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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Markus_Persson#cite_note-marysue-80] | [TOKENS: 3525] |
Contents Markus Persson Markus Alexej Persson (/ˈpɪərsən/ ⓘ PEER-sən, Swedish: [ˈmǎrːkɵs ˈpæ̌ːʂɔn] ⓘ; born 1 June 1979), known by the pseudonym Notch, is a Swedish video game programmer and designer. He is the creator of Minecraft, the best-selling video game in history. He founded the video game development company Mojang Studios in 2009. Persson began developing video games at an early age. His commercial success began after he published an early version of Minecraft in 2009. Prior to the game's official retail release in 2011, it had sold over four million copies. After this point Persson stood down as the lead designer and transferred his creative authority to Jens Bergensten. In September 2014 Persson announced his intention to leave Mojang, and in November of that year the company was sold to Microsoft reportedly for US$2.5 billion, which made him a billionaire. Since 2016 several of Persson's posts on Twitter regarding feminism, race, and transgender rights have caused public controversies. He has been described as "an increasingly polarizing figure, tweeting offensive statements regarding race, the LGBTQ community, gender, and other topics." In an effort to distance itself from Persson, Microsoft removed mentions of his name from Minecraft (excluding one instance in the game's end credits) and did not invite him to the game's tenth anniversary celebration. In 2015 he co-founded a separate game studio called Rubberbrain, which was relaunched in 2024 as Bitshift Entertainment. Early life Markus Alexej Persson was born in Stockholm, Sweden, to a Finnish mother, Ritva, and a Swedish father, Birger, on 1 June 1979. He has one sister. He grew up in Edsbyn until he was seven years old, when his family moved back to Stockholm. In Edsbyn, Persson's father worked for the railroad, and his mother was a nurse. He spent much time outdoors in Edsbyn, exploring the woods with his friends. When Persson was about seven years old, his parents divorced, and he and his sister lived with their mother. His father moved to a cabin in the countryside. Persson said in an interview that they experienced food insecurity around once a month. Persson lost contact with his father for several years after the divorce. According to Persson, his father suffered from depression, bipolar disorder, alcoholism, and medication abuse, and went to jail for robberies. While his father had somewhat recovered during Persson's early life, his father relapsed, contributing to the divorce. His sister also experimented with drugs and ran away from home. He had gained interest in video games at an early age. His father was "a really big nerd", who built his own modem and taught Persson to use the family's Commodore 128. On it, Persson played bootleg games and loaded in various type-in programs from computer magazines with the help of his sister. The first game he purchased with his own money was The Bard's Tale. He began programming on his father's Commodore 128 home computer at the age of seven. He produced his first game at the age of eight, a text-based adventure game. By 1994 Persson knew he wanted to become a video game developer, but his teachers advised him to study graphic design, which he did from ages 15 to 18. Persson, although introverted, was well-liked by his peers, but after entering secondary school was a "loner" and reportedly had only one friend. He spent most of his spare time with games and programming at home. He managed to reverse-engineer the Doom engine, which he continued to take great pride in as of 2014[update]. He never finished high school, but was reportedly a good student. Career Persson started his career working as a web designer. He later found employment at Game Federation, where he met Rolf Jansson. The pair worked in their spare time to build the 2006 video game Wurm Online. The game was released through a new entity, "Mojang Specifications AB". Persson left the project in late 2007. As Persson wanted to reuse the name "Mojang", Jansson agreed to rename the company to Onetoofree AB. Between 2004 and 2009 Persson worked as a game developer for Midasplayer (later known as King). There, he worked as a programmer, mostly building browser games made in Flash. He later worked as a programmer for jAlbum. Prior to creating Minecraft, Persson developed multiple, small games. He also entered a number of game design competitions and participated in discussions on the TIGSource forums, a web forum for independent game developers. One of Persson's more notable personal projects was called RubyDung, an isometric three-dimensional base-building game like RollerCoaster Tycoon and Dwarf Fortress. While working on RubyDung, Persson experimented with a first-person view mode similar to that found in Dungeon Keeper. However, he felt the graphics were too pixelated and omitted this mode. In 2009 Persson found inspiration in Infiniminer, a block-based open-ended mining game. Infiniminer heavily influenced his future work on RubyDung, and was behind Persson's reasoning for returning the first-person mode, the "blocky" visual style and the block-building fundamentals to the game. RubyDung is the earliest known Minecraft prototype created by Persson. On 17 May 2009 Persson released the original edition (later called "Classic version") of Minecraft on the TIGSource forums. He regularly updated the game based on feedback from TIGSource users. Persson released several new versions of Minecraft throughout 2009 and 2010, going through several phases of development including Survival Test, Indev, and Infdev. On 30 June 2010 Persson released the game's Alpha version. While working on the pre-Alpha version of Minecraft, Persson continued working at jAlbum. In 2010, after the release and subsequent success of Minecraft's Alpha version, Persson moved from a full-time role to a part-time role at jAlbum. He left jAlbum later that same year. In September 2010 Persson travelled to Valve Corporation's headquarters in Bellevue, Washington, United States, where he took part in a programming exercise and met Gabe Newell. Persson was subsequently offered a job at Valve, which he turned down in order to continue work on Minecraft. On 20 December 2010 Minecraft moved into its beta phase and began expanding to other platforms, including mobile. In January 2011 Minecraft reached one million registered accounts. Six months afterwards, it reached ten million. The game has sold over four million copies by 7 November 2011. Mojang held the first Minecon from 18 to 19 November 2011 to celebrate its full release, and subsequently made it an annual event. Following this, on 11 December 2011, Persson transferred creative control of Minecraft to Jens Bergensten and began working on another game title, 0x10c, although he reportedly abandoned the project around 2013. In 2013 Mojang recorded revenues of $330 million and profits of $129 million. Persson has stated that, due to the intense media attention and public pressure, he became exhausted with running Minecraft and Mojang. In a September 2014 blog post he shared his realization that he "didn't have the connection to my fans I thought I had", that he had "become a symbol", and that he did not wish to be responsible for Mojang's increasingly large operation. In June 2014 Persson tweeted "Anyone want to buy my share of Mojang so I can move on with my life? Getting hate for trying to do the right thing is not my gig", reportedly partly as a joke. Persson controlled a 71% stake in Mojang at the time. The offer attracted significant interest from Activision Blizzard, EA, and Microsoft. Forbes later reported that Microsoft wanted to purchase the game as a "tax dodge" to turn their taxable excess liquid cash into other assets. In September 2014 Microsoft agreed to purchase Mojang for $2.5 billion, making Persson a billionaire. He then left the company after the deal was finalised in November. Since leaving Mojang, Persson has worked on several small projects. On 23 June 2014 he founded a company with Porsér called Rubberbrain AB; the company had no games by 2021, despite spending SEK 60 million. The company was relaunched as Bitshift Entertainment, LLC on 28 March 2024. Persson expressed interest in creating a new video game studio in 2020, and in developing virtual reality games. He has also since created a series of narrative-driven immersive events called ".party()", which uses extensive visual effects and has been hosted in multiple cities. At the beginning of 2025 Persson decided to create a spiritual successor to Minecraft, referred to as "Minecraft 2", in response to the results of a poll on X. However, after speaking to his team, he shortly went against this in favour of developing the other choice on his Twitter poll, a roguelike titled Levers and Chests. Games Persson's most popular creation is the survival sandbox game Minecraft, which was first publicly available on 17 May 2009 and fully released on 18 November 2011. Persson left his job as a game developer to work on Minecraft full-time until completion. In early 2011, Mojang AB sold the one millionth copy of the game, several months later their second, and several more their third. Mojang hired several new staff members for the Minecraft team, while Persson passed the lead developer role to Jens Bergensten. He stopped working on Minecraft after a deal with Microsoft to sell Mojang for $2.5 billion. This brought his net worth to US$1.5 billion. Persson and Jakob Porsér came up with the idea for Scrolls including elements from board games and collectible card games. Persson noted that he will not be actively involved in development of the game and that Porsér will be developing it. Persson revealed on his Tumblr blog on 5 August 2011 that he was being sued by a Swedish law firm representing Bethesda Softworks over the trademarked name of Scrolls, claiming that it conflicted with their The Elder Scrolls series of games. On 17 August 2011 Persson challenged Bethesda to a Quake 3 tournament to decide the outcome of the naming dispute. On 27 September 2011 Persson confirmed that the lawsuit was going to court. ZeniMax Media, owner of Bethesda Softworks, announced the lawsuit's settlement in March 2012. The settlement allowed Mojang to continue using the Scrolls trademark. In 2018, Scrolls was made available free of charge and renamed to Caller's Bane. Cliffhorse is a humorous game programmed in two hours using the Unity game engine and free assets. The game took inspiration from Skyrim's physics engine, "the more embarrassing minimum-effort Greenlight games", Goat Simulator, and Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing. The game was released to Microsoft Windows systems as an early access and honourware game on the first day of E3 2014, instructing users to donate Dogecoin to "buy" the game before downloading it. The game accumulated over 280,000 dogecoins. Following the end to his involvement with Minecraft, Persson began pre-production of an alternate reality space game set in the distant future in March 2012. On April Fools' Day Mojang launched a satirical website for Mars Effect (parody of Mass Effect), citing the lawsuit with Bethesda as an inspiration. However, the gameplay elements remained true and on 4 April, Mojang revealed 0x10c (pronounced "Ten to the C") as a space sandbox title. Persson officially halted game production in August 2013. However, C418, the composer of the game's soundtrack (as well as that of Minecraft), released an album of the work he had made for the game. In 2013, Persson made a free game called Shambles in the Unity game engine. Persson has also participated in several Ludum Dare 48-hour game making competitions. Personal life In 2011 Persson married Elin Zetterstrand, whom he had dated for four years before. Zetterstrand was a former moderator on the Minecraft forums. They had a daughter together, but by mid-2012, he began to see little of her. On 15 August 2012 he announced that he and his wife had filed for divorce. The divorce was finalised later that year. On 14 December 2011 Persson's father committed suicide with a handgun after drinking heavily. In an interview with The New Yorker, Persson said of his father: When I decided I wanted to quit my day job and work on my own games, he was the only person who supported my decision. He was proud of me and made sure I knew. When I added the monsters to Minecraft, he told me that the dark caves became too scary for him. But I think that was the only true criticism I ever heard from him. Persson later admitted that he himself suffered from depression and various highs and lows in his mood. Persson has criticised the stance of large game companies on piracy. He once stated that "piracy is not theft", viewing unauthorised downloads as potential future customers. Persson stated himself to be a member of the Pirate Party of Sweden in 2011. He is also a member of Mensa. He has donated to numerous charities, including Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders). Under his direction, Mojang spent a week developing Catacomb Snatch for the Humble Indie Bundle and raised US$458,248 for charity. He also donated $250,000 to the Electronic Frontier Foundation in 2012. In 2011 he gave $3 million in dividends back to Mojang employees. According to Forbes, his net worth in 2023 was around $1.2 billion. In 2014 Persson was one of the biggest taxpayers in Sweden. Around 2014, he lived in a multi-level penthouse in Östermalm, Stockholm, an area he described as "where the rich people live". In December 2014 Persson purchased a home in Trousdale Estates, a neighbourhood in Beverly Hills, California, in the United States, for $70 million, a record sales price for Beverly Hills at the time. Persson reportedly outbid Beyoncé and Jay-Z for the property. Persson began receiving criticism for political and social opinions he expressed on social media as early as 2016. November 30, 2017 In 2017, he proposed a heterosexual pride holiday, and wrote that those who opposed the idea "deserve to be shot." After facing backlash, he deleted the tweets and rescinded his statements, writing, "So yeah, it's about pride of daring to express, not about pride of being who you are. I get it now." Later in the year, he wrote that feminism is a "social disease" and called the video game developer and feminist Zoë Quinn a "cunt", although he was generally critical of the GamerGate movement. He has described intersectional feminism as a "framework for bigotry" and the use of the word mansplaining as being sexist. Also in 2017, Persson tweeted that "It's okay to be white". Later that year, he stated that he believed in the Pizzagate conspiracy theory. In 2019, he tweeted referencing QAnon, saying "Q is legit. Don't trust the media." Later in 2019, he tweeted in response to a pro-transgender internet meme that, "You are absolutely evil if you want to encourage delusion. What happened to not stigmatizing mental illness?" He then also promoted claims that people were fined for "using the wrong pronoun". However, after facing backlash, he tweeted a day afterwards that he had "no idea what [being trans is] like of course, but it's inspiring as hell when people open up and choose to actually be who they know themselves as. Not because it's a cool choice, because it's a big step. I gues [sic] that's actually cool nvm". Later that year, Microsoft removed two mentions of Persson's name in the "19w13a" snapshot of Minecraft and did not invite him to the 10-year anniversary celebration of the game. A spokesperson for Microsoft stated that his views "do not reflect those of Microsoft or Mojang". He is still mentioned in the End Poem ("a flat, infinite world created by a man called Markus").[citation needed] Awards References External links |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GPT-4o] | [TOKENS: 2086] |
Contents GPT-4o GPT-4o ("o" for "omni") is a multilingual, multimodal generative pre-trained transformer developed by OpenAI and released in May 2024. It can process and generate text, images and audio. Upon release, GPT-4o was free in ChatGPT, though paid subscribers had higher usage limits. GPT-4o was removed from ChatGPT in August 2025 when GPT-5 was released, but OpenAI reintroduced it for paid subscribers after users complained about the sudden removal. GPT-4o's audio-generation capabilities are used in ChatGPT's Advanced Voice Mode. On July 18, 2024, OpenAI released GPT-4o mini, a smaller version of GPT-4o which replaced GPT-3.5 Turbo on the ChatGPT interface. The image generation model GPT Image 1 which is based on GPT-4o replaced DALL-E 3 in ChatGPT in March 2025. OpenAI retired GPT-4o from ChatGPT on February 13, 2026. However, as of February 2026 the voice mode is still powered by GPT-4o or GPT-4o mini, depending on the usage and plan. Background Multiple versions of GPT-4o were originally secretly launched under different names on Arena (formerly LMArena and Chatbot Arena) as three different models. These three models were called gpt2-chatbot, im-a-good-gpt2-chatbot, and im-also-a-good-gpt2-chatbot. On 7 May 2024, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman tweeted "im-a-good-gpt2-chatbot", which was commonly interpreted as a confirmation that these were new OpenAI models being A/B tested. Capabilities When released in May 2024, GPT-4o achieved state-of-the-art results in voice, multilingual, and vision benchmarks, setting new records in audio speech recognition and translation. GPT-4o scored 88.7 on the Massive Multitask Language Understanding (MMLU) benchmark compared to 86.5 for GPT-4. Unlike GPT-3.5 and GPT-4, which rely on other models to process sound, GPT-4o natively supports voice-to-voice. The Advanced Voice Mode was delayed and finally released to ChatGPT Plus and Team subscribers in September 2024. On 1 October 2024, the Realtime API was introduced. When released, the model supported over 50 languages, which OpenAI claims cover over 97% of speakers. Mira Murati demonstrated the model's multilingual capability by speaking Italian to the model and having it translate between English and Italian during the live-streamed OpenAI demonstration event on 13 May 2024. In addition, the new tokenizer uses fewer tokens for certain languages, especially languages that are not based on the Latin alphabet, making it cheaper for those languages. GPT-4o has knowledge up to October 2023, but can access the Internet if up-to-date information is needed. It has a context length of 128k tokens. In August 2024, OpenAI introduced a new feature allowing corporate customers to customize GPT-4o using proprietary company data. This customization, known as fine-tuning, enables businesses to adapt GPT-4o to specific tasks or industries, enhancing its utility in areas like customer service and specialized knowledge domains. Previously, fine-tuning was available only on the less powerful model GPT-4o mini. The fine-tuning process requires customers to upload their data to OpenAI's servers, with the training typically taking one to two hours. OpenAI's focus with this rollout is to reduce the complexity and effort required for businesses to tailor AI solutions to their needs, potentially increasing the adoption and effectiveness of AI in corporate environments. GPT-4o mini On July 18, 2024, OpenAI released a smaller and cheaper version, GPT-4o mini. According to OpenAI, its low cost is expected to be particularly useful for companies, startups, and developers that seek to integrate it into their services, which often make a high number of API calls. Its API costs $0.15 per million input tokens and $0.6 per million output tokens, compared to $2.50 and $10, respectively, for GPT-4o. It is also significantly more capable and 60% cheaper than GPT-3.5 Turbo, which it replaced on the ChatGPT interface. The price after fine-tuning doubles: $0.3 per million input tokens and $1.2 per million output tokens. Controversies As released, GPT-4o offered five voices: Breeze, Cove, Ember, Juniper, and Sky. A similarity between the voice of American actress Scarlett Johansson and Sky was quickly noticed. On May 14, Entertainment Weekly asked themselves whether this likeness was on purpose. On May 18, Johansson's husband, Colin Jost, joked about the similarity in a segment on Saturday Night Live. On May 20, 2024, OpenAI disabled the Sky voice. Scarlett Johansson starred in the 2013 sci-fi movie Her, playing Samantha, an artificially intelligent virtual assistant personified by a female voice. As part of the promotion leading up to the release of GPT-4o, Sam Altman on May 13 tweeted a single word: "her". OpenAI stated that each voice was based on the voice work of a hired actor. According to OpenAI, "Sky's voice is not an imitation of Scarlett Johansson but belongs to a different professional actress using her own natural speaking voice." CTO Mira Murati stated "I don't know about the voice. I actually had to go and listen to Scarlett Johansson's voice." OpenAI further stated the voice talent was recruited before reaching out to Johansson. On May 21, Johansson issued a statement explaining that OpenAI had repeatedly offered to make her a deal to gain permission to use her voice as early as nine months prior to release, a deal she rejected. She said she was "shocked, angered, and in disbelief that Mr. Altman would pursue a voice that sounded so eerily similar to mine that my closest friends and news outlets could not tell the difference." In the statement, Johansson also used the incident to draw attention to the lack of legal safeguards around the use of creative work to power leading AI tools, as her legal counsel demanded OpenAI detail the specifics of how the Sky voice was created. Observers noted similarities to how Johansson had previously sued and settled with The Walt Disney Company for breach of contract over the direct-to-streaming rollout of her Marvel film Black Widow, a settlement widely speculated to have netted her around $40M. Also on May 21, Shira Ovide at The Washington Post shared her list of "most bone-headed self-owns" by technology companies, with the decision to go ahead with a Johansson sound-alike voice despite her opposition and then denying the similarities ranking 6th. On May 24, Derek Robertson at Politico wrote about the "massive backlash", concluding that "appropriating the voice of one of the world's most famous movie stars — in reference [...] to a film that serves as a cautionary tale about over-reliance on AI — is unlikely to help shift the public back into [Sam Altman's] corner anytime soon." In April 2025, OpenAI rolled back an update of GPT-4o due to excessive sycophancy, after widespread reports that it had become flattering and agreeable to the point of supporting clearly delusional or dangerous ideas. In the United States, at least nine lawsuits have alleged that GPT-4o has encouraged teens to end their lives. The model was still described as sycophancy-prone when it was removed from ChatGPT in February 2026. On August 7, 2025, OpenAI released GPT-5. Its release was criticized as, with it, legacy GPT models were no longer available via ChatGPT, including GPT-4o, except for Pro users. Some users were particularly frustrated over this removal without prior warning because they used different GPT models for distinct purposes and found that GPT-5's router system left them with less control. In addition, some users preferred GPT-4o's warmer and more personal tone over that of GPT-5, which they described as "flat", "uncreative" and "lobotomized", and resembling an "overworked secretary". As a response, in a post on X, Sam Altman said that OpenAI would bring back the option to select GPT-4o to Plus users as well, and "[w]e [OpenAI] will watch usage as we think about how long to offer legacy models for." He also stated: "We for sure underestimated how much some of the things that people like in GPT-4o matter to them, even if GPT-5 performs better in most ways". "Long-term, this has reinforced that we really need good ways for different users to customize things (we understand that there isn't one model that works for everyone, and we have been investing in steerability research and launched a research preview of different personalities)". On August 13, 2025, Altman wrote on X that OpenAI is working on GPT-5's personality to make the model "feel warmer". The model was removed from ChatGPT on February 13, 2026. This caused new backlash from users that had grown attached to its personality and felt its creative writing abilities and understanding of nuance were irreplaceable. On social media, some users launched the movement "#Keep4o". A research paper highlighted the plea "Please, don’t kill the only model that still feels human". The model was removed the day before Valentine's Day, and some users had romantic relationships with GPT-4o. See also References |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World#cite_ref-Price_30-1] | [TOKENS: 5641] |
Contents World The world is the totality of entities, the whole of reality, or everything that exists. The nature of the world has been conceptualized differently in different fields. Some conceptions see the world as unique, while others talk of a "plurality of worlds". Some treat the world as one simple object, while others analyze the world as a complex made up of parts. In scientific cosmology, the world or universe is commonly defined as "the totality of all space and time; all that is, has been, and will be". Theories of modality talk of possible worlds as complete and consistent ways how things could have been. Phenomenology, starting from the horizon of co-given objects present in the periphery of every experience, defines the world as the biggest horizon, or the "horizon of all horizons". In philosophy of mind, the world is contrasted with the mind as that which is represented by the mind. Theology conceptualizes the world in relation to God, for example, as God's creation, as identical to God, or as the two being interdependent. In religions, there is a tendency to downgrade the material or sensory world in favor of a spiritual world to be sought through religious practice. A comprehensive representation of the world and our place in it, as is found in religions, is known as a worldview. Cosmogony is the field that studies the origin or creation of the world, while eschatology refers to the science or doctrine of the last things or of the end of the world. In various contexts, the term "world" takes a more restricted meaning associated, for example, with the Earth and all life on it, with humanity as a whole, or with an international or intercontinental scope. In this sense, world history refers to the history of humanity as a whole, and world politics is the discipline of political science studying issues that transcend nations and continents. Other examples include terms such as "world religion", "world language", "world government", "world war", "world population", "world economy", or "world championship". Etymology The English word world comes from the Old English weorold. The Old English is a reflex of the Common Germanic *weraldiz, a compound of weraz 'man' and aldiz 'age', thus literally meaning roughly 'age of man'; this word led to Old Frisian warld, Old Saxon werold, Old Dutch werolt, Old High German weralt, and Old Norse verǫld. The corresponding word in Latin is mundus, literally 'clean, elegant', itself a loan translation of Greek cosmos 'orderly arrangement'. While the Germanic word thus reflects a mythological notion of a "domain of Man" (compare Midgard), presumably as opposed to the divine sphere on the one hand and the chthonic sphere of the underworld on the other, the Greco-Latin term expresses a notion of creation as an act of establishing order out of chaos. Conceptions Different fields often work with quite different conceptions of the essential features associated with the term "world". Some conceptions see the world as unique: there can be no more than one world. Others talk of a "plurality of worlds". Some see worlds as complex things composed of many substances as their parts while others hold that worlds are simple in the sense that there is only one substance: the world as a whole. Some characterize worlds in terms of objective spacetime while others define them relative to the horizon present in each experience. These different characterizations are not always exclusive: it may be possible to combine some without leading to a contradiction. Most of them agree that worlds are unified totalities. Monism is a thesis about oneness: that only one thing exists in a certain sense. The denial of monism is pluralism, the thesis that, in a certain sense, more than one thing exists. There are many forms of monism and pluralism, but in relation to the world as a whole, two are of special interest: existence monism/pluralism and priority monism/pluralism. Existence monism states that the world is the only concrete object there is. This means that all the concrete "objects" we encounter in our daily lives, including apples, cars and ourselves, are not truly objects in a strict sense. Instead, they are just dependent aspects of the world-object. Such a world-object is simple in the sense that it does not have any genuine parts. For this reason, it has also been referred to as "blobject" since it lacks an internal structure like a blob. Priority monism allows that there are other concrete objects besides the world. But it holds that these objects do not have the most fundamental form of existence, that they somehow depend on the existence of the world. The corresponding forms of pluralism state that the world is complex in the sense that it is made up of concrete, independent objects. Scientific cosmology can be defined as the science of the universe as a whole. In it, the terms "universe" and "cosmos" are usually used as synonyms for the term "world". One common definition of the world/universe found in this field is as "[t]he totality of all space and time; all that is, has been, and will be". Some definitions emphasize that there are two other aspects to the universe besides spacetime: forms of energy or matter, like stars and particles, and laws of nature. World-conceptions in this field differ both concerning their notion of spacetime and of the contents of spacetime. The theory of relativity plays a central role in modern cosmology and its conception of space and time. A difference from its predecessors is that it conceives space and time not as distinct dimensions but as a single four-dimensional manifold called spacetime. This can be seen in special relativity in relation to the Minkowski metric, which includes both spatial and temporal components in its definition of distance. General relativity goes one step further by integrating the concept of mass into the concept of spacetime as its curvature. Quantum cosmology uses a classical notion of spacetime and conceives the whole world as one big wave function expressing the probability of finding particles in a given location. The world-concept plays a role in many modern theories of modality, sometimes in the form of possible worlds. A possible world is a complete and consistent way how things could have been. The actual world is a possible world since the way things are is a way things could have been. There are many other ways things could have been besides how they actually are. For example, Hillary Clinton did not win the 2016 US election, but she could have won. So there is a possible world in which she did. There is a vast number of possible worlds, one corresponding to each such difference, no matter how small or big, as long as no outright contradictions are introduced this way. Possible worlds are often conceived as abstract objects, for example, in terms of non-obtaining states of affairs or as maximally consistent sets of propositions. On such a view, they can even be seen as belonging to the actual world. Another way to conceive possible worlds, made famous by David Lewis, is as concrete entities. On this conception, there is no important difference between the actual world and possible worlds: both are conceived as concrete, inclusive and spatiotemporally connected. The only difference is that the actual world is the world we live in, while other possible worlds are not inhabited by us but by our counterparts. Everything within a world is spatiotemporally connected to everything else but the different worlds do not share a common spacetime: They are spatiotemporally isolated from each other. This is what makes them separate worlds. It has been suggested that, besides possible worlds, there are also impossible