Amnesia Remembered: Reverse Engineering a Digital Artifact: 2 (Digital Archaeology: Documenting the Anthropocene)

Aycock, John

ISBN 10: 1800738676 ISBN 13: 9781800738676

Publisher: Berghahn Books, 2023

Synopsis

Our modern culture is increasingly expressed in the form of digital artifacts, yet archaeology is in its infancy when it comes to researching and understanding them. The study and reverse engineering of digital artifacts is no longer the exclusive domain of computer scientists. Presented by way of analogy to the process of archaeological fieldwork familiar to readers, the 1986 Electronic Arts game Amnesia is used as a vehicle to explain the procedure and thought process required to reverse engineer a digital artifact. As a go-to reference to learn how to begin studying the digital, Amnesia is shown to be a multi-layered artifact with a complex backstory; through it, topics in data compression, copy protection, memory management, and programming languages are covered.

About this title

About the Author

John Aycock is an associate professor in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Calgary, Canada. He is the author of Retrogame Archeology: Exploring Old Computer Games (Springer, 2016). His research interests include studying the implementation of "retro" computer games and technology, which he has been doing in collaboration with archaeologists and others.

Edition details

• Publisher: Berghahn Books
• Publication date: 2023
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1800738676
• ISBN 13: 9781800738676
• Binding: Library Binding
• Number of pages: 210