Re: <nettime> Guillaume Lachenal: Ebola: a brilliantly scripted

[Magnus Boman <mabmab@gmail.com>]

Thank you kindly for the translation. I have worked as a computational
epidemiologist for almost ten years now, in Europe and in the Middle East,
and I have tried not to contribute to the dichotomy outlined (reality vs.
disaster movie) but it is very hard. The reason is not media, for once. I
would say the health care workers, even the first responders, have an urge
to see the world as a Simondon-type dichotomy: it is very hard to say that
the healthcare system and preparedness, including what the pathogens and
politics around them, are "us" (reality) and not "them" (a disaster movie).
So only the strongest do.

I have myself argued openly against the employment of serious games and
even of ordinary computer games like WoW (remember the Hakkar plague there)
for understanding spread of communicable disease and people's attitudes in
connection with such spread. Lachenal's piece gave me some new arguments,
to finish that academic paper I've had on the backburner for 5-6 years, and
which noone would applaud.

M.

On 24 September 2014 19:09, Patrice Riemens <patrice@xs4all.nl> wrote:

> Original (French) to:
>
> http://www.liberation.fr/monde/2014/09/18/chronique-d-un-film-catastrophe-bien-prepare_1103419
>
> Ebola: a brilliantly scripted disaster movie
> by Guillaume Lachenal
>


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