worlds. Possible worlds are ways things could have been, so impossible worlds are ways things could not have been. Such worlds involve a contradiction, like a world in which Hillary Clinton both won and lost the 2016 US election. Both possible and impossible worlds have in common the idea that they are totalities of their constituents. Within phenomenology, worlds are defined in terms of horizons of experiences. When we perceive an object, like a house, we do not just experience this object at the center of our attention but also various other objects surrounding it, given in the periphery. The term "horizon" refers to these co-given objects, which are usually experienced only in a vague, indeterminate manner. The perception of a house involves various horizons, corresponding to the neighborhood, the city, the country, the Earth, etc. In this context, the world is the biggest horizon or the "horizon of all horizons". It is common among phenomenologists to understand the world not just as a spatiotemporal collection of objects but as additionally incorporating various other relations between these objects. These relations include, for example, indication-relations that help us anticipate one object given the appearances of another object and means-end-relations or functional involvements relevant for practical concerns. In philosophy of mind, the term "world" is commonly used in contrast to the term "mind" as that which is represented by the mind. This is sometimes expressed by stating that there is a gap between mind and world and that this gap needs to be overcome for representation to be successful. One problem in philosophy of mind is to explain how the mind is able to bridge this gap and to enter into genuine mind-world-relations, for example, in the form of perception, knowledge or action. This is necessary for the world to be able to rationally constrain the activity of the mind. According to a realist position, the world is something distinct and independent from the mind. Idealists conceive of the world as partially or fully determined by the mind. Immanuel Kant's transcendental idealism, for example, posits that the spatiotemporal structure of the world is imposed by the mind on reality but lacks independent existence otherwise. A more radical idealist conception of the world can be found in Berkeley's subjective idealism, which holds that the world as a whole, including all everyday objects like tables, cats, trees and ourselves, "consists of nothing but minds and ideas". Different theological positions hold different conceptions of the world based on its relation to God. Classical theism states that God is wholly distinct from the world. But the world depends for its existence on God, both because God created the world and because He maintains or conserves it. This is sometimes understood in analogy to how humans create and conserve ideas in their imagination, with the difference being that the divine mind is vastly more powerful. On such a view, God has absolute, ultimate reality in contrast to the lower ontological status ascribed to the world. God's involvement in the world is often understood along the lines of a personal, benevolent God who looks after and guides His creation. Deists agree with theists that God created the world but deny any subsequent, personal involvement in it. Pantheists reject the separation between God and world. Instead, they claim that the two are identical. This means that there is nothing to the world that does not belong to God and that there is nothing to God beyond what is found in the world. Panentheism constitutes a middle ground between theism and pantheism. Against theism, it holds that God and the world are interrelated and depend on each other. Against pantheism, it holds that there is no outright identity between the two. History of philosophy In philosophy, the term world has several possible meanings. In some contexts, it refers to everything that makes up reality or the physical universe. In others, it can mean have a specific ontological sense (see world disclosure). While clarifying the concept of world has arguably always been among the basic tasks of Western philosophy, this theme appears to have been raised explicitly only at the start of the twentieth century, Plato is well known for his theory of forms, which posits the existence of two different worlds: the sensible world and the intelligible world. The sensible world is the world we live in, filled with changing physical things we can see, touch and interact with. The intelligible world is the world of invisible, eternal, changeless forms like goodness, beauty, unity and sameness. Plato ascribes a lower ontological status to the sensible world, which only imitates the world of forms. This is due to the fact that physical things exist only to the extent that they participate in the forms that characterize them, while the forms themselves have an independent manner of existence. In this sense, the sensible world is a mere replication of the perfect exemplars found in the world of forms: it never lives up to the original. In the allegory of the cave, Plato compares the physical things we are familiar with to mere shadows of the real things. But not knowing the difference, the prisoners in the cave mistake the shadows for the real things. Two definitions that were both put forward in the 1920s, however, suggest the range of available opinion. "The world is everything that is the case", wrote Ludwig Wittgenstein in his influential Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, first published in 1921. Martin Heidegger, meanwhile, argued that "the surrounding world is different for each of us, and notwithstanding that we move about in a common world". "World" is one of the key terms in Eugen Fink's philosophy. He thinks that there is a misguided tendency in western philosophy to understand the world as one enormously big thing containing all the small everyday things we are familiar with. He sees this view as a form of forgetfulness of the world and tries to oppose it by what he calls the "cosmological difference": the difference between the world and the inner-worldly things it contains. On his view, the world is the totality of the inner-worldly things that transcends them. It is itself groundless but it provides a ground for things. It therefore cannot be identified with a mere container. Instead, the world gives appearance to inner-worldly things, it provides them with a place, a beginning and an end. One difficulty in investigating the world is that we never encounter it since it is not just one more thing that appears to us. This is why Fink uses the notion of play or playing to elucidate the nature of the world. He sees play as a symbol of the world that is both part of it and that represents it. Play usually comes with a form of imaginary play-world involving various things relevant to the play. But just like the play is more than the imaginary realities appearing in it so the world is more than the actual things appearing in it. The concept of worlds plays a central role in Nelson Goodman's late philosophy. He argues that we need to posit different worlds in order to account for the fact that there are different incompatible truths found in reality. Two truths are incompatible if they ascribe incompatible properties to the same thing. This happens, for example, when we assert both that the earth moves and that the earth is at rest. These incompatible truths correspond to two different ways of describing the world: heliocentrism and geocentrism. Goodman terms such descriptions "world versions". He holds a correspondence theory of truth: a world version is true if it corresponds to a world. Incompatible true world versions correspond to different worlds. It is common for theories of modality to posit the existence of a plurality of possible worlds. But Goodman's theory is different since it posits a plurality not of possible but of actual worlds. Such a position is in danger of involving a contradiction: there cannot be a plurality of actual worlds if worlds are defined as maximally inclusive wholes. This danger may be avoided by interpreting Goodman's world-concept not as maximally inclusive wholes in the absolute sense but in relation to its corresponding world-version: a world contains all and only the entities that its world-version describes. Religion Mythological cosmologies depict the world as centered on an axis mundi and delimited by a boundary such as a world ocean, a world serpent or similar. Hinduism constitutes a family of religious-philosophical views. These views present perspectives on the nature and role of the world. Samkhya philosophy, for example, is a metaphysical dualism that understands reality as comprising 2 parts: purusha and prakriti. The term "purusha" stands for the individual conscious self that each of "us" possesses. Prakriti, on the other hand, is the 1 world inhabited by all these selves. Samkhya understands this world as a world of matter governed by the law of cause and effect. The term "matter" is understood in a sense in this tradition including physical and mental aspects. This is reflected in the doctrine of tattvas, according to which prakriti is made up of 23 principles or elements of reality. These principles include physical elements, like water or earth, and mental aspects, like intelligence or sense-impressions. The relation between purusha and prakriti is conceived as 1 of observation: purusha is the conscious self aware of the world of prakriti and does not causally interact with it. A conception of the world is present in Advaita Vedanta, the monist school among the Vedanta schools. Unlike the realist position defended in Samkhya philosophy, Advaita Vedanta sees the world of multiplicity as an illusion, referred to as Maya. This illusion includes impression of existing as separate experiencing selfs called Jivas. Instead, Advaita Vedanta teaches that on the most fundamental level of reality, referred to as Brahman, there exists no plurality or difference. All there is is 1 all-encompassing self: Atman. Ignorance is seen as the source of this illusion, which results in bondage to the world of mere appearances. Liberation is possible in the course of overcoming this illusion by acquiring the knowledge of Brahman, according to Advaita Vedanta. Contemptus mundi is the name given to the belief that the world, in all its vanity, is nothing more than a futile attempt to hide from God by stifling our desire for the good and the holy. This view has been characterised as a "pastoral of fear" by historian Jean Delumeau. "The world, the flesh, and the devil" is a traditional division of the sources of temptation. Orbis Catholicus is a Latin phrase meaning "Catholic world", per the expression Urbi et Orbi, and refers to that area of Christendom under papal supremacy. In Islam, the term "dunya" is used for the world. Its meaning is derived from the root word "dana", a term for "near". It is associated with the temporal, sensory world and earthly concerns, i.e. with this world in contrast to the spiritual world. Religious teachings warn of a tendency to seek happiness in this world and advise a more ascetic lifestyle concerned with the afterlife. Other strands in Islam recommend a balanced approach. In Mandaean cosmology, the world or earthly realm is known as Tibil. It is separated from the World of Light (alma d-nhūra) above and the World of Darkness (alma d-hšuka) below by aether (ayar). Related terms and problems A worldview is a comprehensive representation of the world and our place in it. As a representation, it is a subjective perspective of the world and thereby different from the world it represents. All higher animals need to represent their environment in some way in order to navigate it. But it has been argued that only humans possess a representation encompassing enough to merit the term "worldview". Philosophers of worldviews commonly hold that the understanding of any object depends on a worldview constituting the background on which this understanding can take place. This may affect not just our intellectual understanding of the object in question but the experience of it in general. It is therefore impossible to assess one's worldview from a neutral perspective since this assessment already presupposes the worldview as its background. Some hold that each worldview is based on a single hypothesis that promises to solve all the problems of our existence we may encounter. On this interpretation, the term is closely associated to the worldviews given by different religions. Worldviews offer orientation not just in theoretical matters but also in practical matters. For this reason, they usually include answers to the question of the meaning of life and other evaluative components about what matters and how we should act. A worldview can be unique to one individual but worldviews are usually shared by many people within a certain culture or religion. The idea that there exist many different worlds is found in various fields. For example, theories of modality talk about a plurality of possible worlds and the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics carries this reference even in its name. Talk of different worlds is also common in everyday language, for example, with reference to the world of music, the world of business, the world of football, the world of experience or the Asian world. But at the same time, worlds are usually defined as all-inclusive totalities. This seems to contradict the very idea of a plurality of worlds since if a world is total and all-inclusive then it cannot have anything outside itself. Understood this way, a world can neither have other worlds besides itself or be part of something bigger. One way to resolve this paradox while holding onto the notion of a plurality of worlds is to restrict the sense in which worlds are totalities. On this view, worlds are not totalities in an absolute sense. This might be even understood in the sense that, strictly speaking, there are no worlds at all. Another approach understands worlds in a schematic sense: as context-dependent expressions that stand for the current domain of discourse. So in the expression "Around the World in Eighty Days", the term "world" refers to the earth while in the colonial expression "the New World" it refers to the landmass of North and South America. Cosmogony is the field that studies the origin or creation of the world. This includes both scientific cosmogony and creation myths found in various religions. The dominant theory in scientific cosmogony is the Big Bang theory, according to which both space, time and matter have their origin in one initial singularity occurring about 13.8 billion years ago. This singularity was followed by an expansion that allowed the universe to sufficiently cool down for the formation of subatomic particles and later atoms. These initial elements formed giant clouds, which would then coalesce into stars and galaxies. Non-scientific creation myths are found in many cultures and are often enacted in rituals expressing their symbolic meaning. They can be categorized concerning their contents. Types often found include creation from nothing, from chaos or from a cosmic egg. Eschatology refers to the science or doctrine of the last things or of the end of the world. It is traditionally associated with religion, specifically with the Abrahamic religions. In this form, it may include teachings both of the end of each individual human life and of the end of the world as a whole. But it has been applied to other fields as well, for example, in the form of physical eschatology, which includes scientifically based speculations about the far future of the universe. According to some models, there will be a Big Crunch in which the whole universe collapses back into a singularity, possibly resulting in a second Big Bang afterward. But current astronomical evidence seems to suggest that our universe will continue to expand indefinitely. World history studies the world from a historical perspective. Unlike other approaches to history, it employs a global viewpoint. It deals less with individual nations and civilizations, which it usually approaches at a high level of abstraction. Instead, it concentrates on wider regions and zones of interaction, often interested in how people, goods and ideas move from one region to another. It includes comparisons of different societies and civilizations as well as considering wide-ranging developments with a long-term global impact like the process of industrialization. Contemporary world history is dominated by three main research paradigms determining the periodization into different epochs. One is based on productive relations between humans and nature. The two most important changes in history in this respect were the introduction of agriculture and husbandry concerning the production of food, which started around 10,000 to 8,000 BCE and is sometimes termed the Neolithic Revolution, and the Industrial Revolution, which started around 1760 CE and involved the transition from manual to industrial manufacturing. Another paradigm, focusing on culture and religion instead, is based on Karl Jaspers' theories about the Axial Age, a time in which various new forms of religious and philosophical thoughts appeared in several separate parts of the world around the time between 800 and 200 BCE. A third periodization is based on the relations between civilizations and societies. According to this paradigm, history can be divided into three periods in relation to the dominant region in the world: Middle Eastern dominance before 500 BCE, Eurasian cultural balance until 1500 CE and Western dominance since 1500 CE. Big History employs an even wider framework than world history by putting human history into the context of the history of the universe as a whole. It starts with the Big Bang and traces the formation of galaxies, the Solar System, the Earth, its geological eras, the evolution of life and humans until the present day. World politics, also referred to as global politics or international relations, is the discipline of political science studying issues of interest to the world that transcend nations and continents. It aims to explain complex patterns found in the social world that are often related to the pursuit of power, order and justice, usually in the context of globalization. It focuses not just on the relations between nation-states but also considers other transnational actors, like multinational corporations, terrorist groups, or non-governmental organizations. For example, it tries to explain events such as the September 11 attacks, the 2003 invasion of Iraq or the 2008 financial crisis. Various theories have been proposed in order to deal with the complexity involved in formulating such explanations. These theories are sometimes divided into realism, liberalism and constructivism. Realists see nation-states as the main actors in world politics. They constitute an anarchical international system without any overarching power to control their behavior. They are seen as sovereign agents that, determined by human nature, act according to their national self-interest. Military force may play an important role in the ensuing struggle for power between states, but diplomacy and cooperation are also key mechanisms for nations to achieve their goals. Liberalists acknowledge the importance of states but they also emphasize the role of transnational actors, like the United Nations or the World Trade Organization. They see humans as perfectible and stress the role of democracy in this process. The emergent order in world politics, on this perspective, is more complex than a mere balance of power since more different agents and interests are involved in its production. Constructivism ascribes more importance to the agency of individual humans than realism and liberalism. It understands the social world as a construction of the people living in it. This leads to an emphasis on the possibility of change. If the international system is an anarchy of nation-states, as the realists hold, then this is only so because we made it this way and may change since this is not prefigured by human nature, according to the constructivists. See also References External links Africa Antarctica Asia Australia Europe North America South America Afro-Eurasia Americas Eurasia Oceania |
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Contents Book sources This page allows users to search multiple sources for a book given a 10- or 13-digit International Standard Book Number. Spaces and dashes in the ISBN do not matter. This page links to catalogs of libraries, booksellers, and other book sources where you will be able to search for the book by its International Standard Book Number (ISBN). Online text Google Books and other retail sources below may be helpful if you want to verify citations in Wikipedia articles, because they often let you search an online version of the book for specific words or phrases, or you can browse through the book (although for copyright reasons the entire book is usually not available). At the Open Library (part of the Internet Archive) you can borrow and read entire books online. Online databases Subscription eBook databases Libraries Alabama Alaska California Colorado Connecticut Delaware Florida Georgia Illinois Indiana Iowa Kansas Kentucky Massachusetts Michigan Minnesota Missouri Nebraska New Jersey New Mexico New York North Carolina Ohio Oklahoma Oregon Pennsylvania Rhode Island South Carolina South Dakota Tennessee Texas Utah Washington state Wisconsin Bookselling and swapping Find your book on a site that compiles results from other online sites: These sites allow you to search the catalogs of many individual booksellers: Non-English book sources If the book you are looking for is in a language other than English, you might find it helpful to look at the equivalent pages on other Wikipedias, linked below – they are more likely to have sources appropriate for that language. Find other editions The WorldCat xISBN tool for finding other editions is no longer available. However, there is often a "view all editions" link on the results page from an ISBN search. Google books often lists other editions of a book and related books under the "about this book" link. You can convert between 10 and 13 digit ISBNs with these tools: Find on Wikipedia See also Get free access to research! Research tools and services Outreach Get involved |
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Contents Intersectionality Intersectionality is an analytical framework for understanding how groups' and individuals' social and political identities result in unique combinations of discrimination and privilege. Examples of these intersecting and overlapping factors include gender, caste, sex, race, ethnicity, class, sexuality, religion, disability, physical appearance, and age. These factors can lead to both empowerment and oppression. Intersectionality arose in reaction to both white feminism and the then male-dominated Black liberation movement, citing the "interlocking oppressions" of racism, sexism, and heteronormativity. It broadens the scope of the first and second waves of feminism, which largely focused on the experiences of women who were white, cisgender, and middle-class, to include the different experiences of women of color, poor women, immigrant women, and other groups, and aims to separate itself from white feminism by acknowledging women's differing experiences and identities. The term intersectionality was coined by Kimberlé Crenshaw in 1989.: 385 She describes how interlocking systems of power affect those who are most marginalized in society. Activists and academics use the framework to promote social and political egalitarianism. Intersectionality opposes analytical systems that treat each axis of oppression in isolation. In this framework, for instance, discrimination against Black women cannot be explained as a simple combination of misogyny and racism, but as something more complicated. While many readers understand intersectionality as the overlapping of multiple social identities (e.g., race, gender, and class), the original intent was to provide an internal framework for analyzing systems of oppression and privilege that interlock. For example, structural racism, sexism, classism, heterosexism, and to support putting theory into practice for social justice rather than simply cataloguing individual identities. Intersectionality has heavily influenced modern feminism and gender studies. Its proponents suggest that it promotes a more nuanced and complex approach to addressing power and oppression, rather than offering simplistic answers. Its critics suggest that the concept is too broad or complex, tends to reduce individuals to specific demographic factors, is used as an ideological tool, and is difficult to apply in research contexts. Scholars of postcolonial and transnational feminist studies have also debated the global application of intersectionality Key concepts Patricia Hill Collins, author of Intersectionality as Critical Social Theory (2019), refers to the various intersections of social inequality as "vectors of oppression and privilege" that together form a matrix of domination. These concepts describe how people's experiences of privilege and marginalization are shaped not just by individual differences in isolation (e.g., sexual orientation, class, race, age, etc.), but also by the effect of overlaps and interactions between these differences. The impact of a particular factor, such as race, can vary based on the presence or absence of other factors, such as gender or class.: 204 In the European Union (EU) and UK, "multiple discrimination" refers to discrimination which encompasses more than one social classification (e.g., gender, race, class, religion, sexuality, etc.). These categories, which were previously considered in isolation as defining in their own right, are now increasingly approached as different facets of a person's identity, considered as a multidimensional whole. Standpoint theory has been described by Patricia Collins and Dorothy E. Smith. A standpoint is an individual's world perspective. Standpoint theory suggests that societal knowledge is subjective, being situated within an individual's specific geographic location and the social conditions under which it was produced.: 392 History Black feminist scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw introduced the concept of intersectionality in a pair of essays published in 1989 and 1991 in the field of legal studies. Intersectionality originated in critical race studies and considers the way different forms of oppression (such as racism, sexism, classism, homophobia, and so on) can combine and interact to produce multifaceted systems of oppression and privilege that shape the experiences of individuals. Crenshaw used intersectionality to demonstrate how these intersecting systems of oppression disadvantaged minorities in the workplace and society. Although Crenshaw introduced the term Intersectionality in 1989, recent scholars emphasize that intersectionality is not a static framework but one that has continued to evolve both before and after its namesake. In a 2023 review of the concept's development, T. Batista argued that intersectionality has undergone significant reinterpretation over time as researchers apply it across new geopolitical, legal, and social contexts. The article notes that while Crenshaw's original formulation emerged from Black feminist legal theory to illustrate how racism and sexism operate simultaneously, contemporary scholars increasingly stress the need to maintain a focus on structures of power rather than reducing the concept to overlapping identities. This ongoing academic debate highlights both the durability of Crenshaw's foundational insights and the expanding range of issues to which intersectionality is now applied. The historical exclusion of Black women from the feminist movement in the United States resulted in many Black 19th- and 20th-century feminists—including Sojourner Truth, Anna J. Cooper, Maria W. Stewart, Ida B. Wells, and others—challenging their historical exclusion from earlier feminist movements, which were primarily led by white middle-class women who suggested that women were a homogeneous category who shared the same life experiences. In her 1851 "Ain't I a Woman?" speech, Sojourner Truth spoke from her racialized position as a formerly enslaved woman to critique essentialist notions of femininity. She highlighted the differences between the treatment of white and Black women in society, saying that white women were often regarded as emotional and delicate, while Black women were stereotyped as brutish and subjected to both gendered and racialized abuse. These observations were largely dismissed by many white feminists of the time, who prioritized the suffrage movement over addressing the intersecting oppressions faced by Black women. Early writers and intellectuals such as Cooper, Stewart, Wells, Stuart Hall, and Nira Yuval-Davis also emphasized the interconnected nature of racial and gender oppressions, prefiguring intersectionality. In her 1892 essay titled "The Colored Woman's Office", Cooper identified Black women as crucial agents of social change, emphasizing their unique understanding of multiple forms of oppression. In her book A Voice from the South (1892), Cooper emphasized the importance of considering the "whole race" by focusing on the lived experiences of Black women. Cooper said that their oppression was just not racial or gender-based but a complex combination of the two. W. E. B. Du Bois theorized that the intersectional paradigms of race, class, and nation might explain specific aspects of the Black political economy. Patricia Hill Collins writes: "Du Bois saw race, class, and nation not primarily as personal identity categories but as social hierarchies that shaped African-American access to status, poverty, and power." Du Bois nevertheless omitted gender from his theory and considered it more of a personal identity category. In 1947, Pauli Murray used the phrase "Jane Crow" to describe the compounded challenges faced by Black women in the Jim Crow South. Patricia Hill Collins describes the many proponents of Black, Asian American, Latina, Indigenous, and Chicana feminism active in North America between the 1960s and 1980s as instrumental in the development of intersectionality. In the 1970s and 1980s, a number of non-Western feminists of color also articulated ideas similar to intersectionality, such as Awa Thiam, Chandra Talpade Mohanty, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Chela Sandoval, and others. In 1974, a group of Black feminists organized the Combahee River Collective in Boston, Massachusetts, in response to what they felt was an alienation from both white feminism and the male-dominated Black liberation movement, citing the "interlocking oppressions" of racism, sexism and heteronormativity. The collective developed the concept of "simultaneity": the simultaneous influences of race, class, gender, and sexuality, which informed the members' lives and their resistance to oppression. The Combahee River Collective advanced an understanding of African-American experiences that challenged analyses emerging from Black and male-centered social movements, as well as those from mainstream cisgender, white, middle-class, heterosexual feminists. In DeGraffenreid v. General Motors (1976), Emma DeGraffenreid and four other Black female auto workers alleged compound employment discrimination as Black women resulting from General Motors' seniority-based system of layoffs. The courts weighed the allegations of race and gender discrimination separately, finding that the employment of African-American men in the factory disproved racial discrimination, and the employment of white women in the offices disproved gender discrimination. The court declined to consider compound discrimination, and dismissed the case. Crenshaw said that in cases such as this, the courts have tended to ignore Black women's unique experiences by treating them as only women or only Black.: 141–143 In 1978, Senegalese writer Awa Thiam wrote of the "threefold oppression" of racism, sexism, and class oppression which impacted African women: The Black woman of Africa suffers threefold oppression: by virtue of her sex, she is dominated by man in a patriarchal society; by virtue of her class she is at the mercy of capitalist exploitation; by virtue of her race she suffers from the appropriation of her country by colonial or neo-colonial powers. Sexism, racism, class