This paper scrutinizes the interrelation between technology and processes of bordering. In particular, it addresses the ways through which biometrics, dataveiilance, predictive analytics, and robotics enlist the hum an body, networks, and hum an-m achine assemblages in practices o f inclusion and exclusion at the contem porary dislocated and 'sm art' border. Through a description o f the sociotechnical apparatuses underlying biom etric, algorithmic, and autom ated border work, the paper develops the term iBorder, and connects its specific affordances to an emergent late-m odern regime o f security. W ith reference to the notion o f cultural technique, the paper argues that contem porary technologically facilitated practices o f bordering coconstitute, rather than merely process, contingent subjectivities and frames for practice.

The present article brings game studies into dialogue with cultural memory studies and argues for the significance of computer games for historical discourse and memory politics. Drawing upon the works of Robert Rosenstone and Astrid Erll, we develop concepts and theories from film studies and adapt them to respond to the media specificity of computer games. Through a critical reading of the first chapter of the history-based first-person shooter Call of Duty:Black Ops (Activision, 2010), the article demonstrates how the game's formal properties frame in-game experiences and performances, and this way predispose the emergence of certain memory-making potentials in and through constrained practices of play. Subsequently, an analysis of the serious game Czechoslovakia 38-89: Assassination (Charles University in Prague/Czech Academy of Sciences, 2015) shows the potentials of game design to facilitate meta-historical reflections and critical inquiries.

The present contribution conducts an intervention in the study and practice of digital and media literacy. After reviewing key tenets of recent debates, I advance a specific understanding of the concept – critical digital literacy – that, as I argue, comprehensively addresses issues of knowledge, competencies, and skills in relation to digital technologies. In particular, I posit that critical thinking about educational and other values of ‘the digital’ needs to take structural aspects of the technology into account that are often eschewed in instrumental or commercially-driven approaches. To prepare pupils for their future lives requires a widest possible contextualisation of technology, including issues of exploitation, commodification, and degradation in digital capitalism. Finally, I make concrete suggestions for constructive uses of technology in teaching and learning.

The present article develops the concept of selective realism to understand how design features and narrative frames of first-and third-person shooters (F/TPS) exclude attention to salient, yet unpleasant, features of warfare such as problematic forms of violence, long-term psychological impacts, or sociopolitical blowbacks. Identifying four specific filters that frame player experiences, I argue that the resulting selectivity is significant because it is characteristic of the F/TPS genre as a whole that, through its wide dissemination, impacts upon the cultural framing of actual warfare. The article illustrates features of selective realism before it conducts in-depth analysis of the titles Spec Ops: The Line and The Last of Us to show how critical game design can invite a conscious unraveling of the generic frames and the ideological positions these invite. The article concludes with a reassessment of arguments regarding alleged sociopolitical impacts of war-and violence-themed computer games.

The present article reconceptualises the archive in the context of digital media ecologies. Drawing upon archival theory and critical approaches to the political economy of the Internet, I account for new dynamics and implications afforded by digital archives. Operating at both a usercontrolled explicit and a state-and corporate-owned implicit level, the digital archive at once facilitates empowerment and enables unprecedented forms of management and control. Connecting the politics and economy of digital media with issues of identity formation and curation on social networking sites, I coin the terms iArchive and predictive retention to highlight how recent technological advances provide both new means for self-expression, mobilisation, and resistance, and afford an almost ubiquitous tracking, profiling, and, indeed moulding of emergent subjectivities.