictionally, generated by a number of computers. The figures acting
in this game are devoid of skeletons; they are merely bodies of
information, produced by machines. In dialogue with (among others)
Norbert Wiener, Lewis Mumford, John von Neumann and Marshall McLuhan,
Ekbom's text is found to illustrate a broader context of cybernetics
and subjectivity in the 1960's. Finally, by using the shift of
epistemological dominant (described by N. Katherine Hayles) from
"presence-absence" to "pattern-randomness", Ekbom's Game Matrices
for Operation Albatross finds itself in an historically interesting
intersection of subjectivity: the life of Man in the 1960's is
becoming increasingly "coded" and "randomized", while the computer is
still that huge Machine, not yet, as today, the subconscious of
everyday life.
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