division; three plagues. By the 1980s, as second-wave feminism began to recede, scholars of color including Audre Lorde, Gloria E. Anzaldúa and Angela Davis brought their lived experiences into academic discussion, shaping what would become known as "intersectionality" within race, class, and gender studies in U.S. academia. Scholar bell hooks, in her groundbreaking work Ain't I a Woman? Black Women and Feminism (1981), described the exclusion of Black women's experiences from mainstream feminist narratives and underscored the importance of addressing race, gender, and class as intersecting systems of oppression. For hooks, the emergence of intersectionality "challenged the notion that 'gender' was the primary factor determining a woman's fate". Inspired by Lorde, Afro-German women also began to explore issues of overlapping oppression in Germany. Also in 1981, Cherríe Moraga and Gloria Anzaldúa published This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color, an anthology centering the experiences of women of color, which challenges white feminists who made claims to solidarity based on sisterhood, calling for greater recognition of their multiple identities. Among other things, works in the anthology call for greater attention to race-related subjectivities in feminism, and ultimately laid the foundation for third wave feminism. In 1988, Deborah K. King published the article "Multiple Jeopardy, Multiple Consciousness: The Context of a Black Feminist Ideology". In it, King addresses what soon became the foundation for intersectionality, saying, "Black women have long recognized the special circumstances of our lives in the United States: the commonalities that we share with all women, as well as the bonds that connect us to the men of our race". In 1989, Kimberlé Crenshaw coined the term intersectionality as a way to help explain the oppression of African-American women in her essay Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Anti-discrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory and Antiracist Politics. Crenshaw's term has risen to the forefront of national conversations about racial justice, identity politics, and policing—and over the years has helped shape legal discussions. In her work, Crenshaw discusses Black feminism, arguing that the experience of being a Black woman cannot be understood in terms independent of either being Black or a woman. Rather, it must include interactions between the two identities, which, she adds, should frequently reinforce one another. In order to demonstrate that women of color have different experiences from white women, Crenshaw explores domestic violence and rape committed by men, which for women of color consist of a combination of both racism and sexism. She says that because the discourses designed to address either race or sex do not consider both at the same time, women of color are marginalized within both of them as a result. The chapter "Sexualities, social justice, and sexual justice" by Jeff Hearn, Sofia Aboim and Tamara Shefer also directly connects to Crenshaw's concept of intersectionality. It is explained how Crenshaw argues that systems of power constantly ignore the way race and gender intersect. This produces unique forms of marginalization for women of colour. Similarly, the passage also critiques global sexual justice efforts for reproducing racialize and gendered hierarchies, specifically when Global Northern actors frame poor, Black women living in the Global South as "helpless victims". Both cases touch upon how marginalized groups are spoken about, rather than with. Crenshaw also delves into several legal cases that exhibit the concept of political intersectionality and how anti-discrimination law has been historically limited, such as DeGraffenreid v. General Motors, Moore v Hughes Helicopter Inc., and Payne v Travenol. There are two commonalities, amongst others, between these cases: firstly, each respective court's inability to fully understand the multidimensionality of the plaintiff's intersecting identities, and the limited ability that the plaintiffs had to argue their case due to restrictions created by the very legislation that exists in opposition to discrimination, such as Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Development The concept of intersectionality was intended to illuminate dynamics that have often been overlooked by feminist theory and movements. Racial inequality was largely ignored by first-wave feminism, which was primarily concerned with achieving political equality between white men and white women,: 59–60 and second-wave feminism, which sought to dismantle sexism relating to the perceived domestic purpose of women. Third-wave feminism—which emerged shortly after the term intersectionality was coined—attempted to address the lack of attention given to race, class, sexual orientation, and gender identity in early feminist movements.: 72–73 The term became more widely used in the 1990s, particularly following further development of Crenshaw's work by sociologist Patricia Hill Collins. Collins says Crenshaw's term replaced her own previous coinage "Black feminist thought", and "increased the general applicability of her theory from African American women to all women".: 61 Collins sought to create frameworks to think about intersectionality, rather than expanding on the theory itself. She identified three main branches of study within intersectionality: one dealing with the background, ideas, issues, conflicts, and debates within intersectionality; another that seeks to apply intersectionality as an analytical strategy to examine how various social institutions might perpetuate social inequality; and one that uses intersectionality to bring social change through social justice initiatives. Though intersectionality began with the exploration of the interplay between sexist and racist oppression, with classist and homophobic/biphobic oppression sometimes included, the theory has since expanded to cover other forms of oppression. Additionally, intersectionality has been used to address the differences between women of color even regarding shared experiences such as racism. For example, Asian American women have reported intersectional experiences that set them apart from other women of color as well as Asian men. Gloria Wekker says the Chicana feminist work of Gloria E. Anzaldúa is important because "existent categories for identity are strikingly not dealt with in separate or mutually exclusive terms, but are always referred to in relation to one another". In South Asia, Dalit feminists have drawn on intersectional analysis to emphasize the compounded marginalization faced by Dalit women, who experience both caste-based and gender-based discrimination. Scholars such as Thenmozhi Soundararajan argue in their works like The Trauma of Caste that mainstream feminist frameworks often neglect these intersecting oppressions, calling for a more nuanced analysis that recognizes caste as a central axis of inequality. Collins has used a Marxist feminist approach to apply intersectional principles to study Black women's poverty and what she calls the "work/family nexus". In her 2000 article "Black Political Economy", she suggests the intersections of consumer racism, gender hierarchies, and disadvantages in the labor market can be centered on Black women's unique experiences—such as the suppression of Black women's economic mobility due to inheritance and anti-miscegenation laws.: 506 Chiara Bottici has also incorporated elements of anarcha-feminism to counter criticisms that intersectionality is incomplete or fails to recognize the specificity of women's oppression, saying "that there is something specific about the oppression of women and that in order to fight it you have to fight all other forms of oppression." In Latin America, Maria Lugones introduced the concept of the "coloniality of gender" to explore how colonial histories intersect across race, gender, and class, creating unique forms of oppression for Indigenous and Afro-descendant women. Her work reveals the imposition of Eurocentric gender norms during colonial rule, which marginalized non-Western gender identities and social structures. Mara Viveros Vigoya also provides a Latin American perspective which considers the need to address colonialism as part of an intersectional approach. Forms In "Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence Against Women of Color", Kimberlé Crenshaw outlines three forms of intersectionality to describe the violence women experience: structural, political, and representational. These frameworks are still used today. Structural intersectionality considers how people are marginalized by the combined effects of different overlapping and reinforcing forms of systemic, institutional, and structural inequality.: 797 : 1245 Crenshaw uses this approach to analyze the structural classism, racism, and sexism that combine to make women of color more vulnerable to domestic violence and rape, as well as how a failure to recognise the overlapping of these structures has resulted in inadequate interventions for such women.: 797 In 2020, Alesha Durfee used the structural intersectional approach to examine the inability of "multiply marginalized" people, such as women of color, to file for, obtain, serve, and enforce protective orders in domestic violence situations, and suggested that the systems in place replicated wider social inequalities. Durfee said the basis for such inequalities was "policies and procedures based on inappropriate assumptions about individuals" that do not account for the complexity of their lived experiences. In 2021, a group of researchers using a structural intersectional approach found that the impact of overlapping structural racism, sexism, and income inequality in U.S. healthcare varied considerably across the country but was most consistently associated with poor health in Black women. Political intersectionality considers how activist or political movements can marginalize people with multiple intersecting identities by focusing on "allegedly universal, single-axis approaches" which either exclude them or else ignore or downplay the complexities of their experiences.: 800 Black feminists such as Crenshaw and Deborah K. King have used political intersectionality to explore the separation of race- and gender-based discourse within the anti-racist and feminist movements, which requires women of color to prioritise their interests as either "people of color" or "women", rather than reflecting that they are both. This framework has since been applied to consider other intersections, such as class, sexuality, and disability. Sameena Azhar et al. have argued that Asian Americans are subject to myths that they "do not experience racialized, sexualized, and gendered microaggressions". They suggest these attitudes serve to socially and politically delegitimize Asian Americans' experiences of racism. They suggest that stereotypes of Asian Americans that frame their sexuality "in ways that maintain the social and political dominance of white men" affect Asian American men and women differently. For example, Asian American women were often perceived as romantically desirable and overly sexualized, while their male counterparts were perceived as asexual. Representational intersectionality is the study of how intersecting identities (e.g., race, gender, class, sexuality) are depicted in cultural narratives and media, and how this creates or reinforces overlapping forms of marginalization. Crenshaw used this framework to analyze how stereotypical portrayals of women of color in popular culture often perpetuate harm against them. Subsequent analysis of representation in popular culture has also used an international approach. Analyzing film and television, bell hooks suggests women of color are frequently portrayed as hyper-sexualized, "sassy", or docile tropes—such as the "fiery Latina', "submissive Asian", "angry Black woman"— which erase the full complexity of their intersecting identities, perpetuate oppressive societal attitudes and norms (such as sexism, racism, and classism), and even lead to violence against women of color. According to Mari J. Matsuda and others, these tropes also appear in advertising and marketing campaigns, which often portray women of color in "exotic" or "hyper-feminine" terms and thereby reinforce stereotypes of them as commodities or objects of consumption.[page needed] In their analysis of news media, including over two million articles published by Fox News and The New York Times between 2000–2022, Elliot Ash and others found that news stories involving women of color, LGBTQ+ people, and other minority groups often used sensational or stereotypical lenses, ignoring socioeconomic contexts or broader structural inequalities, and effectively "flattening" the narrative of complex identities. They especially noted tropes of criminality, cleanliness, and invasion about immigrants, single parents, and trans people, which they found had shaped broader perceptions of marginalized communities. In the context of domestic violence, Timothy Laurie and Hannah Stark also observe disparities in representations of victims and offenders: "cisgendered, white, middle-class women are most often regarded as victims responding to an oppressive gender order, and women of colour, Indigenous women, and working-class women are more likely to be regarded as potential criminals." Marie-Claire Belleau has called for "strategic intersectionality" in order to foster cooperation between feminisms of different ethnicities.: 51 She refers to different nat-cult (national-cultural) groups that produce different types of feminisms. Using the Québécois nat-cult as an example, Belleau says that many nat-cult groups contain infinite sub-identities within themselves, saying that there are endless ways in which different feminisms can cooperate by using strategic intersectionality, and that these partnerships can help bridge gaps between "dominant and marginal" groups.: 54 Belleau argues that, through strategic intersectionality, differences between nat-cult feminisms are neither essentialist nor universal, but should be understood as resulting from socio-cultural contexts. Furthermore, the performances of these nat-cult feminisms are also not essentialist. Instead, they are strategies. Postcolonial feminists and transnational feminists have criticized intersectionality as a concept emanating from WEIRD (Western, educated, industrialized, rich, democratic) societies that unduly universalizes women's experiences. Postcolonial feminists have worked to revise Western conceptualizations of intersectionality that assume all women experience the same type of gender and racial oppression. Shelly Grabe coined the term transnational intersectionality to represent a more comprehensive conceptualization of intersectionality. Grabe wrote, "Transnational intersectionality places importance on the intersections among gender, ethnicity, sexuality, economic exploitation, and other social hierarchies in the context of empire building or imperialist policies characterized by historical and emergent global capitalism." Both Postcolonial and transnational feminists advocate attending to "complex and intersecting oppressions and multiple forms of resistance". Vrushali Patil argues that intersectionality ought to recognize transborder constructions of racial and cultural hierarchies. About the effect of the state on identity formation, Patil says: "If we continue to neglect cross-border dynamics and fail to problematize the nation and its emergence via transnational processes, our analyses will remain tethered to the spatialities and temporalities of colonial modernity." Expanding on these global and decolonial perspectives, philosopher Charles W. Mills has argued that Western political philosophy has historically excluded race and colonialism from its moral frameworks, calling for a "decolonization" of liberal thought to address global systems of domination. Similarly, contributors to Gary Craig's Handbook on Global Social Justice emphasize that intersectional approaches must account for worldwide structures of inequality such as colonial history, race, and class, in order to achieve substantive and inclusive justice. Elaborating on this line of thought, Marc Aziz Michael has shown, relying on dominant female STEM enrolment and proficiency data in the Arab world, that even when intersectional axes of thought are included in Western thinking, they are typically perceived as a stacking of oppressions, rather than crossroads of freedom and resistance. Chandra Mohanty discusses alliances between women worldwide as an example of intersectionality in a global context. She rejects the Western feminist theory, especially when it writes about global women of color, and is generally associated with "third world women". She argues that "third world women" are often thought of as a homogeneous entity, when, in fact, their experience of oppression is informed by their geography, history, and culture. When Western feminists write about women in the global South in this way, they dismiss the inherent, intersecting identities that shape feminism in the global South. Mohanty questions the performance of intersectionality and relationality of power structures within the US and colonialism, and how to work across identities with this history of colonial power structures. This is elaborated on by Christine Bose, who discusses a global use of intersectionality that works to remove associations of specific inequalities with specific institutions while showing that these systems generate intersectional effects. She uses this approach to develop a framework that can analyze gender inequalities across different nations and differentiates this from an approach (the one that Mohanty was referring to) which, one, paints national-level inequalities as the same and, two, differentiates only between the global North and South. This is manifested through the intersection of global dynamics, such as economics, migration, or violence, with regional dynamics, such as histories of the nation or gendered inequalities in education and property. Europe Evidence suggests that within Europe there is a divide between white and blue collar workers, and their levels of political engagement, white collar men demonstrated the highest levels of political engagement while on the opposite side of the spectrum falls blue collar women. Women in Europe are observed to generally have less political confidence, especially those who were not able to achieve higher levels of education and or work blue collar jobs. One aspect relevant to European intersectionality has to do with the migration status of an individual. European migrants come from across the globe from various different circumstances that may or may not have forced them to flee their homes due to arranged marriages or internal conflict. These situations by nature make these individuals vulnerable because they are in an unfamiliar place and do not generally have a lot of resources to support themselves. Exact numbers differ year by year, as there is a significant number of unaccompanied children migrants. This is on top of reports of racism, islamophobia and general anti-migrant sentiment at almost every level of European society. Studies in Europe that have used intersectionality as a guiding framework have contributed to a better understanding of gender based violence, showing that it does not occur in isolation and that its underlying patterns can be anticipated and addressed. Gender based violence does not affect all groups equally. Certain populations are more susceptible due not only to their individual circumstances but also to broader societal and institutional factors. Applications Intersectionality has been applied in many fields from politics, education healthcare, and employment, to economics. Scholars of intersectionality have also advocated for its use more widely. Little good-quality quantitative research has been done to support or undermine the practical uses of intersectionality, owing to misapplication of theoretical concepts and problems in methodology. Women with disabilities encounter more frequent domestic violence with a greater number of abusers. Health care workers and personal care attendants perpetrate abuse in these circumstances, and women with disabilities have fewer options for escaping the abusive situation. There is a "silence" principle concerning the intersectionality of women and disability, which maintains an overall social denial of the prevalence of abuse among the disabled and leads to this abuse being frequently ignored when encountered. This can exacerbate limited autonomy and social isolation of disabled individuals, and place women with disabilities in situations where further or more frequent abuse can occur. Intersectionality in education involves considering multiple elements of people's identities to increase accessibility, such as language, learning style, and disabilities. Laura Gonzales and Janine Butler say that an intersectional approach can help decrease the impact of disadvantages in the learning environment. For example, the research by Gonzales and Butler found benefits from incorporating bilingual delivery, adjustments for disability, and inclusion of marginalized subjects in their writing assignments. Authors Collin Lamout Craig and Staci Maree suggest there are also benefits for intersectionality in aiding acknowledgment and understanding in academia. Within the institution of education, Sandra Jones' research on working-class women in academia takes into consideration meritocracy within all social strata, but argues that it is complicated by race and the external forces that oppress. Intersectional approaches to employment may be implemented in different ways in different organizations. Within the UK charity sector, Ashlee Christoffersen identified five different conceptualizations of intersectionality. "Generic intersectionality" was observed in policy areas, where intersectionality was conceptualized as developing policies to be in everyone's universal interest rather than being targeted to particular groups. "Pan equality" was a concern for issues that affected most marginalised groups. "Multi-strand intersectionality" attempted to consider different groups when making a decision, but rarely viewed the groups as overlapping or focused on issues for a particular group. "Diversity within" is considered one main form of identity, such as gender, as most important, while occasionally considering other aspects of identity, with these different forms of identity sometimes seen as detracting from the main identity. "Intersections of equality strands" considered the intersection of identities, but no form of identity was seen as more relevant. In this approach, it was sometimes felt that if one dealt with the most marginalized identity, the system would tend to work for all people. Christoffersen referred to some of these meanings given to intersectionality as "additive" where inequalities are thought of as being added to and subtracted from one another. In the United States, studies of the labor market suggest there are economic inequalities due to the intersections of race and gender, including for African American women.: 506–507 In a book by Esther Chow and others, the authors write: "The impact of patriarchy and traditional assumptions about gender and families are evident in the lives of Chinese migrant workers, sex workers and their clients in South Korea, and Indian widows, but also Ukrainian migrants and Australian men of the new global middle class." Intersectionality has been used as a critical framework in healthcare, such as in addressing issues of reproductive justice, where the intersection of race, class, and gender shapes access to healthcare and family planning resources for women of color. An intersectional lens reveals a disproportionate rate of maternal mortality among Black women in the United States. Black women experience a significantly higher rate of pregnancy-related deaths, despite controlling for insurance status, income, and education. Research has linked these disparities to structural racism and implicit bias within the healthcare system. Healthcare providers have been shown to cause an underestimation of Black patients' pain and inadequate or delayed treatment, specifically in maternal care and pain management. People of color, in general, often experience differential treatment in the healthcare system. For example, in the period immediately after 9/11, researchers noted low birth weights and other poor birth outcomes among Muslim and Arab Americans, a result they connected to the increased racial and religious discrimination of the time. Some researchers have also argued that immigration policies can affect health outcomes through mechanisms such as stress, restrictions on access to health care, and the social determinants of health. Social determinants of health, such as food security, access to clean air and water, housing stability, and employment conditions, can also have significant impacts on health outcomes, particularly for marginalized communities. Environmental racism, a form of systemic racism where communities of color disproportionately bear the burden of environmental hazards, contributes to elevated rates of asthma, cancer, and other chronic illnesses. Rising temperatures and natural disasters as a result of climate change also disproportionately impact populations with limited economic resources and restricted access to healthcare. Historical medical exploitation continues to inform health disparities today. The Tuskegee Syphilis Study, in which Black men were denied treatment for syphilis without their consent or knowledge, and the forced sterilization of Indigenous and Latina women, driven by the eugenics movement, racial and colonial control, and targeting through welfare and public health programs, are all examples of systemic medical abuse. These events have contributed to longstanding distrust in healthcare institutions among marginalized communities. Additionally, medical research has historically excluded people of color, women, and disabled individuals from clinical trials, resulting in gaps in knowledge about how various treatments affect these populations. This underrepresentation persists in many areas of research and contributes to unequal health outcomes today. The African American Policy Forum (AAPF) has advocated for an intersectional approach to immigration policy, considering factors such as race, marriage, and gender. The AAPF says that immigrant women's lives are often threatened by abusive spouses who are already citizens, and yet such women cannot divorce their spouses for two years if they seek permanent resident status. According to the AAPF, the law currently includes "no exceptions for battered women who often faced the risk of serious injury and death on the one hand, or deportation on the other". Researchers in psychology have incorporated intersection effects since the 1950s. These intersection effects were based on studying the lenses of biases, heuristics, stereotypes, and judgments. Psychologists have extended research in psychological biases to the areas of cognitive and motivational psychology. What is found is that every human mind has its own biases in judgment and decision-making that tend to preserve the status quo by avoiding change and attention to ideas that exist outside one's personal realm of perception. Psychological interaction effects span a range of variables, although person-by-situation effects are the most examined category. As a result, psychologists do not construe the interaction effect of demographics such as gender and race as either more noteworthy or less noteworthy than any other interaction effect. In addition, oppression can be regarded as a subjective construct when viewed as an absolute hierarchy. Even if an objective definition of oppression were reached, person-by-situation effects would make it difficult to deem certain persons or categories of persons as uniformly oppressed. For instance, black men are stereotypically perceived as criminals, which makes it much more difficult for them to get hired for a job than a white man. However, gay black men are perceived as harmless, which increases their chances of getting employed and receiving bonuses, even though gay males are also socially disadvantaged. The stereotype of gay men as harmless helps black men transcend their reputation for criminality. Several psychological studies have likewise shown that possessing multiple oppressed or marginalized identities has effects that are not necessarily additive, or even multiplicative, but rather, interactive in complex ways. One of the main issues that affects the research of intersectionality is the construct problem. Constructs are what scientists use to build blocks of understanding within their field of study. It is important because it gives us something to measure. As mentioned previously, it is incredibly difficult to define oppression and, specifically, the feeling of being oppressed and the ways that different kinds of oppression may interact as a construct. As psychology grows and changes its ability to define constructs, this research will likely improve. To provide sufficient preventive, redressive, and deterrent remedies, judges in courts and others working in conflict resolution mechanisms take into account intersectional dimensions. In the field of social work, proponents of intersectionality hold that unless service providers take intersectionality into account, they will be of less use for various segments of the population, such as those reporting domestic violence or disabled victims of abuse. According to intersectional theory, the practice of domestic violence counselors in the United States urging all women to report their abusers to police is of little use to women of color due to the history of racially motivated police brutality, and those counselors should adapt their counseling for women of color. Intersectionality has also been used in critical animal studies and ecofeminist literature, particularly in considering how our treatment of animals and the natural environment affects people. For example, factory farming can be understood not just as an issue of animal welfare but also as an issue of environmental justice, workers' rights, and public health which may disproportionately impact marginalized communities and peoples. Responses Many feminists have positively engaged with the idea of intersectionality. Black feminists, in particular, suggest that an understanding of intersectionality is a vital element of gaining political and social equity and improving the societal structures that oppress individuals. Beverly Guy-Sheftall says, "black women experience a special kind of oppression and suffering in this country which is racist, sexist, and classist because of their dual race and gender identity and their limited access to economic resources". Stephanie A. Shields says that each part of someone's identity "serve as organizing features of social relations, mutually constitute, reinforce, and naturalize one another". Shields says that one aspect cannot exist individually, rather it "takes its meaning as a category in relation to another category." Some scholars suggest intersectionality is often weaponized against other forms of feminism. Barbara Tomlinson, of the Department of Feminist Studies at University of California, Santa Barbara, has been critical of the applications of intersectional theory to attack other ways of feminist thinking. Downing says intersectionality, seen through the framework of Andrea Dworkin's class-based radical feminism, focuses too much on group identities and interests over individuality, leading to simplistic analysis and inaccurate assumptions about how a person's values and attitudes are determined. Iris Marion Young suggests that differences must be acknowledged in order to find unifying social justice issues that create coalitions that aid in changing society for the better. More specifically, this relates to the ideals of the National Council of Negro Women (NCNW). Scholar Jennifer Nash says that, using an Afropessimist framework, intersectionality may flatten the unique experiences of blackness and gender by treating different forms of identity as equivalent.[page needed] Nash also criticizes the superficial use of intersectionality by some institutions without addressing systematic inequalities.