ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on Peter Sloterdijk notion of historical temperaments to clarify the thesis of a bifurcation of human attitudes and orientations in response to the Personal Computer (PC), interface. It begins with the question of the social character of play. The chapter concentrates at an example of the some recent, ludological scholarship that has emerged in response to the emergence of the computer game. It argues that the computer game as a medium and the cynical temperament which is its home in contemporary culture play a fundamental role in the technical politics that contests the PC interface. Play, according to Caillois can be open and unstructured but playing games always involves rules. The notion that game playing is a form of cynicism enables us to situate the computer game as a cultural force, against the background of the cold war. Informationalism is a globalising economic system that relies upon the spread of networked computer technology.
