[...] computational processes are experienced, as something to be judged and interacted with on the basis of human skill. To experience them otherwise is to 'cheat'. An example of the persistence of such is in the rules governing many massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs) such as World of Warcraft or Runescape. Here, the use of macros, autotypers (to repeat messages), autoclickers (to repeat functions) and other kinds of bots is generally deemed to be an offence, a violation of the game. But such things, bots especially, can, in turn, be means of having fun with the rather jaded rule sets of online gaming, through griefing or more interesting means. On the one hand, the prohibition on bots argues for an assumed level playing field: that real users are playing the game, not sets of competing scripts or mechanical devices tapping keyboards. In turn, the use of gold farmers, or professional players, in MMORPGs is seen as a betrayal of such experiential requirement, but also as part of the game, when players are increasingly plugged into wider sets of economic systems through games as backchannels. [...]

On the one hand, computation is a technique of abstraction. Layers of abstractions are piled up [...] abstraction is a self-contained dimension of existence of the computational. Historically and conceptually, computation draws upon the formal abstractions of logic and mathematics. Abstract mechanisms of inference drive it, while formal languages and symbolic manipulation are among the abstract means that ground the very possibility of algorithmic 'effective procedures'. On the other hand, however, computation is as concrete as the world in which it participates. Computation not only abstracts from the world in order to model and represent it; through such abstractions, it also partakes in the world. In this sense, computation is a technology of material agency [...]