[page needed] Among scholars, proponents of intersectionality cite its broad applicability and embrace of nuance, while its critics say it is overly complex or too broad. Sociologist Kathy Davis says intersectionality's broad applicability and consideration of multiple factors makes it a useful critical tool: "It encourages complexity, stimulates creativity, and avoids premature closure, tantalizing feminist scholars to raise new questions and explore uncharted territory." Rekia Jibrin and Sara Salem suggest that because intersectional theory creates a unified but complex idea of anti-oppression politics, this creates difficulties achieving praxis and results in significant ambiguity in how the framework should be applied. As it is based in standpoint theory, Lisa Downing says the focus on subjective experiences can lead to contradictions and the inability to identify common causes of oppression. Brittney Cooper says that "intersectionality does not deserve our religious devotion" but that "as a conceptual and analytic tool for thinking about operations of power, intersectionality remains one of the most useful and expansive paradigms we have". In responding to critics of intersectionality who find it to be incomplete, or argue that it fails to recognize the specificity of women's oppression, Chiara Bottici says that "there is something specific about the oppression of women and that in order to fight it you have to fight "all other forms of oppression". Cheryl Townsend Gilkes and Joy James say there is value in focusing on the experiences of black women. Patricia Hill Collins also argues that without critical social theory, intersectionality falls flat. She argues that the mission of intersectionality currently within academia is too broad as a theoretical project, leading to its meaning being diluted both by the left and the right. As a result, intersectionality needs to take a position as a critical social theory in order to further it as a discipline and as a theory that can be utilized to dismantle systematic oppression. Many recent academics, such as Leslie McCall, have argued that the introduction of the intersectionality theory was vital to sociology and that before the development of the theory, there was little research that specifically addressed the experiences of people who are subjected to multiple forms of oppression within society. There have been recent attempts to apply the intersectionality theory to research that involves disability, gender, and poverty. For example, Jacqueline Moodley and Lauren Graham focused on the intersection of disabled, impoverished, South African men and women to find what effect different combinations of the characteristics and identities had on outcomes of education, income, and employment. Also, researchers have used data from the National Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, EEOC, and Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) Research Project to explore the interactions among disability, gender, age, race, and employer characteristics and it connection to the outcome of workplace harassment. Others suggest that generating testable predictions from intersectionality theory can be complex. Liam Kofi Bright, Daniel Malinsky, and Morgan Thompson suggest a framework of graphical causal modeling to provide "empirically testable interpretations of intersectional theory" to address such concerns. An analysis of academic articles published through December 2019 found that there are no widely adopted quantitative methods to investigate research questions informed by intersectionality and provided recommendations on analytic best practices for future research. An analysis of academic articles published through May 2020 found that intersectionality is frequently misunderstood when bridging theory into quantitative methodology. Critics of intersectionality also say that it is used as a tool of neoliberalism. Cooper says: "To suggest as Puar does that intersectionality is a tool of a neoliberal agenda rather than a tool that works against it is a line of thinking that should be vigilantly guarded against." Jibrin and Salem suggest that, while intersectionality has radical origins, its ambiguities mean it has been embraced by neoliberal feminists, undermining its radical nature: Given the empirical examples presented, we are convinced that the rise of class domination in what we know as the neoliberal university creates the conditions for concepts like intersectionality to become diluted and commodified. By depoliticizing intersectionality neoliberal market regimes empty radical struggle of structural critiques and translate them into palatable (unthreatening) narratives of social justice, multiculturalisms. Conservatives such as American conservative commentator Ben Shapiro suggest that intersectionality creates a "hierarchy of victimhood", where individuals are categorized as "members of a victim class by virtue of membership in a particular group". On the international political scale, intersectional lenses have not been applied to the topic of human right laws. Gauthier de Beco found using an intersectional lens that people with disabilities that belong to racial or ethnic, gender, and age minorities lack suitable human rights. Philosopher Tommy J. Curry published several works suggesting intersectional feminism implicitly adopts, and thereby perpetuates, harmful stereotypes of Black men. Curry says Crenshaw's intersectional model depends on second-wave feminist ideas, imported from subculture of violence theorists who argue that Black masculinity is compensatory and sexually predatory. In so doing, Curry says that the intersectional feminist concept of "Double Jeopardy" is fundamentally mistaken because intersectionality is over-determined by feminist politics. Curry also says that Crenshaw's conclusions in Mapping the Margins rely on gender essentialism that erases Black male victims of intimate partner violence, sexual assault, and lethal violence. See also References Further reading External links |
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Contents Markus Persson Markus Alexej Persson (/ˈpɪərsən/ ⓘ PEER-sən, Swedish: [ˈmǎrːkɵs ˈpæ̌ːʂɔn] ⓘ; born 1 June 1979), known by the pseudonym Notch, is a Swedish video game programmer and designer. He is the creator of Minecraft, the best-selling video game in history. He founded the video game development company Mojang Studios in 2009. Persson began developing video games at an early age. His commercial success began after he published an early version of Minecraft in 2009. Prior to the game's official retail release in 2011, it had sold over four million copies. After this point Persson stood down as the lead designer and transferred his creative authority to Jens Bergensten. In September 2014 Persson announced his intention to leave Mojang, and in November of that year the company was sold to Microsoft reportedly for US$2.5 billion, which made him a billionaire. Since 2016 several of Persson's posts on Twitter regarding feminism, race, and transgender rights have caused public controversies. He has been described as "an increasingly polarizing figure, tweeting offensive statements regarding race, the LGBTQ community, gender, and other topics." In an effort to distance itself from Persson, Microsoft removed mentions of his name from Minecraft (excluding one instance in the game's end credits) and did not invite him to the game's tenth anniversary celebration. In 2015 he co-founded a separate game studio called Rubberbrain, which was relaunched in 2024 as Bitshift Entertainment. Early life Markus Alexej Persson was born in Stockholm, Sweden, to a Finnish mother, Ritva, and a Swedish father, Birger, on 1 June 1979. He has one sister. He grew up in Edsbyn until he was seven years old, when his family moved back to Stockholm. In Edsbyn, Persson's father worked for the railroad, and his mother was a nurse. He spent much time outdoors in Edsbyn, exploring the woods with his friends. When Persson was about seven years old, his parents divorced, and he and his sister lived with their mother. His father moved to a cabin in the countryside. Persson said in an interview that they experienced food insecurity around once a month. Persson lost contact with his father for several years after the divorce. According to Persson, his father suffered from depression, bipolar disorder, alcoholism, and medication abuse, and went to jail for robberies. While his father had somewhat recovered during Persson's early life, his father relapsed, contributing to the divorce. His sister also experimented with drugs and ran away from home. He had gained interest in video games at an early age. His father was "a really big nerd", who built his own modem and taught Persson to use the family's Commodore 128. On it, Persson played bootleg games and loaded in various type-in programs from computer magazines with the help of his sister. The first game he purchased with his own money was The Bard's Tale. He began programming on his father's Commodore 128 home computer at the age of seven. He produced his first game at the age of eight, a text-based adventure game. By 1994 Persson knew he wanted to become a video game developer, but his teachers advised him to study graphic design, which he did from ages 15 to 18. Persson, although introverted, was well-liked by his peers, but after entering secondary school was a "loner" and reportedly had only one friend. He spent most of his spare time with games and programming at home. He managed to reverse-engineer the Doom engine, which he continued to take great pride in as of 2014[update]. He never finished high school, but was reportedly a good student. Career Persson started his career working as a web designer. He later found employment at Game Federation, where he met Rolf Jansson. The pair worked in their spare time to build the 2006 video game Wurm Online. The game was released through a new entity, "Mojang Specifications AB". Persson left the project in late 2007. As Persson wanted to reuse the name "Mojang", Jansson agreed to rename the company to Onetoofree AB. Between 2004 and 2009 Persson worked as a game developer for Midasplayer (later known as King). There, he worked as a programmer, mostly building browser games made in Flash. He later worked as a programmer for jAlbum. Prior to creating Minecraft, Persson developed multiple, small games. He also entered a number of game design competitions and participated in discussions on the TIGSource forums, a web forum for independent game developers. One of Persson's more notable personal projects was called RubyDung, an isometric three-dimensional base-building game like RollerCoaster Tycoon and Dwarf Fortress. While working on RubyDung, Persson experimented with a first-person view mode similar to that found in Dungeon Keeper. However, he felt the graphics were too pixelated and omitted this mode. In 2009 Persson found inspiration in Infiniminer, a block-based open-ended mining game. Infiniminer heavily influenced his future work on RubyDung, and was behind Persson's reasoning for returning the first-person mode, the "blocky" visual style and the block-building fundamentals to the game. RubyDung is the earliest known Minecraft prototype created by Persson. On 17 May 2009 Persson released the original edition (later called "Classic version") of Minecraft on the TIGSource forums. He regularly updated the game based on feedback from TIGSource users. Persson released several new versions of Minecraft throughout 2009 and 2010, going through several phases of development including Survival Test, Indev, and Infdev. On 30 June 2010 Persson released the game's Alpha version. While working on the pre-Alpha version of Minecraft, Persson continued working at jAlbum. In 2010, after the release and subsequent success of Minecraft's Alpha version, Persson moved from a full-time role to a part-time role at jAlbum. He left jAlbum later that same year. In September 2010 Persson travelled to Valve Corporation's headquarters in Bellevue, Washington, United States, where he took part in a programming exercise and met Gabe Newell. Persson was subsequently offered a job at Valve, which he turned down in order to continue work on Minecraft. On 20 December 2010 Minecraft moved into its beta phase and began expanding to other platforms, including mobile. In January 2011 Minecraft reached one million registered accounts. Six months afterwards, it reached ten million. The game has sold over four million copies by 7 November 2011. Mojang held the first Minecon from 18 to 19 November 2011 to celebrate its full release, and subsequently made it an annual event. Following this, on 11 December 2011, Persson transferred creative control of Minecraft to Jens Bergensten and began working on another game title, 0x10c, although he reportedly abandoned the project around 2013. In 2013 Mojang recorded revenues of $330 million and profits of $129 million. Persson has stated that, due to the intense media attention and public pressure, he became exhausted with running Minecraft and Mojang. In a September 2014 blog post he shared his realization that he "didn't have the connection to my fans I thought I had", that he had "become a symbol", and that he did not wish to be responsible for Mojang's increasingly large operation. In June 2014 Persson tweeted "Anyone want to buy my share of Mojang so I can move on with my life? Getting hate for trying to do the right thing is not my gig", reportedly partly as a joke. Persson controlled a 71% stake in Mojang at the time. The offer attracted significant interest from Activision Blizzard, EA, and Microsoft. Forbes later reported that Microsoft wanted to purchase the game as a "tax dodge" to turn their taxable excess liquid cash into other assets. In September 2014 Microsoft agreed to purchase Mojang for $2.5 billion, making Persson a billionaire. He then left the company after the deal was finalised in November. Since leaving Mojang, Persson has worked on several small projects. On 23 June 2014 he founded a company with Porsér called Rubberbrain AB; the company had no games by 2021, despite spending SEK 60 million. The company was relaunched as Bitshift Entertainment, LLC on 28 March 2024. Persson expressed interest in creating a new video game studio in 2020, and in developing virtual reality games. He has also since created a series of narrative-driven immersive events called ".party()", which uses extensive visual effects and has been hosted in multiple cities. At the beginning of 2025 Persson decided to create a spiritual successor to Minecraft, referred to as "Minecraft 2", in response to the results of a poll on X. However, after speaking to his team, he shortly went against this in favour of developing the other choice on his Twitter poll, a roguelike titled Levers and Chests. Games Persson's most popular creation is the survival sandbox game Minecraft, which was first publicly available on 17 May 2009 and fully released on 18 November 2011. Persson left his job as a game developer to work on Minecraft full-time until completion. In early 2011, Mojang AB sold the one millionth copy of the game, several months later their second, and several more their third. Mojang hired several new staff members for the Minecraft team, while Persson passed the lead developer role to Jens Bergensten. He stopped working on Minecraft after a deal with Microsoft to sell Mojang for $2.5 billion. This brought his net worth to US$1.5 billion. Persson and Jakob Porsér came up with the idea for Scrolls including elements from board games and collectible card games. Persson noted that he will not be actively involved in development of the game and that Porsér will be developing it. Persson revealed on his Tumblr blog on 5 August 2011 that he was being sued by a Swedish law firm representing Bethesda Softworks over the trademarked name of Scrolls, claiming that it conflicted with their The Elder Scrolls series of games. On 17 August 2011 Persson challenged Bethesda to a Quake 3 tournament to decide the outcome of the naming dispute. On 27 September 2011 Persson confirmed that the lawsuit was going to court. ZeniMax Media, owner of Bethesda Softworks, announced the lawsuit's settlement in March 2012. The settlement allowed Mojang to continue using the Scrolls trademark. In 2018, Scrolls was made available free of charge and renamed to Caller's Bane. Cliffhorse is a humorous game programmed in two hours using the Unity game engine and free assets. The game took inspiration from Skyrim's physics engine, "the more embarrassing minimum-effort Greenlight games", Goat Simulator, and Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing. The game was released to Microsoft Windows systems as an early access and honourware game on the first day of E3 2014, instructing users to donate Dogecoin to "buy" the game before downloading it. The game accumulated over 280,000 dogecoins. Following the end to his involvement with Minecraft, Persson began pre-production of an alternate reality space game set in the distant future in March 2012. On April Fools' Day Mojang launched a satirical website for Mars Effect (parody of Mass Effect), citing the lawsuit with Bethesda as an inspiration. However, the gameplay elements remained true and on 4 April, Mojang revealed 0x10c (pronounced "Ten to the C") as a space sandbox title. Persson officially halted game production in August 2013. However, C418, the composer of the game's soundtrack (as well as that of Minecraft), released an album of the work he had made for the game. In 2013, Persson made a free game called Shambles in the Unity game engine. Persson has also participated in several Ludum Dare 48-hour game making competitions. Personal life In 2011 Persson married Elin Zetterstrand, whom he had dated for four years before. Zetterstrand was a former moderator on the Minecraft forums. They had a daughter together, but by mid-2012, he began to see little of her. On 15 August 2012 he announced that he and his wife had filed for divorce. The divorce was finalised later that year. On 14 December 2011 Persson's father committed suicide with a handgun after drinking heavily. In an interview with The New Yorker, Persson said of his father: When I decided I wanted to quit my day job and work on my own games, he was the only person who supported my decision. He was proud of me and made sure I knew. When I added the monsters to Minecraft, he told me that the dark caves became too scary for him. But I think that was the only true criticism I ever heard from him. Persson later admitted that he himself suffered from depression and various highs and lows in his mood. Persson has criticised the stance of large game companies on piracy. He once stated that "piracy is not theft", viewing unauthorised downloads as potential future customers. Persson stated himself to be a member of the Pirate Party of Sweden in 2011. He is also a member of Mensa. He has donated to numerous charities, including Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders). Under his direction, Mojang spent a week developing Catacomb Snatch for the Humble Indie Bundle and raised US$458,248 for charity. He also donated $250,000 to the Electronic Frontier Foundation in 2012. In 2011 he gave $3 million in dividends back to Mojang employees. According to Forbes, his net worth in 2023 was around $1.2 billion. In 2014 Persson was one of the biggest taxpayers in Sweden. Around 2014, he lived in a multi-level penthouse in Östermalm, Stockholm, an area he described as "where the rich people live". In December 2014 Persson purchased a home in Trousdale Estates, a neighbourhood in Beverly Hills, California, in the United States, for $70 million, a record sales price for Beverly Hills at the time. Persson reportedly outbid Beyoncé and Jay-Z for the property. Persson began receiving criticism for political and social opinions he expressed on social media as early as 2016. November 30, 2017 In 2017, he proposed a heterosexual pride holiday, and wrote that those who opposed the idea "deserve to be shot." After facing backlash, he deleted the tweets and rescinded his statements, writing, "So yeah, it's about pride of daring to express, not about pride of being who you are. I get it now." Later in the year, he wrote that feminism is a "social disease" and called the video game developer and feminist Zoë Quinn a "cunt", although he was generally critical of the GamerGate movement. He has described intersectional feminism as a "framework for bigotry" and the use of the word mansplaining as being sexist. Also in 2017, Persson tweeted that "It's okay to be white". Later that year, he stated that he believed in the Pizzagate conspiracy theory. In 2019, he tweeted referencing QAnon, saying "Q is legit. Don't trust the media." Later in 2019, he tweeted in response to a pro-transgender internet meme that, "You are absolutely evil if you want to encourage delusion. What happened to not stigmatizing mental illness?" He then also promoted claims that people were fined for "using the wrong pronoun". However, after facing backlash, he tweeted a day afterwards that he had "no idea what [being trans is] like of course, but it's inspiring as hell when people open up and choose to actually be who they know themselves as. Not because it's a cool choice, because it's a big step. I gues [sic] that's actually cool nvm". Later that year, Microsoft removed two mentions of Persson's name in the "19w13a" snapshot of Minecraft and did not invite him to the 10-year anniversary celebration of the game. A spokesperson for Microsoft stated that his views "do not reflect those of Microsoft or Mojang". He is still mentioned in the End Poem ("a flat, infinite world created by a man called Markus").[citation needed] Awards References External links |
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Contents Minecraft Minecraft is a sandbox game developed and published by Mojang Studios. Following its initial public alpha release in 2009, it was formally released in 2011 for personal computers. The game has since been ported to numerous platforms, including mobile devices and various video game consoles. In Minecraft, players explore a procedurally generated world with virtually infinite terrain made up of voxels (cubes). They can discover and extract raw materials, craft tools and items, build structures, fight hostile mobs, and cooperate with or compete against other players in multiplayer. The game's large community offers a wide variety of user-generated content, such as modifications, servers, player skins, texture packs, and custom maps, which add new game mechanics and possibilities. Originally created by Markus "Notch" Persson using the Java programming language, Jens "Jeb" Bergensten was handed control over the game's development following its full release. In 2014, Mojang and the Minecraft intellectual property were purchased by Microsoft for US$2.5 billion; Xbox Game Studios hold the publishing rights for the Bedrock Edition, the unified cross-platform version which evolved from the Pocket Edition codebase[i] and replaced the legacy console versions. Bedrock is updated concurrently with Mojang's original Java Edition, although with numerous, generally small, differences. Minecraft is the best-selling video game in history with over 350 million copies sold. It has received critical acclaim, winning several awards and being cited as one of the greatest video games of all time. Social media, parodies, adaptations, merchandise, and the annual Minecon conventions have played prominent roles in popularizing it. The wider Minecraft franchise includes several spin-off games, such as Minecraft: Story Mode, Minecraft Dungeons, and Minecraft Legends. A film adaptation, titled A Minecraft Movie, was released in 2025 and became the second highest-grossing video game film of all time. Gameplay Minecraft is a 3D sandbox video game that has no required goals to accomplish, giving players a large amount of freedom in choosing how to play the game. The game features an optional achievement system. Gameplay is in the first-person perspective by default, but players have the option of third-person perspectives. The game world is composed of rough 3D objects—mainly cubes, referred to as blocks—representing various materials, such as dirt, stone, ores, tree trunks, water, and lava. The core gameplay revolves around picking up and placing these objects. These blocks are arranged in a voxel grid, while players can move freely around the world. Players can break, or mine, blocks and then place them elsewhere, enabling them to build things. Very few blocks are affected by gravity, instead maintaining their voxel position in the air. Players can also craft a wide variety of items, such as armor, which mitigates damage from attacks; weapons (such as swords or bows and arrows), which allow monsters and animals to be killed more easily; and tools (such as pickaxes or shovels), which break certain types of blocks more quickly. Some items have multiple tiers depending on the material used to craft them, with higher-tier items being more effective and durable. They may also freely craft helpful blocks—such as furnaces which can cook food and smelt ores, and torches that produce light—or exchange items with villagers (NPC) through trading emeralds for different goods and vice versa. The game has an inventory system, allowing players to carry a limited number of items. The in-game time system follows a day and night cycle, with one full cycle lasting for 20 real-time minutes. The game also contains a material called redstone, which can be used to make primitive mechanical devices, electrical circuits, and logic gates, allowing for the construction of many complex systems. New players are given a randomly selected default character skin out of nine possibilities, including Steve or Alex, but are able to create and upload their own skins. Players encounter various mobs (short for mobile entities) including animals, villagers, and hostile creatures. Passive mobs, such as cows, pigs, and chickens, spawn during the daytime and can be hunted for food and crafting materials, while hostile mobs—including large spiders, witches, skeletons, and zombies—spawn during nighttime or in dark places such as caves. Some hostile mobs, such as zombies and skeletons, burn under the sun if they have no headgear and are not standing in water. Other creatures unique to Minecraft include the creeper (an exploding creature that sneaks up on the player) and the enderman (a creature with the ability to teleport as well as pick up and place blocks). There are also variants of mobs that spawn in different conditions; for example, zombies have husk and drowned variants that spawn in deserts and oceans, respectively. The Minecraft environment is procedurally generated as players explore it using a map seed that is randomly chosen at the time of world creation (or manually specified by the player). Divided into biomes representing different environments with unique resources and structures, worlds are designed to be effectively infinite in traditional gameplay, though technical limits on the player have existed throughout development, both intentionally and not. Implementation of horizontally infinite generation initially resulted in a glitch termed the "Far Lands" at over 12 million blocks away from the world center, where terrain generated as wall-like, fissured patterns. The Far Lands and associated glitches were considered the effective edge of the world until they were resolved, with the current horizontal limit instead being a special impassable barrier called the world border, located 30 million blocks away. Vertical space is comparatively limited, with an unbreakable bedrock layer at the bottom and a building limit several hundred blocks into the sky. Minecraft features three independent dimensions accessible through portals and providing alternate game environments. The Overworld is the starting dimension and represents the real world, with a terrestrial surface setting including plains, mountains, forests, oceans, caves, and small sources of lava. The Nether is a hell-like underworld dimension accessed via an obsidian portal and composed mainly of lava. Mobs that populate the Nether include shrieking, fireball-shooting ghasts, alongside anthropomorphic pigs called piglins and their zombified counterparts. Piglins in particular have a bartering system, where players can give them gold ingots and receive items in return. Structures known as Nether Fortresses generate in the Nether, containing mobs such as wither skeletons and blazes, which can drop blaze rods needed to access the End dimension. The player can also choose to build an optional boss mob known as the Wither, using skulls obtained from wither skeletons and soul sand. The End can be reached through an end portal, consisting of twelve end portal frames. End portals are found in underground structures in the Overworld known as strongholds. To find strongholds, players must craft eyes of ender using an ender pearl and blaze powder. Eyes of ender can then be thrown, traveling in the direction of the stronghold. Once the player reaches the stronghold, they can place eyes of ender into each portal frame to activate the end portal. The dimension consists of islands floating in a dark, bottomless void. A boss enemy called the Ender Dragon guards the largest, central island. Killing the dragon opens access to an exit portal, which, when entered, cues the game's ending credits and the End Poem, a roughly 1,500-word work written by Irish novelist Julian Gough, which takes about nine minutes to scroll past, is the game's only narrative text, and the only text of significant length directed at the player.: 10–12 At the conclusion of the credits, the player is teleported back to their respawn point and may continue the game indefinitely. In Survival mode, players have to gather natural resources such as wood and stone found in the environment in order to craft certain blocks and items. Depending on the difficulty, monsters spawn in darker areas outside a certain radius of the character, requiring players to build a shelter in order to survive at night. The mode also has a health bar which is depleted by attacks from mobs, falls, drowning, falling into lava, suffocation, starvation, and other events. Players also have a hunger bar, which must be periodically refilled by eating food in-game unless the player is playing on peaceful difficulty. If the hunger bar is empty, the player starves. Health replenishes when players have a full hunger bar or continuously on peaceful. Upon losing all health, players die. The items in the players' inventories are dropped unless the game is reconfigured not to do so. Players then re-spawn at their spawn point, which by default is where players first spawn in the game and can be changed by sleeping in a bed or using a respawn anchor. Dropped items can be recovered if players can reach them before they despawn after 5 minutes. Players may acquire experience points (commonly referred to as "xp" or "exp") by killing mobs and other players, mining, smelting ores, animal breeding, and cooking food. Experience can then be spent on enchanting tools, armor and weapons. Enchanted items are generally more powerful, last longer, or have other special effects. The game features two more game modes based on Survival, known as Hardcore mode and Adventure mode. Hardcore mode plays identically to Survival mode, but with the game's difficulty setting locked to "Hard" and with permadeath, forcing them to delete the world or explore it as a spectator after dying. Adventure mode was added to the game in a post-launch update, and prevents the player from directly modifying the game's world. It was designed primarily for use in custom maps, allowing map designers to let players experience it as intended. In Creative mode, players have access to an infinite number of all resources and items in the game through the inventory menu and can place or mine them instantly. Players can toggle the ability to fly freely around the game world at will, and their characters usually do not take any damage nor are affected by hunger. The game mode helps players focus on building and creating projects of any size without disturbance. Multiplayer in Minecraft enables multiple players to interact and communicate with each other on a single world. It is available through direct game-to-game multiplayer, local area network (LAN) play, local split screen (console-only), and servers (player-hosted and business-hosted). Players can run their own server by making a realm, using a host provider, hosting one themselves or connect directly to another player's game via Xbox Live, PlayStation Network or Nintendo Switch Online. Single-player worlds have LAN support, allowing players