The third level begins. Where the topographic develops one dimension of telegraphy — its flow of information across space — the topological develops the other — its intricate coding and addressing. Where the topographic is an analog flow; the topological is the digital divide. It is a line of another type. It is a line of a new type which, for a brief, burning moment, reignited the dreams of a new topos. But the cycle accelerates. If it took twenty years to get from Brecht or Benjamin’s optimism to Debord’s foreclosure, the same cycle in net time took perhaps five years. Geert Lovink: “Cyberspace at the dawn of the 21st century can no longer position itself in a utopian void of seamless possibilities.”

The third level continues. Games have storylines like the historical novel, which arc from beginning to end. Games have cinematic cut scenes, pure montages of attraction. Games subsume the lines of television just as television subsumed cinema and cinema the novel. But they are something else as well. They are not just an allegory but a double form, an allegory and an allegorithm. Appearances within the game double an algorithm which in turn simulates an unknown algorithm which produces appearances outside the game.

Stuck again. Start over. Another new world. Welcome to the first level. Let’s loop back to Lukács, and ask: rather that insist on the possibilities of the technicity of the line itself, perhaps there’s something to be said for the possibilities of a certain genre that makes use of it? Bonus points! Skip straight to the third level: The strategy game is a genre of a certain type within a line of a certain type, which opens towards certain possibilities. Click on the Government pull down menu and choose Revolution. Your Republic turns to Anarchy. Certain parameters shift. You are playing Sid Meier’s Civilization III. It is not so much an allegory for world history as an allegorithm for gamespace itself. Everything here is a relation between quantifiable processes. Everything is a question of the allocation of resources. There’s a perverse sense of base and superstructure. You can change the form of Government but there’s not much you can do to change the underlying form of production. Invest in science and qualitative technical changes accumulate, which in turn expand military, cultural and political possibilities. Invest in culture to keep the plebs from revolting. Interestingly, civil disorder comes from below, but revolutions come from above, but these are just two functions within an algorithm: a small variable with a big effect; a big variable with a small effect.

Gamespace turns descriptions into a database, and storyline into navigation — an interface to line upon line of data. Sid Meier, known as a voracious reader, turns history and anthropology books into strategy game. Civilization III even comes with its own ‘Cyclopedia’, a one-eyed reference work for to a parallel world. But this is more than the remediation of old forms into new. Rather, the algorithm consumes the topographic and turns it into the topological. In the database, all description is numerical, equivalent in form. Everything within it can be related to or transformed into everything else. A new kind of symmetry operates. The navigation of the database replaces a narration via description. The database expands exponentially. Rather than a politics of allegory, an economics of allegorithm operates, selecting and reducing possibilities.