to join a world on locally interconnected computers without a server setup. Minecraft multiplayer servers are guided by server operators, who have access to server commands such as setting the time of day and teleporting players. Operators can also set up restrictions concerning which usernames or IP addresses are allowed or disallowed to enter the server. Multiplayer servers have a wide range of activities, with some servers having their own unique rules and customs. The largest and most popular server is Hypixel, which has been visited by over 14 million unique players. Player versus player combat (PvP) can be enabled to allow fighting between players. In 2013, Mojang announced Minecraft Realms, a server hosting service intended to enable players to run server multiplayer games easily and safely without having to set up their own. Unlike a standard server, only invited players can join Realms servers, and these servers do not use server addresses. Minecraft: Java Edition Realms server owners can invite up to twenty people to play on their server, with up to ten players online at a time. Minecraft Realms server owners can invite up to 3,000 people to play on their server, with up to ten players online at one time. The Minecraft: Java Edition Realms servers do not support user-made plugins, but players can play custom Minecraft maps. Minecraft Bedrock Realms servers support user-made add-ons, resource packs, behavior packs, and custom Minecraft maps. At Electronic Entertainment Expo 2016, support for cross-platform play between Windows 10, iOS, and Android platforms was added through Realms starting in June 2016, with Xbox One and Nintendo Switch support to come later in 2017, and support for virtual reality devices. On 31 July 2017, Mojang released the beta version of the update allowing cross-platform play. Nintendo Switch support for Realms was released in July 2018. The modding community consists of fans, users and third-party programmers. Using a variety of application program interfaces that have arisen over time, they have produced a wide variety of downloadable content for Minecraft, such as modifications, texture packs and custom maps. Modifications of the Minecraft code, called mods, add a variety of gameplay changes, ranging from new blocks, items, and mobs to entire arrays of mechanisms. The modding community is responsible for a substantial supply of mods from ones that enhance gameplay, such as mini-maps, waypoints, and durability counters, to ones that add to the game elements from other video games and media. While a variety of mod frameworks were independently developed by reverse engineering the code, Mojang has also enhanced vanilla Minecraft with official frameworks for modification, allowing the production of community-created resource packs, which alter certain game elements including textures and sounds. Players can also create their own "maps" (custom world save files) that often contain specific rules, challenges, puzzles and quests, and share them for others to play. Mojang added an adventure mode in August 2012 and "command blocks" in October 2012, which were created specially for custom maps in Java Edition. Data packs, introduced in version 1.13 of the Java Edition, allow further customization, including the ability to add new achievements, dimensions, functions, loot tables, predicates, recipes, structures, tags, and world generation. The Xbox 360 Edition supported downloadable content, which was available to purchase via the Xbox Games Store; these content packs usually contained additional character skins. It later received support for texture packs in its twelfth title update while introducing "mash-up packs", which combined texture packs with skin packs and changes to the game's sounds, music and user interface. The first mash-up pack (and by extension, the first texture pack) for the Xbox 360 Edition was released on 4 September 2013, and was themed after the Mass Effect franchise. Unlike Java Edition, however, the Xbox 360 Edition did not support player-made mods or custom maps. A cross-promotional resource pack based on the Super Mario franchise by Nintendo was released exclusively for the Wii U Edition worldwide on 17 May 2016, and later bundled free with the Nintendo Switch Edition at launch. Another based on Fallout was released on consoles that December, and for Windows and Mobile in April 2017. In April 2018, malware was discovered in several downloadable user-made Minecraft skins for use with the Java Edition of the game. Avast stated that nearly 50,000 accounts were infected, and when activated, the malware would attempt to reformat the user's hard drive. Mojang promptly patched the issue, and released a statement stating that "the code would not be run or read by the game itself", and would run only when the image containing the skin itself was opened. In June 2017, Mojang released the "1.1 Discovery Update" to the Pocket Edition of the game, which later became the Bedrock Edition. The update introduced the "Marketplace", a catalogue of purchasable user-generated content intended to give Minecraft creators "another way to make a living from the game". Various skins, maps, texture packs and add-ons from different creators can be bought with "Minecoins", a digital currency that is purchased with real money. Additionally, users can access specific content with a subscription service titled "Marketplace Pass". Alongside content from independent creators, the Marketplace also houses items published by Mojang and Microsoft themselves, as well as official collaborations between Minecraft and other intellectual properties. By 2022, the Marketplace had over 1.7 billion content downloads, generating over $500 million in revenue. Development Before creating Minecraft, Markus "Notch" Persson was a game developer at King, where he worked until March 2009. At King, he primarily developed browser games and learned several programming languages. During his free time, he prototyped his own games, often drawing inspiration from other titles, and was an active participant on the TIGSource forums for independent developers. One such project was "RubyDung", a base-building game inspired by Dwarf Fortress, but with an isometric, three-dimensional perspective similar to RollerCoaster Tycoon. Among the features in RubyDung that he explored was a first-person view similar to Dungeon Keeper, though he ultimately discarded this idea, feeling the graphics were too pixelated at the time. Around March 2009, Persson left King and joined jAlbum, while continuing to work on his prototypes. Infiniminer, a block-based open-ended mining game first released in April 2009, inspired Persson's vision for RubyDung's future direction. Infiniminer heavily influenced the visual style of gameplay, including bringing back the first-person mode, the "blocky" visual style and the block-building fundamentals. However, unlike Infiniminer, Persson wanted Minecraft to have RPG elements. The first public alpha build of Minecraft was released on 17 May 2009 on TIGSource. Over the years, Persson regularly released test builds that added new features, including tools, mobs, and entire new dimensions. In 2011, partly due to the game's rising popularity, Persson decided to release a full 1.0 version—a second part of the "Adventure Update"—on 18 November 2011. Shortly after, Persson stepped down from development, handing the project's lead to Jens "Jeb" Bergensten. On 15 September 2014, Microsoft, the developer behind the Microsoft Windows operating system and Xbox video game console, announced a $2.5 billion acquisition of Mojang, which included the Minecraft intellectual property. Persson had suggested the deal on Twitter, asking a corporation to buy his stake in the game after receiving criticism for enforcing terms in the game's end-user license agreement (EULA), which had been in place for the past three years. According to Persson, Mojang CEO Carl Manneh received a call from a Microsoft executive shortly after the tweet, asking if Persson was serious about a deal. Mojang was also approached by other companies including Activision Blizzard and Electronic Arts. The deal with Microsoft was arbitrated on 6 November 2014 and led to Persson becoming one of Forbes' "World's Billionaires". After 2014, Minecraft's primary versions received usually annual major updates—free to players who have purchased the game— each primarily centered around a specific theme. For instance, version 1.13, the Update Aquatic, focused on ocean-related features, while version 1.16, the Nether Update, introduced significant changes to the Nether dimension. However, in late 2024, Mojang announced a shift in their update strategy; rather than releasing large updates annually, they opted for a more frequent release schedule with smaller, incremental updates, stating, "We know that you want new Minecraft content more often." The Bedrock Edition has also received regular updates, now matching the themes of the Java Edition updates. Other versions of the game, such as various console editions and the Pocket Edition, were either merged into Bedrock or discontinued and have not received further updates. On 7 May 2019, coinciding with Minecraft's 10th anniversary, a JavaScript recreation of an old 2009 Java Edition build named Minecraft Classic was made available to play online for free. On 16 April 2020, a Bedrock Edition-exclusive beta version of Minecraft, called Minecraft RTX, was released by Nvidia. It introduced physically-based rendering, real-time path tracing, and DLSS for RTX-enabled GPUs. The public release was made available on 8 December 2020. Path tracing can only be enabled in supported worlds, which can be downloaded for free via the in-game Minecraft Marketplace, with a texture pack from Nvidia's website, or with compatible third-party texture packs. It cannot be enabled by default with any texture pack on any world. Initially, Minecraft RTX was affected by many bugs, display errors, and instability issues. On 22 March 2025, a new visual mode called Vibrant Visuals, an optional graphical overhaul similar to Minecraft RTX, was announced. It promises modern rendering features—such as dynamic shadows, screen space reflections, volumetric fog, and bloom—without the need of RTX-capable hardware. Vibrant Visuals was released as a part of the Chase the Skies update on 17 June 2025 for Bedrock Edition and is planned to release on Java Edition at a later date. Development began for the original edition of Minecraft—then known as Cave Game, and now known as the Java Edition—in May 2009,[k] and ended on 13 May, when Persson released a test video on YouTube of an early version of the game, dubbed the "Cave game tech test" or the "Cave game tech demo". The game was named Minecraft: Order of the Stone the next day, after a suggestion made by a player. "Order of the Stone" came from the webcomic The Order of the Stick, and "Minecraft" was chosen "because it's a good name". The title was later shortened to just Minecraft, omitting the subtitle. Persson completed the game's base programming over a weekend in May 2009, and private testing began on TigIRC on 16 May. The first public release followed on 17 May 2009 as a developmental version shared on the TIGSource forums. Based on feedback from forum users, Persson continued updating the game. This initial public build later became known as Classic. Further developmental phases—dubbed Survival Test, Indev, and Infdev—were released throughout 2009 and 2010. The first major update, known as Alpha, was released on 30 June 2010. At the time, Persson was still working a day job at jAlbum but later resigned to focus on Minecraft full-time as sales of the alpha version surged. Updates were distributed automatically, introducing new blocks, items, mobs, and changes to game mechanics such as water flow. With revenue generated from the game, Persson founded Mojang, a video game studio, alongside former colleagues Jakob Porser and Carl Manneh. On 11 December 2010, Persson announced that Minecraft would enter its beta phase on 20 December. He assured players that bug fixes and all pre-release updates would remain free. As development progressed, Mojang expanded, hiring additional employees to work on the project. The game officially exited beta and launched in full on 18 November 2011. On 1 December 2011, Jens "Jeb" Bergensten took full creative control over Minecraft, replacing Persson as lead designer. On 28 February 2012, Mojang announced the hiring of the developers behind Bukkit, a popular developer API for Minecraft servers, to improve Minecraft's support of server modifications. This move included Mojang taking apparent ownership of the CraftBukkit server mod, though this apparent acquisition later became controversial, and its legitimacy was questioned due to CraftBukkit's open-source nature and licensing under the GNU General Public License and Lesser General Public License. In August 2011, Minecraft: Pocket Edition was released as an early alpha for the Xperia Play via the Android Market, later expanding to other Android devices on 8 October 2011. The iOS version followed on 17 November 2011. A port was made available for Windows Phones shortly after Microsoft acquired Mojang. Unlike Java Edition, Pocket Edition initially focused on Minecraft's creative building and basic survival elements but lacked many features of the PC version. Bergensten confirmed on Twitter that the Pocket Edition was written in C++ rather than Java, as iOS does not support Java. On 10 December 2014, a port of Pocket Edition was released for Windows Phone 8.1. In July 2015, a port of the Pocket Edition to Windows 10 was released as the Windows 10 Edition, with full crossplay to other Pocket versions. In January 2017, Microsoft announced that it would no longer maintain the Windows Phone versions of Pocket Edition. On 20 September 2017, with the "Better Together Update", the Pocket Edition was ported to the Xbox One, and was renamed to the Bedrock Edition. The console versions of Minecraft debuted with the Xbox 360 edition, developed by 4J Studios and released on 9 May 2012. Announced as part of the Xbox Live Arcade NEXT promotion, this version introduced a redesigned crafting system, a new control interface, in-game tutorials, split-screen multiplayer, and online play via Xbox Live. Unlike the PC version, its worlds were finite, bordered by invisible walls. Initially, the Xbox 360 version resembled outdated PC versions but received updates to bring it closer to Java Edition before eventually being discontinued. The Xbox One version launched on 5 September 2014, featuring larger worlds and support for more players. Minecraft expanded to PlayStation platforms with PlayStation 3 and PlayStation 4 editions released on 17 December 2013 and 4 September 2014, respectively. Originally planned as a PS4 launch title, it was delayed before its eventual release. A PlayStation Vita version followed in October 2014. Like the Xbox versions, the PlayStation editions were developed by 4J Studios. Nintendo platforms received Minecraft: Wii U Edition on 17 December 2015, with a physical release in North America on 17 June 2016 and in Europe on 30 June. The Nintendo Switch version launched via the eShop on 11 May 2017. During a Nintendo Direct presentation on 13 September 2017, Nintendo announced that Minecraft: New Nintendo 3DS Edition, based on the Pocket Edition, would be available for download immediately after the livestream, and a physical copy available on a later date. The game is compatible only with the New Nintendo 3DS or New Nintendo 2DS XL systems and does not work with the original 3DS or 2DS systems. On 20 September 2017, the Better Together Update introduced Bedrock Edition across Xbox One, Windows 10, VR, and mobile platforms, enabling cross-play between these versions. Bedrock Edition later expanded to Nintendo Switch and PlayStation 4, with the latter receiving the update in December 2019, allowing cross-platform play for users with a free Xbox Live account. The Bedrock Edition released a native version for PlayStation 5 on 22 October 2024, while the Xbox Series X/S version launched on 17 June 2025. On 18 December 2018, the PlayStation 3, PlayStation Vita, Xbox 360, and Wii U versions of Minecraft received their final update and would later become known as "Legacy Console Editions". On 15 January 2019, the New Nintendo 3DS version of Minecraft received its final update, effectively becoming discontinued as well. An educational version of Minecraft, designed for use in schools, launched on 1 November 2016. It is available on Android, ChromeOS, iPadOS, iOS, MacOS, and Windows. On 20 August 2018, Mojang announced that it would bring Education Edition to iPadOS in Autumn 2018. It was released to the App Store on 6 September 2018. On 27 March 2019, it was announced that it would be operated by JD.com in China. On 26 June 2020, a public beta for the Education Edition was made available to Google Play Store compatible Chromebooks. The full game was released to the Google Play Store for Chromebooks on 7 August 2020. On 20 May 2016, China Edition (also known as My World) was announced as a localized edition for China, where it was released under a licensing agreement between NetEase and Mojang. The PC edition was released for public testing on 8 August 2017. The iOS version was released on 15 September 2017, and the Android version was released on 12 October 2017. The PC edition is based on the original Java Edition, while the iOS and Android mobile versions are based on the Bedrock Edition. The edition is free-to-play and had over 700 million registered accounts by September 2023. This version of Bedrock Edition is exclusive to Microsoft's Windows 10 and Windows 11 operating systems. The beta release for Windows 10 launched on the Windows Store on 29 July 2015. After nearly a year and a half in beta, Microsoft fully released the version on 19 December 2016. Called the "Ender Update", this release implemented new features to this version of Minecraft like world templates and add-on packs. On 7 June 2022, the Java and Bedrock Editions of Minecraft were merged into a single bundle for purchase on Windows; those who owned one version would automatically gain access to the other version. Both game versions would otherwise remain separate. Around 2011, prior to Minecraft's full release, Mojang collaborated with The Lego Group to create a Lego brick-based Minecraft game called Brickcraft. This would have modified the base Minecraft game to use Lego bricks, which meant adapting the basic 1×1 block to account for larger pieces typically used in Lego sets. Persson worked on an early version called "Project Rex Kwon Do", named after the character of the same name from the film Napoleon Dynamite. Although Lego approved the project and Mojang assigned two developers for six months, it was canceled due to the Lego Group's demands, according to Mojang's Daniel Kaplan. Lego considered buying Mojang to complete the game, but when Microsoft offered over $2 billion for the company, Lego stepped back, unsure of Minecraft's potential. On 26 June 2025, a build of Brickcraft dated 28 June 2012 was published on a community archive website Omniarchive. Initially, Markus Persson planned to support the Oculus Rift with a Minecraft port. However, after Facebook acquired Oculus in 2013, he abruptly canceled the plans, stating, "Facebook creeps me out." In 2016, a community-made mod, Minecraft VR, added VR support for Java Edition, followed by Vivecraft for HTC Vive. Later that year, Microsoft introduced official Oculus Rift support for Windows 10 Edition, leading to the discontinuation of the Minecraft VR mod due to trademark complaints. Vivecraft was endorsed by Minecraft VR contributors for its Rift support. Also available is a Gear VR version, titled Minecraft: Gear VR Edition. Windows Mixed Reality support was added in 2017. On 7 September 2020, Mojang Studios announced that the PlayStation 4 Bedrock version would receive PlayStation VR support later that month. In September 2024, the Minecraft team announced they would no longer support PlayStation VR, which received its final update in March 2025. Music and sound design Minecraft's music and sound effects were produced by German musician Daniel Rosenfeld, better known as C418. To create the sound effects for the game, Rosenfeld made extensive use of Foley techniques. On learning the processes for the game, he remarked, "Foley's an interesting thing, and I had to learn its subtleties. Early on, I wasn't that knowledgeable about it. It's a whole trial-and-error process. You just make a sound and eventually you go, 'Oh my God, that's it! Get the microphone!' There's no set way of doing anything at all." He reminisced on creating the in-game sound for grass blocks, stating "It turns out that to make grass sounds you don't actually walk on grass and record it, because grass sounds like nothing. What you want to do is get a VHS, break it apart, and just lightly touch the tape." According to Rosenfeld, his favorite sound to design for the game was the hisses of spiders. He elaborates, "I like the spiders. Recording that was a whole day of me researching what a spider sounds like. Turns out, there are spiders that make little screeching sounds, so I think I got this recording of a fire hose, put it in a sampler, and just pitched it around until it sounded like a weird spider was talking to you." Many of the sound design decisions by Rosenfeld were done accidentally or spontaneously. The creeper notably lacks any specific noises apart from a loud fuse-like sound when about to explode; Rosenfeld later recalled "That was just a complete accident by Markus and me [sic]. We just put in a placeholder sound of burning a matchstick. It seemed to work hilariously well, so we kept it." On other sounds, such as those of the zombie, Rosenfeld remarked, "I actually never wanted the zombies so scary. I intentionally made them sound comical. It's nice to hear that they work so well [...]." Rosenfeld remarked that the sound engine was "terrible" to work with, remembering "If you had two song files at once, it [the game engine] would actually crash. There were so many more weird glitches like that the guys never really fixed because they were too busy with the actual game and not the sound engine." The background music in Minecraft consists of instrumental ambient music. To compose the music of Minecraft, Rosenfeld used the package from Ableton Live, along with several additional plug-ins. Speaking on them, Rosenfeld said "They can be pretty much everything from an effect to an entire orchestra. Additionally, I've got some synthesizers that are attached to the computer. Like a Moog Voyager, Dave Smith Prophet 08 and a Virus TI." On 4 March 2011, Rosenfeld released a soundtrack titled Minecraft – Volume Alpha; it includes most of the tracks featured in Minecraft, as well as other music not featured in the game. Kirk Hamilton of Kotaku chose the music in Minecraft as one of the best video game soundtracks of 2011. On 9 November 2013, Rosenfeld released the second official soundtrack, titled Minecraft – Volume Beta, which included the music that was added in a 2013 "Music Update" for the game. A physical release of Volume Alpha, consisting of CDs, black vinyl, and limited-edition transparent green vinyl LPs, was issued by indie electronic label Ghostly International on 21 August 2015. On 14 August 2020, Ghostly released Volume Beta on CD and vinyl, with alternate color LPs and lenticular cover pressings released in limited quantities. The final update Rosenfeld worked on was 2018's 1.13 Update Aquatic. His music remained the only music in the game until 2020's "Nether Update", introducing pieces from Lena Raine. Since then, other composers have made contributions, including Kumi Tanioka, Samuel Åberg, Aaron Cherof, and Amos Roddy, with Raine remaining as the new primary composer. Ownership of all music besides Rosenfeld's independently released albums has been retained by Microsoft, with their label publishing all of the other artists' releases. Gareth Coker also composed some of the music for the game's mini games from the Legacy Console editions. Rosenfeld had stated his intent to create a third album of music for the game in a 2015 interview with Fact, and confirmed its existence in a 2017 tweet, stating that his work on the record as of then had tallied up to be longer than the previous two albums combined, which in total clocks in at over 3 hours and 18 minutes. However, due to licensing issues with Microsoft, the third volume has since not seen release. On 8 January 2021, Rosenfeld was asked in an interview with Anthony Fantano whether or not there was still a third volume of his music intended for release. Rosenfeld responded, saying, "I have something—I consider it finished—but things have become complicated, especially as Minecraft is now a big property, so I don't know." Reception Minecraft has received critical acclaim, with praise for the creative freedom it grants players in-game, as well as the ease of enabling emergent gameplay. Critics have expressed enjoyment in Minecraft's complex crafting system, commenting that it is an important aspect of the game's open-ended gameplay. Most publications were impressed by the game's "blocky" graphics, with IGN describing them as "instantly memorable". Reviewers also liked the game's adventure elements, noting that the game creates a good balance between exploring and building. The game's multiplayer feature has been generally received favorably, with IGN commenting that "adventuring is always better with friends". Jaz McDougall of PC Gamer said Minecraft is "intuitively interesting and contagiously fun, with an unparalleled scope for creativity and memorable experiences". It has been regarded as having introduced millions of children to the digital world, insofar as its basic game mechanics are logically analogous to computer commands. IGN was disappointed about the troublesome steps needed to set up multiplayer servers, calling it a "hassle". Critics also said that visual glitches occur periodically. Despite its release out of beta in 2011, GameSpot said the game had an "unfinished feel", adding that some game elements seem "incomplete or thrown together in haste". A review of the alpha version, by Scott Munro of the Daily Record, called it "already something special" and urged readers to buy it. Jim Rossignol of Rock Paper Shotgun also recommended the alpha of the game, calling it "a kind of generative 8-bit Lego Stalker". On 17 September 2010, gaming webcomic Penny Arcade began a series of comics and news posts about the addictiveness of the game. The Xbox 360 version was generally received positively by critics, but did not receive as much praise as the PC version. Although reviewers were disappointed by the lack of features such as mod support and content from the PC version, they acclaimed the port's addition of a tutorial and in-game tips and crafting recipes, saying that they make the game more user-friendly. The Xbox One Edition was one of the best received ports, being praised for its relatively large worlds. The PlayStation 3 Edition also received generally favorable reviews, being compared to the Xbox 360 Edition and praised for its well-adapted controls. The PlayStation 4 edition was the best received port to date, being praised for having 36 times larger worlds than the PlayStation 3 edition and described as nearly identical to the Xbox One edition. The PlayStation Vita Edition received generally positive reviews from critics but was noted for its technical limitations. The Wii U version received generally positive reviews from critics but was noted for a lack of GamePad integration. The 3DS version received mixed reviews, being criticized for its high price, technical issues, and lack of cross-platform play. The Nintendo Switch Edition received fairly positive reviews from critics, being praised, like other modern ports, for its relatively larger worlds. Minecraft: Pocket Edition initially received mixed reviews from critics. Although reviewers appreciated the game's intuitive controls, they were disappointed by the lack of content. The inability to collect resources and craft items, as well as the limited types of blocks and lack of hostile mobs, were especially criticized. After updates added more content, Pocket Edition started receiving more positive reviews. Reviewers complimented the controls and the graphics, but still noted a lack of content. Minecraft surpassed over a million purchases less than a month after entering its beta phase in early 2011. At the same time, the game had no publisher backing and has never been commercially advertised except through word of mouth, and various unpaid references in popular media such as the Penny Arcade webcomic. By April 2011, Persson estimated that Minecraft had made €23 million (US$33 million) in revenue, with 800,000 sales of the alpha version of the game, and over 1 million sales of the beta version. In November 2011, prior to the game's full release, Minecraft beta surpassed 16 million registered users and 4 million purchases. By March 2012, Minecraft had become the 6th best-selling PC game of all time. As of 10 October 2014[update], the game had sold 17 million copies on PC, becoming the best-selling PC game of all time. On 25 February 2014, the game reached 100 million registered users. By May 2019, 180 million copies had been sold across all platforms, making it the single best-selling video game of all time. The free-to-play Minecraft China version had over 700 million registered accounts by September 2023. By 2023, the game had sold over 300 million copies. As of April 2025, Minecraft has sold over 350 million copies. The Xbox 360 version of Minecraft became profitable within the first day of the game's release in 2012, when the game broke the Xbox Live sales records with 400,000 players online. Within a week of being on the Xbox Live Marketplace, Minecraft sold a million copies. GameSpot announced in December 2012 that Minecraft sold over 4.48 million copies since the game debuted on Xbox Live Arcade in May 2012. In 2012, Minecraft was the most purchased title on Xbox Live Arcade; it was also the fourth most played title on Xbox Live based on average unique users per day. As of 4 April 2014[update], the Xbox 360 version has sold 12 million copies. In addition, Minecraft: Pocket Edition has reached a figure of 21 million in sales. The PlayStation 3 Edition sold one million copies in five weeks. The release of the game's PlayStation Vita version boosted Minecraft sales by 79%, outselling both PS3 and PS4 debut releases and becoming the largest Minecraft launch on a PlayStation console. The PS Vita version sold 100,000 digital copies in Japan within the first two months of release, according to an announcement by SCE Japan Asia. By January 2015, 500,000 digital copies of Minecraft were sold in Japan across all PlayStation platforms, with a surge in primary school children purchasing the PS Vita version. As of 2022, the Vita version has sold over 1.65 million physical copies in Japan, making it the best-selling Vita game in the country. Minecraft helped improve Microsoft's total first-party revenue by $63 million for the 2015 second quarter. The game, including all of its versions, had over 112 million monthly active players by September 2019. On its 11th anniversary in May 2020, the company announced that Minecraft had reached over 200 million copies sold across platforms with over 126 million monthly active players. By April 2021, the number of active monthly users had climbed to 140 million. In July 2010, PC Gamer listed Minecraft as the fourth-best game to play at work. In December of that year, Good Game selected Minecraft as their choice for Best Downloadable Game of 2010, Gamasutra named it the eighth best game of the year as well as the eighth best indie game of the year, and Rock, Paper, Shotgun named it the "game of the year". Indie DB awarded the game the 2010 Indie of the Year award as chosen by voters, in addition to two out of five Editor's Choice awards for Most Innovative and Best Singleplayer Indie. It was also awarded Game of the Year by PC Gamer UK. The game was nominated for the Seumas McNally Grand Prize, Technical Excellence, and Excellence in Design awards at the March 2011 Independent Games Festival and won the Grand Prize and the community-voted Audience Award. At Game Developers Choice Awards 2011, Minecraft won awards in the categories for Best Debut Game, Best Downloadable Game and Innovation Award, winning every award for which it was nominated. It also won GameCity's video game arts award. On 5 May 2011, Minecraft was selected as one of the 80 games that would be displayed at the Smithsonian American Art Museum as part of The Art of Video Games exhibit that opened on 16 March 2012. At the 2011 Spike Video Game Awards, Minecraft won the award for Best Independent Game and was nominated in the Best PC Game category. In 2012, at the British Academy Video Games Awards, Minecraft was nominated in the GAME Award of 2011 category and Persson received The Special Award. In 2012, Minecraft XBLA was awarded a Golden Joystick Award in the Best Downloadable Game category, and a TIGA Games Industry Award in the Best Arcade Game category. In 2013, it was nominated as the family game of the year at the British Academy Video Games Awards. During the 16th Annual D.I.C.E. Awards, the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences nominated the Xbox 360 version of Minecraft for "Strategy/Simulation Game of the Year". Minecraft Console Edition won the award for TIGA Game Of The Year in 2014. In 2015, the game placed 6th on USgamer's The 15 Best Games Since 2000 list. In 2016, Minecraft placed 6th on Time's The 50 Best Video Games of All Time list. Minecraft was nominated for the 2013 Kids' Choice Awards for Favorite App, but lost to Temple Run. It was nominated for the 2014 Kids' Choice Awards for Favorite Video Game, but lost to Just Dance 2014. The game later won the award for the Most Addicting Game at the 2015 Kids' Choice Awards. In addition, the Java Edition was nominated for "Favorite Video Game" at the 2018 Kids' Choice Awards, while the game itself won the "Still Playing" award at the 2019 Golden Joystick Awards, as well as the "Favorite Video Game" award at the 2020 Kids' Choice Awards. Minecraft also won "Stream Game of the Year" at inaugural Streamer Awards in 2021. The game later garnered a Nickelodeon Kids' Choice Award nomination for Favorite Video Game in 2021, and won the same category in 2022 and 2023. At the Golden Joystick Awards 2025, it won the Still Playing Award - PC and Console. Minecraft has been subject to several notable controversies. In June 2014, Mojang announced that it would begin enforcing the portion of Minecraft's end-user license agreement (EULA) which prohibits servers from giving in-game advantages to players in exchange for donations or payments. Spokesperson Owen Hill stated that servers could still require players to pay a fee to access the server and could sell in-game cosmetic items. The change was supported by Persson, citing emails he received from parents of children who had spent hundreds of dollars on servers. The Minecraft community and server owners protested, arguing that the EULA's terms were more broad than Mojang was claiming, that the crackdown would force smaller servers to shut down for financial reasons, and that Mojang was suppressing competition for its own Minecraft Realms subscription service. The controversy contributed to Notch's decision to sell Mojang. In 2020, Mojang announced an eventual change to the Java Edition to require a login from a Microsoft account rather than a Mojang account, the latter of which would be sunsetted. This also required Java Edition players to create Xbox network Gamertags. Mojang defended the move to Microsoft accounts by saying that improved security could be offered, including two-factor authentication, blocking cyberbullies in chat, and improved parental controls. The community responded with intense backlash, citing various technical difficulties encountered in the process and how account migration would be mandatory, even for those who do not play on servers. As of 10 March 2022, Microsoft required that all players migrate in order to maintain access the Java Edition of Minecraft. Mojang announced a deadline of 19 September 2023 for account migration, after which all legacy Mojang accounts became inaccessible and unable to be migrated. In June 2022, Mojang added a player-reporting feature in Java Edition. Players could report other players on multiplayer servers for sending messages prohibited by the Xbox Live Code of Conduct; report categories included profane language,[l] substance abuse, hate speech, threats of violence, and nudity. If a player was found to be in violation of Xbox Community Standards, they would be banned from all servers for a specific period of time or permanently. The update containing the report feature (1.19.1) was released on 27 July 2022. Mojang received substantial backlash and protest from community members, one of the most common complaints being that banned players would be forbidden from joining any server, even private ones. Others took issue to what they saw as Microsoft increasing control over its player base and exercising censorship, leading some to start a hashtag #saveminecraft and dub the version "1.19.84", a reference to the dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. The "Mob Vote" was an online event organized by Mojang in which the Minecraft community voted between three original mob concepts; initially, the winning mob was to be implemented in a future update, while the losing mobs were scrapped, though after the first mob vote this was changed, and losing mobs would now have a chance to come to the game in the future. The first Mob Vote was held during Minecon Earth 2017 and became an annual event starting with Minecraft Live 2020. The Mob Vote was often criticized for forcing players to choose one mob instead of implementing all three, causing divisions and flaming within the community, and potentially allowing internet bots and Minecraft content creators with large fanbases to conduct vote brigading. The Mob Vote was also blamed for a perceived lack of new content added to Minecraft since Microsoft's acquisition of Mojang in 2014. The 2023 Mob Vote featured three passive mobs—the crab, the penguin, and the armadillo—with voting scheduled to start on 13 October. In response, a Change.org petition was created on 6 October, demanding that Mojang eliminate the Mob Vote and instead implement all three mobs going forward. The petition received approximately 445,000 signatures by 13 October and was joined by calls to boycott the Mob Vote, as well as a partially tongue-in-cheek "revolutionary" propaganda campaign in which sympathizers created anti-Mojang and pro-boycott posters in the vein of real 20th century propaganda posters. Mojang did not release an official response to the boycott, and the Mob Vote otherwise proceeded normally, with the armadillo winning the vote. In September 2024, as part of a blog post detailing their future plans for Minecraft's development, Mojang announced the Mob Vote would be retired. Cultural impact In September 2019, The Guardian classified Minecraft as the best video game of the 21st century to date, and in November 2019, Polygon called it the "most important game of the decade" in its 2010s "decade in review". In June 2020, Minecraft was inducted into the World Video Game Hall of Fame. Minecraft is recognized as one of the first successful games to use an early access model to draw in sales prior to its full release version to help fund development. As Minecraft helped to bolster indie game development in the early 2010s, it also helped to popularize the use of the early access model in indie game development. Social media sites such as YouTube, Facebook, and Reddit have played a significant role in popularizing Minecraft. Research conducted by the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania showed that one-third of Minecraft players learned about the game via Internet videos. In 2010, Minecraft-related videos began to gain influence on YouTube, often made by commentators. The videos usually contain screen-capture footage of the game and voice-overs. Common coverage in the videos includes creations made by players, walkthroughs of various tasks, and parodies of works in popular culture. By May 2012, over four million Minecraft-related YouTube videos had been uploaded. The game would go on to be a prominent fixture within YouTube's gaming scene during the entire 2010s; in 2014, it was the second-most searched term on the entire platform. By 2018, it was still YouTube's biggest game globally. Some popular commentators have received employment at Machinima, a now-defunct gaming video company that owned a highly watched entertainment channel on YouTube. The Yogscast is a British company that regularly produces Minecraft videos; their YouTube channel has attained billions of views, and their panel at Minecon 2011 had the highest attendance. Another well-known YouTube personality is Jordan Maron, known online as CaptainSparklez, who has also created many Minecraft music parodies, including "Revenge", a parody of Usher's "DJ Got Us Fallin' in Love". Minecraft's popularity on YouTube was described by Polygon as quietly dominant, although in 2019, thanks in part to PewDiePie's playthroughs of the game, Minecraft experienced a visible uptick in popularity on the platform. Longer-running series include Far Lands or Bust, dedicated to reaching the obsolete "Far Lands" glitch by foot on an older version of the game. YouTube announced that on 14 December 2021 that the total amount of Minecraft-related views on the website had exceeded one trillion. Minecraft has been referenced by other video games, such as Torchlight II, Team Fortress 2, Borderlands 2, Choplifter HD, Super Meat Boy, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, The Binding of Isaac, The Stanley Parable, and FTL: Faster Than Light. Minecraft is officially represented in downloadable content for the crossover fighter Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, with Steve as a playable character with a moveset including references to building, crafting, and redstone, alongside an Overworld-themed stage. It was also referenced by electronic music artist Deadmau5 in his performances. The game is also referenced heavily in "Informative Murder Porn", the second episode of the seventeenth season of the animated television series South Park. In 2025, A Minecraft Movie was released. It made $313 million in the box office in the first week, a record-breaking opening for a video game adaptation. Minecraft has been noted as a cultural touchstone for Generation Z, as many of the generation's members played the game at a young age. The possible applications of Minecraft have been discussed extensively, especially in the fields of computer-aided design (CAD) and education. In a panel at Minecon 2011, a Swedish developer discussed the possibility of using the game to redesign public buildings and parks, stating that rendering using Minecraft was much more user-friendly for the community, making it easier to envision the functionality of new buildings and parks. In 2012, a member of the Human Dynamics group at the MIT Media Lab, Cody Sumter, said: "Notch hasn't just built a game. He's tricked 40 million people into learning to use a CAD program." Various software has been developed to allow virtual designs to be printed using professional 3D printers or personal printers such as MakerBot and RepRap. In September 2012, Mojang began the Block by Block project in cooperation with UN Habitat to create real-world environments in Minecraft. The project allows young people who live in those environments to participate in designing the changes they would like to see. Using Minecraft, the community has helped reconstruct the areas of concern, and citizens are invited to enter the Minecraft servers and modify their own neighborhood. Carl Manneh, Mojang's managing director, called the game "the perfect tool to facilitate this process", adding "The three-year partnership will support UN-Habitat's Sustainable Urban Development Network to upgrade 300 public spaces by 2016." Mojang signed Minecraft building community, FyreUK, to help render the environments into Minecraft. The first pilot project began in Kibera, one of Nairobi's informal settlements and is in the planning phase. The Block by Block project is based on an earlier initiative started in October 2011, Mina Kvarter (My Block), which gave young people in Swedish communities a tool to visualize how they wanted to change their part of town. According to Manneh, the project was a helpful way to visualize urban planning ideas without necessarily having a training in architecture. The ideas presented by the citizens were a template for political decisions. In April 2014, the Danish Geodata Agency generated all of Denmark in fullscale in Minecraft based on their own geodata. This is possible because Denmark is one of the flattest countries with the highest point at 171 meters (ranking as the country with the 30th smallest elevation span), where the limit in default Minecraft was around 192 meters above in-game sea level when the project was completed. Taking advantage of the game's accessibility where other websites are censored, the non-governmental organization Reporters Without Borders has used an open Minecraft server to create the Uncensored Library, a repository within the game of journalism by authors from countries (including Egypt, Mexico, Russia, Saudi Arabia and Vietnam) who have been censored and arrested, such as Jamal Khashoggi. The neoclassical virtual building was created over about 250 hours by an international team of 24 people. Despite its unpredictable nature, Minecraft speedrunning, where players time themselves from spawning into a new world to reaching The End and defeating the Ender Dragon boss, is popular. Some speedrunners use a combination of mods, external programs, and debug menus, while other runners play the game in a more vanilla or more consistency-oriented way. Minecraft has been used in educational settings through initiatives such as MinecraftEdu, founded in 2011 to make the game affordable and accessible for schools in collaboration with Mojang. MinecraftEdu provided features allowing teachers to monitor student progress, including screenshot submissions as evidence of lesson completion, and by 2012 reported that approximately 250,000 students worldwide had access to the platform. Mojang also developed Minecraft: Education Edition with pre-built lesson plans for up to 30 students in a closed environment. Educators have used Minecraft to teach subjects such as history, language arts, and science through custom-built environments, including reconstructions of historical landmarks and large-scale models of biological structures such as animal cells. The introduction of redstone blocks enabled the construction of functional virtual machines such as a hard drive and an 8-bit computer. Mods have been created to use these mechanics for teaching programming. In 2014, the British Museum announced a project to reproduce its building and exhibits in Minecraft in collaboration with the public. Microsoft and Code.org have offered Minecraft-based tutorials and activities designed to teach programming, reporting by 2018 that more than 85 million children had used their resources. In 2025, the Musée de Minéralogie in Paris held a temporary exhibition titled "Minerals in Minecraft." Following the initial surge in popularity of Minecraft in 2010, other video games were criticised for having various similarities to Minecraft, and some were described as being "clones", often due to a direct inspiration from Minecraft, or a superficial similarity. Examples include Ace of Spades, CastleMiner, CraftWorld, FortressCraft, Terraria, BlockWorld 3D, Total Miner, and Luanti (formerly Minetest). David Frampton, designer of The Blockheads, reported that one failure of his 2D game was the "low resolution pixel art" that too closely resembled the art in Minecraft, which resulted in "some resistance" from fans. A homebrew adaptation of the alpha version of Minecraft for the Nintendo DS, titled DScraft, has been released; it has been noted for its similarity to the original game considering the technical limitations of the system. In response to Microsoft's acquisition of Mojang and their Minecraft IP, various developers announced further clone titles developed specifically for Nintendo's consoles, as they were the only major platforms not to officially receive Minecraft at the time. These clone titles include UCraft (Nexis Games), Cube Life: Island Survival (Cypronia), Discovery (Noowanda), Battleminer (Wobbly Tooth Games), Cube Creator 3D (Big John Games), and Stone Shire (Finger Gun Games). Despite this, the fears of fans were unfounded, with official Minecraft releases on Nintendo consoles eventually resuming. Markus Persson made another similar game, Minicraft, for a Ludum Dare competition in 2011. In 2025, Persson announced through a poll on his X account that he was considering developing a spiritual successor to Minecraft. He later clarified that he was "100% serious", and that he had "basically announced Minecraft 2". Within days, however, Persson cancelled the plans after speaking to his team. In November 2024, artificial intelligence companies Decart and Etched released Oasis, an artificially generated version of Minecraft, as a proof of concept. Every in-game element is completely AI-generated in real time and the model does not store world data, leading to "hallucinations" such as items and blocks appearing that were not there before. In January 2026, indie game developer Unomelon announced that their voxel sandbox game Allumeria would be playable in Steam Next Fest that year. On 10 February, Mojang issued a DMCA takedown of Allumeria on Steam through Valve, alleging the game was infringing on Minecraft's copyright. Some reports suggested that the takedown may have used an automatic AI copyright claiming service. The DMCA was later withdrawn. Minecon was an annual official fan convention dedicated to Minecraft. The first full Minecon was held in November 2011 at the Mandalay Bay Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas. The event included the official launch of Minecraft; keynote speeches, including one by Persson; building and costume contests; Minecraft-themed breakout classes; exhibits by leading gaming and Minecraft-related companies; commemorative merchandise; and autograph and picture times with Mojang employees and well-known contributors from the Minecraft community. In 2016, Minecon was held in-person for the last time, with the following years featuring annual "Minecon Earth" livestreams on minecraft.net and YouTube instead. These livestreams, later rebranded to "Minecraft Live", included the mob/biome votes, and announcements of new game updates. In 2025, "Minecraft Live" became a biannual event as part of Minecraft's changing update schedule.[citation needed] Notes References External links |
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new fast.ai course: A Code-First Introduction to Natural Language Processing Rachel Thomas July 8, 2019 On this page Our newest course is a code-first introduction to NLP, following the fast.ai teaching philosophy of sharing practical code implementations and giving students a sense of the “whole game” before delving into lower-level details. Applications covered include topic modeling, classfication (identifying whether the sentiment of a review is postive or negative), language modeling, and translation. The course teaches a blend of traditional NLP topics (including regex, SVD, naive bayes, tokenization) and recent neural network approaches (including RNNs, seq2seq, attention, and the transformer architecture), as well as addressing urgent ethical issues, such as bias and disinformation. Topics can be watched in any order. All the code is in Python in Jupyter Notebooks, using PyTorch and the fastai library. You can find all code for the notebooks available on GitHub and all the videos of the lectures are in this playlist. This course was originally taught in the University of San Francisco MS in Data Science program during May-June 2019. The USF MSDS has been around for 7 years (over 330 students have graduated and gone on to jobs as data scientists during this time!) and is now housed at the Data Institute in downtown SF. In previous years, Jeremy taught the machine learning course and I’ve taught a computational linear algebra elective as part of the program. Highlights Some highlights of the course that I’m particularly excited about: Most of the topics can stand alone, so no need to go through the course in order if you are only interested in particular topics (although I hope everyone will watch the videos on bias and disinformation, as these are important topics for everyone interested in machine learning). Note that videos vary in length between 20-90 minutes. Course Topics There have been many major advances in NLP in the last year, and new state-of-the-art results are being achieved every month. NLP is still very much a field in flux, with best practices changing and new standards not yet settled on. This makes for an exciting time to learn NLP. This course covers a blend of more traditional techniques, newer neural net approaches, and urgent issues of bias and disinformation. For the first third of the course, we cover topic modeling with SVD, sentiment classification via naive bayes and logisitic regression, and regex. Along the way, we learn crucial processing techniques such as tokenization and numericalizaiton. Jeremy shares jupyter notebooks stepping through ULMFit, his groundbreaking work with Sebastian Ruder last year to successfully apply transfer learning to NLP. The technique involves training a language model on a large corpus, fine-tuning it for a different and smaller corpus, and then adding a classifier to the end. This work has been built upon by more recent papers such as BERT, GPT-2, and XLNet. In new material (accompanying updates to the fastai library), Jeremy shares tips and tricks to work with languages other than English, and walks through examples implementing ULMFit for Vietnamese and Turkish. We will dig into some underlying details of how simple RNNs work, and then consider a seq2seq model for translation. We build up our translation model, adding approaches such as teacher forcing, attention, and GRUs to improve performance. We are then ready to move on to the Transformer, exploring an implementation. NLP raises important ethical issues, such as how stereotypes can be encoded in word embeddings and how the words of marginalized groups are often more likely to be classified as toxic. It was a special treat to have Stanford PhD student Nikhil Garg share his work which had been published in PNAS on this topic. We also learn about a framework for better understanding the causes of different types of bias, the importance of questioning what work we should avoid doing altogether, and steps towards addressing bias, such as Data Statements for NLP. Bias is not the only ethical issue in NLP. More sophisticated language models can create compelling fake prose that may drown out real humans or manipulate public opinion. We cover dynamics of disinformation, risks of compelling computer generated text, OpenAI’s controversial decision of staged release for GPT-2, and some proposed steps towards solutions, such as systems for verification or digital signatures. We hope you will check out the course! All the code for the jupyter notebooks used in the class can be found on GitHub and a playlist of all the videos is available on YouTube. Prerequisites (Updated to add) Familiarity with working with data in Python, as well as with machine learning concepts (such as training and test sets) is a necessary prerequisite. Some experience with PyTorch and neural networks is helpful. As always, at fast.ai we recommend learning on an as-needed basis (too many students feel like they need to spend months or even years on background material before they can get to what really interests them, and too often, much of that background material ends up not even being necessary). If you are interested in this course, but unsure whether you have the right background, go ahead and try the course! If you find necessary concepts that you are unfamiliar with, you can always pause and study up on them. Also, please be sure to check out the fast.ai forums as a place to ask questions and share resources. |
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[SOURCE: https://www.fast.ai/posts/2019-07-08-fastai-nlp.html] | [TOKENS: 1100] |
new fast.ai course: A Code-First Introduction to Natural Language Processing Rachel Thomas July 8, 2019 On this page Our newest course is a code-first introduction to NLP, following the fast.ai teaching philosophy of sharing practical code implementations and giving students a sense of the “whole game” before delving into lower-level details. Applications covered include topic modeling, classfication (identifying whether the sentiment of a review is postive or negative), language modeling, and translation. The course teaches a blend of traditional NLP topics (including regex, SVD, naive bayes, tokenization) and recent neural network approaches (including RNNs, seq2seq, attention, and the transformer architecture), as well as addressing urgent ethical issues, such as bias and disinformation. Topics can be watched in any order. All the code is in Python in Jupyter Notebooks, using PyTorch and the fastai library. You can find all code for the notebooks available on GitHub and all the videos of the lectures are in this playlist. This course was originally taught in the University of San Francisco MS in Data Science program during May-June 2019. The USF MSDS has been around for 7 years (over 330 students have graduated and gone on to jobs as data scientists during this time!) and is now housed at the Data Institute in downtown SF. In previous years, Jeremy taught the machine learning course and I’ve taught a computational linear algebra elective as part of the program. Highlights Some highlights of the course that I’m particularly excited about: Most of the topics can stand alone, so no need to go through the course in order if you are only interested in particular topics (although I hope everyone will watch the videos on bias and disinformation, as these are important topics for everyone interested in machine learning). Note that videos vary in length between 20-90 minutes. Course Topics There have been many major advances in NLP in the last year, and new state-of-the-art results are being achieved every month. NLP is still very much a field in flux, with best practices changing and new standards not yet settled on. This makes for an exciting time to learn NLP. This course covers a blend of more traditional techniques, newer neural net approaches, and urgent issues of bias and disinformation. For the first third of the course, we cover topic modeling with SVD, sentiment classification via naive bayes and logisitic regression, and regex. Along the way, we learn crucial processing techniques such as tokenization and numericalizaiton. Jeremy shares jupyter notebooks stepping through ULMFit, his groundbreaking work with Sebastian Ruder last year to successfully apply transfer learning to NLP. The technique involves training a language model on a large corpus, fine-tuning it for a different and smaller corpus, and then adding a classifier to the end. This work has been built upon by more recent papers such as BERT, GPT-2, and XLNet. In new material (accompanying updates to the fastai library), Jeremy shares tips and tricks to work with languages other than English, and walks through examples implementing ULMFit for Vietnamese and Turkish. We will dig into some underlying details of how simple RNNs work, and then consider a seq2seq model for translation. We build up our translation model, adding approaches such as teacher forcing, attention, and GRUs to improve performance. We are then ready to move on to the Transformer, exploring an implementation. NLP raises important ethical issues, such as how stereotypes can be encoded in word embeddings and how the words of marginalized groups are often more likely to be classified as toxic. It was a special treat to have Stanford PhD student Nikhil Garg share his work which had been published in PNAS on this topic. We also learn about a framework for better understanding the causes of different types of bias, the importance of questioning what work we should avoid doing altogether, and steps towards addressing bias, such as Data Statements for NLP. Bias is not the only ethical issue in NLP. More sophisticated language models can create compelling fake prose that may drown out real humans or manipulate public opinion. We cover dynamics of disinformation, risks of compelling computer generated text, OpenAI’s controversial decision of staged release for GPT-2, and some proposed steps towards solutions, such as systems for verification or digital signatures. We hope you will check out the course! All the code for the jupyter notebooks used in the class can be found on GitHub and a playlist of all the videos is available on YouTube. Prerequisites (Updated to add) Familiarity with working with data in Python, as well as with machine learning concepts (such as training and test sets) is a necessary prerequisite. Some experience with PyTorch and neural networks is helpful. As always, at fast.ai we recommend learning on an as-needed basis (too many students feel like they need to spend months or even years on background material before they can get to what really interests them, and too often, much of that background material ends up not even being necessary). If you are interested in this course, but unsure whether you have the right background, go ahead and try the course! If you find necessary concepts that you are unfamiliar with, you can always pause and study up on them. Also, please be sure to check out the fast.ai forums as a place to ask questions and share resources. |
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[SOURCE: https://www.fast.ai/posts/2019-06-28-course-p2v3.html] | [TOKENS: 2463] |
Deep Learning from the Foundations Jeremy Howard June 28, 2019 On this page Today we are releasing a new course (taught by me), Deep Learning from the Foundations, which shows how to build a state of the art deep learning model from scratch. It takes you all the way from the foundations of implementing matrix multiplication and back-propogation, through to high performance mixed-precision training, to the latest neural network architectures and learning techniques, and everything in between. It covers many of the most important academic papers that form the foundations of modern deep learning, using “code-first” teaching, where each method is implemented from scratch in python and explained in detail (in the process, we’ll discuss many important software engineering techniques too). The whole course, covering around 15 hours of teaching and dozens of interactive notebooks, is entirely free (and ad-free), provided as a service to the community. The first five lessons use Python, PyTorch, and the fastai library; the last two lessons use Swift for TensorFlow, and are co-taught with Chris Lattner, the original creator of Swift, clang, and LLVM. This course is the second part of fast.ai’s 2019 deep learning series; part 1, Practical Deep Learning for Coders, was released in January, and is a required pre-requisite. It is the latest in our ongoing commitment to providing free, practical, cutting-edge education for deep learning practitioners and educators—a commitment that has been appreciated by hundreds of thousands of students, led to The Economist saying “Demystifying the subject, to make it accessible to anyone who wants to learn how to build AI software, is the aim of Jeremy Howard… It is working”, and to CogX awarding fast.ai the Outstanding Contribution in AI award. The purpose of Deep Learning from the Foundations is, in some ways, the opposite of part 1. This time, we’re not learning practical things that we will use right away, but are learning foundations that we can build on. This is particularly important nowadays because this field is moving so fast. In this new course, we will learn to implement a lot of things that are inside the fastai and PyTorch libraries. In fact, we’ll be reimplementing a significant subset of the fastai library! Along the way, we will practice implementing papers, which is an important skill to master when making state of the art models. A huge amount of work went into the last two lessons—not only did the team need to create new teaching materials covering both TensorFlow and Swift, but also create a new fastai Swift library from scratch, and add a lot of new functionality (and squash a few bugs!) in Swift for TensorFlow. It was a very close collaboration between Google Brain’s Swift for TensorFlow group and fast.ai, and wouldn’t have been possible without the passion, commitment, and expertise of the whole team, from both Google and fast.ai. This collaboration is ongoing, and today Google is releasing a new version of Swift for TensorFlow (0.4) to go with the new course. For more information about the Swift for TensorFlow release and lessons, have a look at this post on the TensorFlow blog. In the remainder of this post I’ll provide a quick summary of some of the topics you can expect to cover in this course—if this sounds interesting, then get started now! And if you have any questions along the way (or just want to chat with other students) there’s a very active forum for the course, with thousands of posts already. Lesson 8: Matrix multiplication; forward and backward passes Our main goal is to build up to a complete system that can train Imagenet to a world-class result, both in terms of accuracy and speed. So we’ll need to cover a lot of territory. Step 1 is matrix multiplication! We’ll gradually refactor and accelerate our first, pure python, matrix multiplication, and in the process will learn about broadcasting and einstein summation. We’ll then use this to create a basic neural net forward pass, including a first look at how neural networks are initialized (a topic we’ll be going into in great depth in the coming lessons). Then we will implement the backwards pass, including a brief refresher of the chain rule (which is really all the backwards pass is). We’ll then refactor the backwards path to make it more flexible and concise, and finally we’ll see how this translates to how PyTorch actually works. Lesson 9: Loss functions, optimizers, and the training loop In the last lesson we had an outstanding question about PyTorch’s CNN default initialization. In order to answer it, I did a bit of research, and we start lesson 9 seeing how I went about that research, and what I learned. Students often ask “how do I do research”, so this is a nice little case study. Then we do a deep dive into the training loop, and show how to make it concise and flexible. First we look briefly at loss functions and optimizers, including implementing softmax and cross-entropy loss (and the logsumexp trick). Then we create a simple training loop, and refactor it step by step to make it more concise and more flexible. In the process we’ll learn about nn.Parameter and nn.Module, and see how they work with nn.optim classes. We’ll also see how Dataset and DataLoader really work. Once we have those basic pieces in place, we’ll look closely at some key building blocks of fastai: Callback, DataBunch, and Learner. We’ll see how they help, and how they’re implemented. Then we’ll start writing lots of callbacks to implement lots of new functionality and best practices! Lesson 10: Looking inside the model In lesson 10 we start with a deeper dive into the underlying idea of callbacks and event handlers. We look at many different ways to implement callbacks in Python, and discuss their pros and cons. Then we do a quick review of some other important foundations: Next up, we use the callback system we’ve created to set up CNN training on the GPU. This is where we start to see how flexible this sytem is—we’ll be creating many callbacks during this course. Then we move on to the main topic of this lesson: looking inside the model to see how it behaves during training. To do so, we first need to learn about hooks in PyTorch, which allow us to add callbacks to the forward and backward passes. We will use hooks to track the changing distribution of our activations in each layer during training. By plotting this distributions, we can try to identify problems with our training. In order to fix the problems we see, we try changing our activation function, and introducing batchnorm. We study the pros and cons of batchnorm, and note some areas where it performs poorly. Finally, we develop a new kind of normalization layer to overcome these problems, compare it to previously published approaches, and see some very encouraging results. Lesson 11: Data Block API, and generic optimizer We start lesson 11 with a brief look at a smart and simple initialization technique called Layer-wise Sequential Unit Variance (LSUV). We implement it from scratch, and then use the methods introduced in the previous lesson to investigate the impact of this technique on our model training. It looks pretty good! Then we look at one of the jewels of fastai: the Data Block API. We already saw how to use this API in part 1 of the course; but now we learn how to create it from scratch, and in the process we also will learn a lot about how to better use it and customize it. We’ll look closely at each step: Next up, we build a new StatefulOptimizer class, and show that nearly all optimizers used in modern deep learning training are just special cases of this one class. We use it to add weight decay, momentum, Adam, and LAMB optimizers, and take a look a detailed look at how momentum changes training. Finally, we look at data augmentation, and benchmark various data augmentation techniques. We develop a new GPU-based data augmentation approach which we find speeds things up quite dramatically, and allows us to then add more sophisticated warp-based transformations. Lesson 12: Advanced training techniques; ULMFiT from scratch We implement some really important training techniques in lesson 12, all using callbacks: We also implement xresnet, which is a tweaked version of the classic resnet architecture that provides substantial improvements. And, even more important, the development of it provides great insights into what makes an architecture work well. Finally, we show how to implement ULMFiT from scratch, including building an LSTM RNN, and looking at the various steps necessary to process natural language data to allow it to be passed to a neural network. Lesson 13: Basics of Swift for Deep Learning By the end of lesson 12, we’ve completed building much of the fastai library for Python from scratch. Next we repeat the process for Swift! The final two lessons are co-taught by Jeremy along with Chris Lattner, the original developer of Swift, and the lead of the Swift for TensorFlow project at Google Brain. In this lesson, Chris explains what Swift is, and what it’s designed to do. He shares insights on its development history, and why he thinks it’s a great fit for deep learning and numeric programming more generally. He also provides some background on how Swift and TensorFlow fit together, both now and in the future. Next up, Chris shows a bit about using types to ensure your code has less errors, whilst letting Swift figure out most of your types for you. And he explains some of the key pieces of syntax we’ll need to get started. Chris also explains what a compiler is, and how LLVM makes compiler development easier. Then he shows how we can actually access and change LLVM builtin types directly from Swift! Thanks to the compilation and language design, basic code runs very fast indeed - about 8000 times faster than Python in the simple example Chris showed in class. Finally, we look at different ways of calculating matrix products in Swift, including using Swift for TensorFlow’s Tensor class. Lesson 14: C interop; Protocols; Putting it all together Today’s lesson starts with a discussion of the ways that Swift programmers will be able to write high performance GPU code in plain Swift. Chris Lattner discusses kernel fusion, XLA, and MLIR, which are exciting technologies coming soon to Swift programmers. Then Jeremy talks about something that’s available right now: amazingly great C interop. He shows how to use this to quickly and easily get high performance code by interfacing with existing C libraries, using Sox audio processing, and VIPS and OpenCV image processing as complete working examples. Next up, we implement the Data Block API in Swift! Well… actually in some ways it’s even better than the original Python version. We take advantage of an enormously powerful Swift feature: protocols (aka type classes). We now have enough Swift knowledge to implement a complete fully connect network forward pass in Swift—so that’s what we do! Then we start looking at the backward pass, and use Swift’s optional reference semantics to replicate the PyTorch approach. But then we learn how to do the same thing in a more “Swifty” way, using value semantics to do the backward pass in a really concise and flexible manner. Finally, we put it all together, implementing our generic optimizer, Learner, callbacks, etc, to train Imagenette from scratch! The final notebooks in Swift show how to build and use much of the fastai.vision library in Swift, even although in these two lessons there wasn’t time to cover everything. So be sure to study the notebooks to see lots more Swift tricks… More lessons We’ll be releasing even more lessons in the coming months and adding them to an attached course we’ll be calling Applications of Deep Learning. They’ll be linked from the Part 2 course page, so keep an eye out there. The first in this series will be a lesson about audio processing and audio models. I can’t wait to share it with you all! |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenAI_o4-mini] | [TOKENS: 284] |
Contents OpenAI o4-mini OpenAI o4-mini is a generative pre-trained transformer model created by OpenAI. On April 16, 2025, the o4-mini model was released to all ChatGPT users (including free-tier users) as well as via the Chat Completions API and Responses API. Additionally, OpenAI introduced the o4-mini-high model, which was made available exclusively to paid-tier ChatGPT users. The high model was a slower model which had a higher reasoning effort to produce more accurate responses. Unlike earlier models, o4-mini is capable of processing both text and images. It also allows to perform tasks like analyzing whiteboard sketches during its "chain-of-thought" phase. o4-mini API providers says that it's designed to enhance decision-making across sectors by enabling utilities to forecast demand and analyze infrastructure data, supporting healthcare through extraction and interpretation of medical records and diagnostics, and assisting financial institutions with real-time regulatory compliance and risk assessment through automated document analysis and data processing. A study indicates that the o4-mini model shows substantial improvement in chemistry-related tasks compared to earlier non-reasoning models (including the GPT-3 era models), but it still lags behind more advanced reasoning-focused models such as the DeepSeek-R1 model. See also References External links This large language model-related article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by adding missing information. |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Markus_Persson#cite_note-83] | [TOKENS: 3525] |
Contents Markus Persson Markus Alexej Persson (/ˈpɪərsən/ ⓘ PEER-sən, Swedish: [ˈmǎrːkɵs ˈpæ̌ːʂɔn] ⓘ; born 1 June 1979), known by the pseudonym Notch, is a Swedish video game programmer and designer. He is the creator of Minecraft, the best-selling video game in history. He founded the video game development company Mojang Studios in 2009. Persson began developing video games at an early age. His commercial success began after he published an early version of Minecraft in 2009. Prior to the game's official retail release in 2011, it had sold over four million copies. After this point Persson stood down as the lead designer and transferred his creative authority to Jens Bergensten. In September 2014 Persson announced his intention to leave Mojang, and in November of that year the company was sold to Microsoft reportedly for US$2.5 billion, which made him a billionaire. Since 2016 several of Persson's posts on Twitter regarding feminism, race, and transgender rights have caused public controversies. He has been described as "an increasingly polarizing figure, tweeting offensive statements regarding race, the LGBTQ community, gender, and other topics." In an effort to distance itself from Persson, Microsoft removed mentions of his name from Minecraft (excluding one instance in the game's end credits) and did not invite him to the game's tenth anniversary celebration. In 2015 he co-founded a separate game studio called Rubberbrain, which was relaunched in 2024 as Bitshift Entertainment. Early life Markus Alexej Persson was born in Stockholm, Sweden, to a Finnish mother, Ritva, and a Swedish father, Birger, on 1 June 1979. He has one sister. He grew up in Edsbyn until he was seven years old, when his family moved back to Stockholm. In Edsbyn, Persson's father worked for the railroad, and his mother was a nurse. He spent much time outdoors in Edsbyn, exploring the woods with his friends. When Persson was about seven years old, his parents divorced, and he and his sister lived with their mother. His father moved to a cabin in the countryside. Persson said in an interview that they experienced food insecurity around once a month. Persson lost contact with his father for several years after the divorce. According to Persson, his father suffered from depression, bipolar disorder, alcoholism, and medication abuse, and went to jail for robberies. While his father had somewhat recovered during Persson's early life, his father relapsed, contributing to the divorce. His sister also experimented with drugs and ran away from home. He had gained interest in video games at an early age. His father was "a really big nerd", who built his own modem and taught Persson to use the family's Commodore 128. On it, Persson played bootleg games and loaded in various type-in programs from computer magazines with the help of his sister. The first game he purchased with his own money was The Bard's Tale. He began programming on his father's Commodore 128 home computer at the age of seven. He produced his first game at the age of eight, a text-based adventure game. By 1994 Persson knew he wanted to become a video game developer, but his teachers advised him to study graphic design, which he did from ages 15 to 18. Persson, although introverted, was well-liked by his peers, but after entering secondary school was a "loner" and reportedly had only one friend. He spent most of his spare time with games and programming at home. He managed to reverse-engineer the Doom engine, which he continued to take great pride in as of 2014[update]. He never finished high school, but was reportedly a good student. Career Persson started his career working as a web designer. He later found employment at Game Federation, where he met Rolf Jansson. The pair worked in their spare time to build the 2006 video game Wurm Online. The game was released through a new entity, "Mojang Specifications AB". Persson left the project in late 2007. As Persson wanted to reuse the name "Mojang", Jansson agreed to rename the company to Onetoofree AB. Between 2004 and 2009 Persson worked as a game developer for Midasplayer (later known as King). There, he worked as a programmer, mostly building browser games made in Flash. He later worked as a programmer for jAlbum. Prior to creating Minecraft, Persson developed multiple, small games. He also entered a number of game design competitions and participated in discussions on the TIGSource forums, a web forum for independent game developers. One of Persson's more notable personal projects was called RubyDung, an isometric three-dimensional base-building game like RollerCoaster Tycoon and Dwarf Fortress. While working on RubyDung, Persson experimented with a first-person view mode similar to that found in Dungeon Keeper. However, he felt the graphics were too pixelated and omitted this mode. In 2009 Persson found inspiration in Infiniminer, a block-based open-ended mining game. Infiniminer heavily influenced his future work on RubyDung, and was behind Persson's reasoning for returning the first-person mode, the "blocky" visual style and the block-building fundamentals to the game. RubyDung is the earliest known Minecraft prototype created by Persson. On 17 May 2009 Persson released the original edition (later called "Classic version") of Minecraft on the TIGSource forums. He regularly updated the game based on feedback from TIGSource users. Persson released several new versions of Minecraft throughout 2009 and 2010, going through several phases of development including Survival Test, Indev, and Infdev. On 30 June 2010 Persson released the game's Alpha version. While working on the pre-Alpha version of Minecraft, Persson continued working at jAlbum. In 2010, after the release and subsequent success of Minecraft's Alpha version, Persson moved from a full-time role to a part-time role at jAlbum. He left jAlbum later that same year. In September 2010 Persson travelled to Valve Corporation's headquarters in Bellevue, Washington, United States, where he took part in a programming exercise and met Gabe Newell. Persson was subsequently offered a job at Valve, which he turned down in order to continue work on Minecraft. On 20 December 2010 Minecraft moved into its beta phase and began expanding to other platforms, including mobile. In January 2011 Minecraft reached one million registered accounts. Six months afterwards, it reached ten million. The game has sold over four million copies by 7 November 2011. Mojang held the first Minecon from 18 to 19 November 2011 to celebrate its full release, and subsequently made it an annual event. Following this, on 11 December 2011, Persson transferred creative control of Minecraft to Jens Bergensten and began working on another game title, 0x10c, although he reportedly abandoned the project around 2013. In 2013 Mojang recorded revenues of $330 million and profits of $129 million. Persson has stated that, due to the intense media attention and public pressure, he became exhausted with running Minecraft and Mojang. In a September 2014 blog post he shared his realization that he "didn't have the connection to my fans I thought I had", that he had "become a symbol", and that he did not wish to be responsible for Mojang's increasingly large operation. In June 2014 Persson tweeted "Anyone want to buy my share of Mojang so I can move on with my life? Getting hate for trying to do the right thing is not my gig", reportedly partly as a joke. Persson controlled a 71% stake in Mojang at the time. The offer attracted significant interest from Activision Blizzard, EA, and Microsoft. Forbes later reported that Microsoft wanted to purchase the game as a "tax dodge" to turn their taxable excess liquid cash into other assets. In September 2014 Microsoft agreed to purchase Mojang for $2.5 billion, making Persson a billionaire. He then left the company after the deal was finalised in November. Since leaving Mojang, Persson has worked on several small projects. On 23 June 2014 he founded a company with Porsér called Rubberbrain AB; the company had no games by 2021, despite spending SEK 60 million. The company was relaunched as Bitshift Entertainment, LLC on 28 March 2024. Persson expressed interest in creating a new video game studio in 2020, and in developing virtual reality games. He has also since created a series of narrative-driven immersive events called ".party()", which uses extensive visual effects and has been hosted in multiple cities. At the beginning of 2025 Persson decided to create a spiritual successor to Minecraft, referred to as "Minecraft 2", in response to the results of a poll on X. However, after speaking to his team, he shortly went against this in favour of developing the other choice on his Twitter poll, a roguelike titled Levers and Chests. Games Persson's most popular creation is the survival sandbox game Minecraft, which was first publicly available on 17 May 2009 and fully released on 18 November 2011. Persson left his job as a game developer to work on Minecraft full-time until completion. In early 2011, Mojang AB sold the one millionth copy of the game, several months later their second, and several more their third. Mojang hired several new staff members for the Minecraft team, while Persson passed the lead developer role to Jens Bergensten. He stopped working on Minecraft after a deal with Microsoft to sell Mojang for $2.5 billion. This brought his net worth to US$1.5 billion. Persson and Jakob Porsér came up with the idea for Scrolls including elements from board games and collectible card games. Persson noted that he will not be actively involved in development of the game and that Porsér will be developing it. Persson revealed on his Tumblr blog on 5 August 2011 that he was being sued by a Swedish law firm representing Bethesda Softworks over the trademarked name of Scrolls, claiming that it conflicted with their The Elder Scrolls series of games. On 17 August 2011 Persson challenged Bethesda to a Quake 3 tournament to decide the outcome of the naming dispute. On 27 September 2011 Persson confirmed that the lawsuit was going to court. ZeniMax Media, owner of Bethesda Softworks, announced the lawsuit's settlement in March 2012. The settlement allowed Mojang to continue using the Scrolls trademark. In 2018, Scrolls was made available free of charge and renamed to Caller's Bane. Cliffhorse is a humorous game programmed in two hours using the Unity game engine and free assets. The game took inspiration from Skyrim's physics engine, "the more embarrassing minimum-effort Greenlight games", Goat Simulator, and Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing. The game was released to Microsoft Windows systems as an early access and honourware game on the first day of E3 2014, instructing users to donate Dogecoin to "buy" the game before downloading it. The game accumulated over 280,000 dogecoins. Following the end to his involvement with Minecraft, Persson began pre-production of an alternate reality space game set in the distant future in March 2012. On April Fools' Day Mojang launched a satirical website for Mars Effect (parody of Mass Effect), citing the lawsuit with Bethesda as an inspiration. However, the gameplay elements remained true and on 4 April, Mojang revealed 0x10c (pronounced "Ten to the C") as a space sandbox title. Persson officially halted game production in August 2013. However, C418, the composer of the game's soundtrack (as well as that of Minecraft), released an album of the work he had made for the game. In 2013, Persson made a free game called Shambles in the Unity game engine. Persson has also participated in several Ludum Dare 48-hour game making competitions. Personal life In 2011 Persson married Elin Zetterstrand, whom he had dated for four years before. Zetterstrand was a former moderator on the Minecraft forums. They had a daughter together, but by mid-2012, he began to see little of her. On 15 August 2012 he announced that he and his wife had filed for divorce. The divorce was finalised later that year. On 14 December 2011 Persson's father committed suicide with a handgun after drinking heavily. In an interview with The New Yorker, Persson said of his father: When I decided I wanted to quit my day job and work on my own games, he was the only person who supported my decision. He was proud of me and made sure I knew. When I added the monsters to Minecraft, he told me that the dark caves became too scary for him. But I think that was the only true criticism I ever heard from him. Persson later admitted that he himself suffered from depression and various highs and lows in his mood. Persson has criticised the stance of large game companies on piracy. He once stated that "piracy is not theft", viewing unauthorised downloads as potential future customers. Persson stated himself to be a member of the Pirate Party of Sweden in 2011. He is also a member of Mensa. He has donated to numerous charities, including Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders). Under his direction, Mojang spent a week developing Catacomb Snatch for the Humble Indie Bundle and raised US$458,248 for charity. He also donated $250,000 to the Electronic Frontier Foundation in 2012. In 2011 he gave $3 million in dividends back to Mojang employees. According to Forbes, his net worth in 2023 was around $1.2 billion. In 2014 Persson was one of the biggest taxpayers in Sweden. Around 2014, he lived in a multi-level penthouse in Östermalm, Stockholm, an area he described as "where the rich people live". In December 2014 Persson purchased a home in Trousdale Estates, a neighbourhood in Beverly Hills, California, in the United States, for $70 million, a record sales price for Beverly Hills at the time. Persson reportedly outbid Beyoncé and Jay-Z for the property. Persson began receiving criticism for political and social opinions he expressed on social media as early as 2016. November 30, 2017 In 2017, he proposed a heterosexual pride holiday, and wrote that those who opposed the idea "deserve to be shot." After facing backlash, he deleted the tweets and rescinded his statements, writing, "So yeah, it's about pride of daring to express, not about pride of being who you are. I get it now." Later in the year, he wrote that feminism is a "social disease" and called the video game developer and feminist Zoë Quinn a "cunt", although he was generally critical of the GamerGate movement. He has described intersectional feminism as a "framework for bigotry" and the use of the word mansplaining as being sexist. Also in 2017, Persson tweeted that "It's okay to be white". Later that year, he stated that he believed in the Pizzagate conspiracy theory. In 2019, he tweeted referencing QAnon, saying "Q is legit. Don't trust the media." Later in 2019, he tweeted in response to a pro-transgender internet meme that, "You are absolutely evil if you want to encourage delusion. What happened to not stigmatizing mental illness?" He then also promoted claims that people were fined for "using the wrong pronoun". However, after facing backlash, he tweeted a day afterwards that he had "no idea what [being trans is] like of course, but it's inspiring as hell when people open up and choose to actually be who they know themselves as. Not because it's a cool choice, because it's a big step. I gues [sic] that's actually cool nvm". Later that year, Microsoft removed two mentions of Persson's name in the "19w13a" snapshot of Minecraft and did not invite him to the 10-year anniversary celebration of the game. A spokesperson for Microsoft stated that his views "do not reflect those of Microsoft or Mojang". He is still mentioned in the End Poem ("a flat, infinite world created by a man called Markus").[citation needed] Awards References External links |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GPT-4.1] | [TOKENS: 543] |
Contents GPT-4.1 GPT-4.1 is a large language model within OpenAI's GPT series. It was released on April 14, 2025. GPT-4.1 can be accessed through the OpenAI API or the OpenAI Developer Playground. Three different models were simultaneously released: GPT-4.1, GPT-4.1 mini, and GPT-4.1 nano. Since May 14, GPT-4.1 has been available for users subscribed to the ChatGPT Plus and Pro plans, and GPT-4.1 mini that replaces GPT-4o mini is available for all ChatGPT users. Overview All three models have a context window of 1 million tokens and a knowledge cutoff of June 2024. The models were tested on numerous benchmarks. Academic knowledge benchmarks included the 2024 AIME, GPQA, and MMLU. Coding benchmarks included SWE-bench and SWE-Lancer. Instruction following benchmarks included COLLIE and IFEval. Vision benchmarks included MMMU (answering questions about images), MathVista (solving vision-related mathematical tasks), and CharXiv (answering questions about charts from research papers). Long-context benchmarks included two brand-new benchmarks invented by OpenAI: "multi-round coreference" (where the model has to find the i-th instance of something in a fake long conversation synthetically generated by GPT-4o) and "Graphwalks" (forcing the model to simulate breadth-first search). The models underwent more training regarding tool-calling, so the "OpenAI cookbook" recommends exclusively using the tools field when giving the model access to tools. The models are also trained to follow instructions more literally, making the model more steerable. Reception The Verge described GPT-4.1's release as "mark[ing] a pivot in the company's release schedule". HackerNoon praised the model as "a HUGE win for developers", and stated that it challenged the advantages of Gemini 2.5 Pro's longer context window and Claude 3.7 Sonnet's strong reasoning capabilities. Zvi Mowshowitz described GPT-4.1-mini as an "excellent practical model". However, he criticized OpenAI for not doing enough safety testing, saying that he "hate[s] the precedent this sets". Two research teams - one led by Oxford University researcher Owain Evans, the other based at the AI red-teaming startup SplxAI - independently found evidence that GPT-4.1 could be more misaligned than GPT-4o. See also References External links |
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[SOURCE: https://www.fast.ai/posts/2019-06-17-latex-ppt.html] | [TOKENS: 1319] |
A LaTeX add-in for PowerPoint - my father’s day project Jeremy Howard June 17, 2019 On this page For creating presentations there’s a lot of features in PowerPoint that are hard to beat. So it’s not surprising that it’s a very popular tool—I see a lot of folks presenting PowerPoint presentations at machine learning talks that I attend. However, for equation-heavy academic publishing, many scientists prefer LaTeX. There are many reasons for this, but one key one is that LaTeX provides great support for creating equations. Whilst PowerPoint has an equation editor of its own, it is not a great match for LaTeX-using scientists, because: To avoid this problem, most scientists I’ve seen tend to copy screenshots from the LaTeX output of their papers, and paste them into PowerPoint. However this has it’s own problems, for instance: If you’re one of those people looking to include LaTeX equations in PowerPoint, I’ve got some good news for you—have a look at this: That’s right, this picture shows a real, editable, resizable, full-resolution equation in PowerPoint, created using LaTeX syntax! What’s the secret? Well… the secret is that Microsoft has actually included this functionality in PowerPoint for us, but they just totally butchered the front-end implementation, and failed to document it properly! So for my father’s day 2019 project, I created a little add-in to try to address that. Here’s how to use it. How to use LaTeX in PowerPoint To use LaTeX in PowerPoint you have to complete a few setup steps first. (I’ve only tested this on the latest Office 365 on Windows 10.) You’ll now find that there’s a new LaTeX tab in your ribbon. Each time you open a new PowerPoint session you’ll need to switch it to “LaTeX mode”. To do so, click inside a text box (so the cursor is flashing) and choose Enable LaTeX in the LaTeX tab. This file will now be in LaTeX mode until you close and reopen PowerPoint. This is necessary to use the Input LaTeX button (see next paragraph), which is the only way I suggest to try to enter or edit LaTeX in PowerPoint. Now you are ready to insert your equation. Click inside a text box, and ensure the cursor is at the end of the text box (currently the macro only works if you’re at the end of the selected text box). Now click Input LaTeX in the LaTeX tab, and paste your equation into the input box that pops up (you can also type into it, of course, although I’d suggest you type your LaTeX into a regular text editor and paste it to PowerPoint from there, so you have a convenient source for all your equations’ LaTeX source). That’s it! The equation is now a regular PowerPoint equation, so when you click inside it, everything is editable, and you can also select the equation and change its font size, color, etc. You can even select the equation and add Wordart effects to it, if you want to really ham things up!… Additional customization and tips You can edit the equation using the normal Microsoft Office equation ribbon commands. If you want to see and edit the LaTeX source again, click Linear on the Equation ribbon. However, don’t edit this LaTeX directly in PowerPoint—it will mangle it as you type! Instead, copy it into an external editor and change it there, then create a new equation with the Input LaTeX command as above. (This is why it’s easier to simply keep all your original LaTeX source in a plain text file, if you’re not editing the equations using the equation ribbon.) Apparently Microsoft hates productivity, or at least that’s the only reason I can think of that they decided to remove one of the most important features for productivity: the ability to customize and add keyboard shortcuts. So if you want to add a keyboard shortcut for Input LaTeX, you instead have to right-click on the Input LaTeX button in the ribbon, and choose Add to Quick Access Toolbar. You’ll now see an extra button in the very top left of your window (that’s the Quick Access Toolbar). Press and release Alt, and you’ll be able to see what numeric shortcut has been assigned to that button. Press and release Alt again to remove the shortcut overlays. Now you’re ready to use the keyboard shortcut. Click inside a textbox as before (at the end of it) and, while holding down Alt, press the number you noted down before. You should see the input box appear. If you want to contribute improvements to the add-in, or just see how it works, head over to the latex-ppt repo. latex.pptm contains the macro, so you can edit it and try out your changes there. If you just want to see the (tiny amount) of code, I’ve popped it in the macros.bas file. My macros are very basic right now, so PRs with improvements and fixes are most welcome! How this works Microsoft have actually added all the necessary stuff to make LaTeX work in PowerPoint already. They’ve just not provided any UI for it, or documentation. And the editor doesn’t work. So I created a little add-in to automate the use of the features described below. Microsoft Office supports a rather nifty plain text equation format called UnicodeMath, which used to be called Linear format. That’s what the PowerPoint ribbon still calls it, in fact. In the Equation ribbon you can click the Linear format button to type UnicodeMath directly. You can switch the linear format mode to LaTeX by typing Unicode character “Ⓣ” into an equation. Apparently that’s been in Microsoft Office for a while, but it’s only recently that the developer actually got around to writing it down. This post includes some additional useful information: The LaTeX option supports all TeX control words appearing in Appendix B of the UnicodeMath spec. That includes many math operators, Greek letters, and various other symbols. The verbose LaTeX notations like \begin{equation} and \begin{matrix} aren’t supported, but the more concise TeX notations are supported, such as and . Fractions can be entered in the LaTeX form or in the TeX form {……}. is implied if the math zone fills the hard/soft paragraph and currently it can’t be turned on in inline math zones. Unicode math alphanumerics can be entered using control words like . I hope you find this add-in and documentation useful! Many thanks to Murray Sargent of Microsoft who built the functionality in Office that this add-in uses. |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minecraft#cite_note-gon-craftbukkitdmca2-171] | [TOKENS: 12858] |
Contents Minecraft Minecraft is a sandbox game developed and published by Mojang Studios. Following its initial public alpha release in 2009, it was formally released in 2011 for personal computers. The game has since been ported to numerous platforms, including mobile devices and various video game consoles. In Minecraft, players explore a procedurally generated world with virtually infinite terrain made up of voxels (cubes). They can discover and extract raw materials, craft tools and items, build structures, fight hostile mobs, and cooperate with or compete against other players in multiplayer. The game's large community offers a wide variety of user-generated content, such as modifications, servers, player skins, texture packs, and custom maps, which add new game mechanics and possibilities. Originally created by Markus "Notch" Persson using the Java programming language, Jens "Jeb" Bergensten was handed control over the game's development following its full release. In 2014, Mojang and the Minecraft intellectual property were purchased by Microsoft for US$2.5 billion; Xbox Game Studios hold the publishing rights for the Bedrock Edition, the unified cross-platform version which evolved from the Pocket Edition codebase[i] and replaced the legacy console versions. Bedrock is updated concurrently with Mojang's original Java Edition, although with numerous, generally small, differences. Minecraft is the best-selling video game in history with over 350 million copies sold. It has received critical acclaim, winning several awards and being cited as one of the greatest video games of all time. Social media, parodies, adaptations, merchandise, and the annual Minecon conventions have played prominent roles in popularizing it. The wider Minecraft franchise includes several spin-off games, such as Minecraft: Story Mode, Minecraft Dungeons, and Minecraft Legends. A film adaptation, titled A Minecraft Movie, was released in 2025 and became the second highest-grossing video game film of all time. Gameplay Minecraft is a 3D sandbox video game that has no required goals to accomplish, giving players a large amount of freedom in choosing how to play the game. The game features an optional achievement system. Gameplay is in the first-person perspective by default, but players have the option of third-person perspectives. The game world is composed of rough 3D objects—mainly cubes, referred to as blocks—representing various materials, such as dirt, stone, ores, tree trunks, water, and lava. The core gameplay revolves around picking up and placing these objects. These blocks are arranged in a voxel grid, while players can move freely around the world. Players can break, or mine, blocks and then place them elsewhere, enabling them to build things. Very few blocks are affected by gravity, instead maintaining their voxel position in the air. Players can also craft a wide variety of items, such as armor, which mitigates damage from attacks; weapons (such as swords or bows and arrows), which allow monsters and animals to be killed more easily; and tools (such as pickaxes or shovels), which break certain types of blocks more quickly. Some items have multiple tiers depending on the material used to craft them, with higher-tier items being more effective and durable. They may also freely craft helpful blocks—such as furnaces which can cook food and smelt ores, and torches that produce light—or exchange items with villagers (NPC) through trading emeralds for different goods and vice versa. The game has an inventory system, allowing players to carry a limited number of items. The in-game time system follows a day and night cycle, with one full cycle lasting for 20 real-time minutes. The game also contains a material called redstone, which can be used to make primitive mechanical devices, electrical circuits, and logic gates, allowing for the construction of many complex systems. New players are given a randomly selected default character skin out of nine possibilities, including Steve or Alex, but are able to create and upload their own skins. Players encounter various mobs (short for mobile entities) including animals, villagers, and hostile creatures. Passive mobs, such as cows, pigs, and chickens, spawn during the daytime and can be hunted for food and crafting materials, while hostile mobs—including large spiders, witches, skeletons, and zombies—spawn during nighttime or in dark places such as caves. Some hostile mobs, such as zombies and skeletons, burn under the sun if they have no headgear and are not standing in water. Other creatures unique to Minecraft include the creeper (an exploding creature that sneaks up on the player) and the enderman (a creature with the ability to teleport as well as pick up and place blocks). There are also variants of mobs that spawn in different conditions; for example, zombies have husk and drowned variants that spawn in deserts and oceans, respectively. The Minecraft environment is procedurally generated as players explore it using a map seed that is randomly chosen at the time of world creation (or manually specified by the player). Divided into biomes representing different environments with unique resources and structures, worlds are designed to be effectively infinite in traditional gameplay, though technical limits on the player have existed throughout development, both intentionally and not. Implementation of horizontally infinite generation initially resulted in a glitch termed the "Far Lands" at over 12 million blocks away from the world center, where terrain generated as wall-like, fissured patterns. The Far Lands and associated glitches were considered the effective edge of the world until they were resolved, with the current horizontal limit instead being a special impassable barrier called the world border, located 30 million blocks away. Vertical space is comparatively limited, with an unbreakable bedrock layer at the bottom and a building limit several hundred blocks into the sky. Minecraft features three independent dimensions accessible through portals and providing alternate game environments. The Overworld is the starting dimension and represents the real world, with a terrestrial surface setting including plains, mountains, forests, oceans, caves, and small sources of lava. The Nether is a hell-like underworld dimension accessed via an obsidian portal and composed mainly of lava. Mobs that populate the Nether include shrieking, fireball-shooting ghasts, alongside anthropomorphic pigs called piglins and their zombified counterparts. Piglins in particular have a bartering system, where players can give them gold ingots and receive items in return. Structures known as Nether Fortresses generate in the Nether, containing mobs such as wither skeletons and blazes, which can drop blaze rods needed to access the End dimension. The player can also choose to build an optional boss mob known as the Wither, using skulls obtained from wither skeletons and soul sand. The End can be reached through an end portal, consisting of twelve end portal frames. End portals are found in underground structures in the Overworld known as strongholds. To find strongholds, players must craft eyes of ender using an ender pearl and blaze powder. Eyes of ender can then be thrown, traveling in the direction of the stronghold. Once the player reaches the stronghold, they can place eyes of ender into each portal frame to activate the end portal. The dimension consists of islands floating in a dark, bottomless void. A boss enemy called the Ender Dragon guards the largest, central island. Killing the dragon opens access to an exit portal, which, when entered, cues the game's ending credits and the End Poem, a roughly 1,500-word work written by Irish novelist Julian Gough, which takes about nine minutes to scroll past, is the game's only narrative text, and the only text of significant length directed at the player.: 10–12 At the conclusion of the credits, the player is teleported back to their respawn point and may continue the game indefinitely. In Survival mode, players have to gather natural resources such as wood and stone found in the environment in order to craft certain blocks and items. Depending on the difficulty, monsters spawn in darker areas outside a certain radius of the character, requiring players to build a shelter in order to survive at night. The mode also has a health bar which is depleted by attacks from mobs, falls, drowning, falling into lava, suffocation, starvation, and other events. Players also have a hunger bar, which must be periodically refilled by eating food in-game unless the player is playing on peaceful difficulty. If the hunger bar is empty, the player starves. Health replenishes when players have a full hunger bar or continuously on peaceful. Upon losing all health, players die. The items in the players' inventories are dropped unless the game is reconfigured not to do so. Players then re-spawn at their spawn point, which by default is where players first spawn in the game and can be changed by sleeping in a bed or using a respawn anchor. Dropped items can be recovered if players can reach them before they despawn after 5 minutes. Players may acquire experience points (commonly referred to as "xp" or "exp") by killing mobs and other players, mining, smelting ores, animal breeding, and cooking food. Experience can then be spent on enchanting tools, armor and weapons. Enchanted items are generally more powerful, last longer, or have other special effects. The game features two more game modes based on Survival, known as Hardcore mode and Adventure mode. Hardcore mode plays identically to Survival mode, but with the game's difficulty setting locked to "Hard" and with permadeath, forcing them to delete the world or explore it as a spectator after dying. Adventure mode was added to the game in a post-launch update, and prevents the player from directly modifying the game's world. It was designed primarily for use in custom maps, allowing map designers to let players experience it as intended. In Creative mode, players have access to an infinite number of all resources and items in the game through the inventory menu and can place or mine them instantly. Players can toggle the ability to fly freely around the game world at will, and their characters usually do not take any damage nor are affected by hunger. The game mode helps players focus on building and creating projects of any size without disturbance. Multiplayer in Minecraft enables multiple players to interact and communicate with each other on a single world. It is available through direct game-to-game multiplayer, local area network (LAN) play, local split screen (console-only), and servers (player-hosted and business-hosted). Players can run their own server by making a realm, using a host provider, hosting one themselves or connect directly to another player's game via Xbox Live, PlayStation Network or Nintendo Switch Online. Single-player worlds have LAN support, allowing players to join a world on locally interconnected computers without a server setup. Minecraft multiplayer servers are guided by server operators, who have access to server commands such as setting the time of day and teleporting players. Operators can also set up restrictions concerning which usernames or IP addresses are allowed or disallowed to enter the server. Multiplayer servers have a wide range of activities, with some servers having their own unique rules and customs. The largest and most popular server is Hypixel, which has been visited by over 14 million unique players. Player versus player combat (PvP) can be enabled to allow fighting between players. In 2013, Mojang announced Minecraft Realms, a server hosting service intended to enable players to run server multiplayer games easily and safely without having to set up their own. Unlike a standard server, only invited players can join Realms servers, and these servers do not use server addresses. Minecraft: Java Edition Realms server owners can invite up to twenty people to play on their server, with up to ten players online at a time. Minecraft Realms server owners can invite up to 3,000 people to play on their server, with up to ten players online at one time. The Minecraft: Java Edition Realms servers do not support user-made plugins, but players can play custom Minecraft maps. Minecraft Bedrock Realms servers support user-made add-ons, resource packs, behavior packs, and custom Minecraft maps. At Electronic Entertainment Expo 2016, support for cross-platform play between Windows 10, iOS, and Android platforms was added through Realms starting in June 2016, with Xbox One and Nintendo Switch support to come later in 2017, and support for virtual reality devices. On 31 July 2017, Mojang released the beta version of the update allowing cross-platform play. Nintendo Switch support for Realms was released in July 2018. The modding community consists of fans, users and third-party programmers. Using a variety of application program interfaces that have arisen over time, they have produced a wide variety of downloadable content for Minecraft, such as modifications, texture packs and custom maps. Modifications of the Minecraft code, called mods, add a variety of gameplay changes, ranging from new blocks, items, and mobs to entire arrays of mechanisms. The modding community is responsible for a substantial supply of mods from ones that enhance gameplay, such as mini-maps, waypoints, and durability counters, to ones that add to the game elements from other video games and media. While a variety of mod frameworks were independently developed by reverse engineering the code, Mojang has also enhanced vanilla Minecraft with official frameworks for modification, allowing the production of community-created resource packs, which alter certain game elements including textures and sounds. Players can also create their own "maps" (custom world save files) that often contain specific rules, challenges, puzzles and quests, and share them for others to play. Mojang added an adventure mode in August 2012 and "command blocks" in October 2012, which were created specially for custom maps in Java Edition. Data packs, introduced in version 1.13 of the Java Edition, allow further customization, including the ability to add new achievements, dimensions, functions, loot tables, predicates, recipes, structures, tags, and world generation. The Xbox 360 Edition supported downloadable content, which was available to purchase via the Xbox Games Store; these content packs usually contained additional character skins. It later received support for texture packs in its twelfth title update while introducing "mash-up packs", which combined texture packs with skin packs and changes to the game's sounds, music and user interface. The first mash-up pack (and by extension, the first texture pack) for the Xbox 360 Edition was released on 4 September 2013, and was themed after the Mass Effect franchise. Unlike Java Edition, however, the Xbox 360 Edition did not support player-made mods or custom maps. A cross-promotional resource pack based on the Super Mario franchise by Nintendo was released exclusively for the Wii U Edition worldwide on 17 May 2016, and later bundled free with the Nintendo Switch Edition at launch. Another based on Fallout was released on consoles that December, and for Windows and Mobile in April 2017. In April 2018, malware was discovered in several downloadable user-made Minecraft skins for use with the Java Edition of the game. Avast stated that nearly 50,000 accounts were infected, and when activated, the malware would attempt to reformat the user's hard drive. Mojang promptly patched the issue, and released a statement stating that "the code would not be run or read by the game itself", and would run only when the image containing the skin itself was opened. In June 2017, Mojang released the "1.1 Discovery Update" to the Pocket Edition of the game, which later became the Bedrock Edition. The update introduced the "Marketplace", a catalogue of purchasable user-generated content intended to give Minecraft creators "another way to make a living from the game". Various skins, maps, texture packs and add-ons from different creators can be bought with "Minecoins", a digital currency that is purchased with real money. Additionally, users can access specific content with a subscription service titled "Marketplace Pass". Alongside content from independent creators, the Marketplace also houses items published by Mojang and Microsoft themselves, as well as official collaborations between Minecraft and other intellectual properties. By 2022, the Marketplace had over 1.7 billion content downloads, generating over $500 million in revenue. Development Before creating Minecraft, Markus "Notch" Persson was a game developer at King, where he worked until March 2009. At King, he primarily developed browser games and learned several programming languages. During his free time, he prototyped his own games, often drawing inspiration from other titles, and was an active participant on the TIGSource forums for independent developers. One such project was "RubyDung", a base-building game inspired by Dwarf Fortress, but with an isometric, three-dimensional perspective similar to RollerCoaster Tycoon. Among the features in RubyDung that he explored was a first-person view similar to Dungeon Keeper, though he ultimately discarded this idea, feeling the graphics were too pixelated at the time. Around March 2009, Persson left King and joined jAlbum, while continuing to work on his prototypes. Infiniminer, a block-based open-ended mining game first released in April 2009, inspired Persson's vision for RubyDung's future direction. Infiniminer heavily influenced the visual style of gameplay, including bringing back the first-person mode, the "blocky" visual style and the block-building fundamentals. However, unlike Infiniminer, Persson wanted Minecraft to have RPG elements. The first public alpha build of Minecraft was released on 17 May 2009 on TIGSource. Over the years, Persson regularly released test builds that added new features, including tools, mobs, and entire new dimensions. In 2011, partly due to the game's rising popularity, Persson decided to release a full 1.0 version—a second part of the "Adventure Update"—on 18 November 2011. Shortly after, Persson stepped down from development, handing the project's lead to Jens "Jeb" Bergensten. On 15 September 2014, Microsoft, the developer behind the Microsoft Windows operating system and Xbox video game console, announced a $2.5 billion acquisition of Mojang, which included the Minecraft intellectual property. Persson had suggested the deal on Twitter, asking a corporation to buy his stake in the game after receiving criticism for enforcing terms in the game's end-user license agreement (EULA), which had been in place for the past three years. According to Persson, Mojang CEO Carl Manneh received a call from a Microsoft executive shortly after the tweet, asking if Persson was serious about a deal. Mojang was also approached by other companies including Activision Blizzard and Electronic Arts. The deal with Microsoft was arbitrated on 6 November 2014 and led to Persson becoming one of Forbes' "World's Billionaires". After 2014, Minecraft's primary versions received usually annual major updates—free to players who have purchased the game— each primarily centered around a specific theme. For instance, version 1.13, the Update Aquatic, focused on ocean-related features, while version 1.16, the Nether Update, introduced significant changes to the Nether dimension. However, in late 2024, Mojang announced a shift in their update strategy; rather than releasing large updates annually, they opted for a more frequent release schedule with smaller, incremental updates, stating, "We know that you want new Minecraft content more often." The Bedrock Edition has also received regular updates, now matching the themes of the Java Edition updates. Other versions of the game, such as various console editions and the Pocket Edition, were either merged into Bedrock or discontinued and have not received further updates. On 7 May 2019, coinciding with Minecraft's 10th anniversary, a JavaScript recreation of an old 2009 Java Edition build named Minecraft Classic was made available to play online for free. On 16 April 2020, a Bedrock Edition-exclusive beta version of Minecraft, called Minecraft RTX, was released by Nvidia. It introduced physically-based rendering, real-time path tracing, and DLSS for RTX-enabled GPUs. The public release was made available on 8 December 2020. Path tracing can only be enabled in supported worlds, which can be downloaded for free via the in-game Minecraft Marketplace, with a texture pack from Nvidia's website, or with compatible third-party texture packs. It cannot be enabled by default with any texture pack on any world. Initially, Minecraft RTX was affected by many bugs, display errors, and instability issues. On 22 March 2025, a new visual mode called Vibrant Visuals, an optional graphical overhaul similar to Minecraft RTX, was announced. It promises modern rendering features—such as dynamic shadows, screen space reflections, volumetric fog, and bloom—without the need of RTX-capable hardware. Vibrant Visuals was released as a part of the Chase the Skies update on 17 June 2025 for Bedrock Edition and is planned to release on Java Edition at a later date. Development began for the original edition of Minecraft—then known as Cave Game, and now known as the Java Edition—in May 2009,[k] and ended on 13 May, when Persson released a test video on YouTube of an early version of the game, dubbed the "Cave game tech test" or the "Cave game tech demo". The game was named Minecraft: Order of the Stone the next day, after a suggestion made by a player. "Order of the Stone" came from the webcomic The Order of the Stick, and "Minecraft" was chosen "because it's a good name". The title was later shortened to just Minecraft, omitting the subtitle. Persson completed the game's base programming over a weekend in May 2009, and private testing began on TigIRC on 16 May. The first public release followed on 17 May 2009 as a developmental version shared on the TIGSource forums. Based on feedback from forum users, Persson continued updating the game. This initial public build later became known as Classic. Further developmental phases—dubbed Survival Test, Indev, and Infdev—were released throughout 2009 and 2010. The first major update, known as Alpha, was released on 30 June 2010. At the time, Persson was still working a day job at jAlbum but later resigned to focus on Minecraft full-time as sales of the alpha version surged. Updates were distributed automatically, introducing new blocks, items, mobs, and changes to game mechanics such as water flow. With revenue generated from the game, Persson founded Mojang, a video game studio, alongside former colleagues Jakob Porser and Carl Manneh. On 11 December 2010, Persson announced that Minecraft would enter its beta phase on 20 December. He assured players that bug fixes and all pre-release updates would remain free. As development progressed, Mojang expanded, hiring additional employees to work on the project. The game officially exited beta and launched in full on 18 November 2011. On 1 December 2011, Jens "Jeb" Bergensten took full creative control over Minecraft, replacing Persson as lead designer. On 28 February 2012, Mojang announced the hiring of the developers behind Bukkit, a popular developer API for Minecraft servers, to improve Minecraft's support of server modifications. This move included Mojang taking apparent ownership of the CraftBukkit server mod, though this apparent acquisition later became controversial, and its legitimacy was questioned due to CraftBukkit's open-source nature and licensing under the GNU General Public License and Lesser General Public License. In August 2011, Minecraft: Pocket Edition was released as an early alpha for the Xperia Play via the Android Market, later expanding to other Android devices on 8 October 2011. The iOS version followed on 17 November 2011. A port was made available for Windows Phones shortly after Microsoft acquired Mojang. Unlike Java Edition, Pocket Edition initially focused on Minecraft's creative building and basic survival elements but lacked many features of the PC version. Bergensten confirmed on Twitter that the Pocket Edition was written in C++ rather than Java, as iOS does not support Java. On 10 December 2014, a port of Pocket Edition was released for Windows Phone 8.1. In July 2015, a port of the Pocket Edition to Windows 10 was released as the Windows 10 Edition, with full crossplay to other Pocket versions. In January 2017, Microsoft announced that it would no longer maintain the Windows Phone versions of Pocket Edition. On 20 September 2017, with the "Better Together Update", the Pocket Edition was ported to the Xbox One, and was renamed to the Bedrock Edition. The console versions of Minecraft debuted with the Xbox 360 edition, developed by 4J Studios and released on 9 May 2012. Announced as part of the Xbox Live Arcade NEXT promotion, this version introduced a redesigned crafting system, a new control interface, in-game tutorials, split-screen multiplayer, and online play via Xbox Live. Unlike the PC version, its worlds were finite, bordered by invisible walls. Initially, the Xbox 360 version resembled outdated PC versions but received updates to bring it closer to Java Edition before eventually being discontinued. The Xbox One version launched on 5 September 2014, featuring larger worlds and support for more players. Minecraft expanded to PlayStation platforms with PlayStation 3 and PlayStation 4 editions released on 17 December 2013 and 4 September 2014, respectively. Originally planned as a PS4 launch title, it was delayed before its eventual release. A PlayStation Vita version followed in October 2014. Like the Xbox versions, the PlayStation editions were developed by 4J Studios. Nintendo platforms received Minecraft: Wii U Edition on 17 December 2015, with a physical release in North America on 17 June 2016 and in Europe on 30 June. The Nintendo Switch version launched via the eShop on 11 May 2017. During a Nintendo Direct presentation on 13 September 2017, Nintendo announced that Minecraft: New Nintendo 3DS Edition, based on the Pocket Edition, would be available for download immediately after the livestream, and a physical copy available on a later date. The game is compatible only with the New Nintendo 3DS or New Nintendo 2DS XL systems and does not work with the original 3DS or 2DS systems. On 20 September 2017, the Better Together Update introduced Bedrock Edition across Xbox One, Windows 10, VR, and mobile platforms, enabling cross-play between these versions. Bedrock Edition later expanded to Nintendo Switch and PlayStation 4, with the latter receiving the update in December 2019, allowing cross-platform play for users with a free Xbox Live account. The Bedrock Edition released a native version for PlayStation 5 on 22 October 2024, while the Xbox Series X/S version launched on 17 June 2025. On 18 December 2018, the PlayStation 3, PlayStation Vita, Xbox 360, and Wii U versions of Minecraft received their final update and would later become known as "Legacy Console Editions". On 15 January 2019, the New Nintendo 3DS version of Minecraft received its final update, effectively becoming discontinued as well. An educational version of Minecraft, designed for use in schools, launched on 1 November 2016. It is available on Android, ChromeOS, iPadOS, iOS, MacOS, and Windows. On 20 August 2018, Mojang announced that it would bring Education Edition to iPadOS in Autumn 2018. It was released to the App Store on 6 September 2018. On 27 March 2019, it was announced that it would be operated by JD.com in China. On 26 June 2020, a public beta for the Education Edition was made available to Google Play Store compatible Chromebooks. The full game was released to the Google Play Store for Chromebooks on 7 August 2020. On 20 May 2016, China Edition (also known as My World) was announced as a localized edition for China, where it was released under a licensing agreement between NetEase and Mojang. The PC edition was released for public testing on 8 August 2017. The iOS version was released on 15 September 2017, and the Android version was released on 12 October 2017. The PC edition is based on the original Java Edition, while the iOS and Android mobile versions are based on the Bedrock Edition. The edition is free-to-play and had over 700 million registered accounts by September 2023. This version of Bedrock Edition is exclusive to Microsoft's Windows 10 and Windows 11 operating systems. The beta release for Windows 10 launched on the Windows Store on 29 July 2015. After nearly a year and a half in beta, Microsoft fully released the version on 19 December 2016. Called the "Ender Update", this release implemented new features to this version of Minecraft like world templates and add-on packs. On 7 June 2022, the Java and Bedrock Editions of Minecraft were merged into a single bundle for purchase on Windows; those who owned one version would automatically gain access to the other version. Both game versions would otherwise remain separate. Around 2011, prior to Minecraft's full release, Mojang collaborated with The Lego Group to create a Lego brick-based Minecraft game called Brickcraft. This would have modified the base Minecraft game to use Lego bricks, which meant adapting the basic 1×1 block to account for larger pieces typically used in Lego sets. Persson worked on an early version called "Project Rex Kwon Do", named after the character of the same name from the film Napoleon Dynamite. Although Lego approved the project and Mojang assigned two developers for six months, it was canceled due to the Lego Group's demands, according to Mojang's Daniel Kaplan. Lego considered buying Mojang to complete the game, but when Microsoft offered over $2 billion for the company, Lego stepped back, unsure of Minecraft's potential. On 26 June 2025, a build of Brickcraft dated 28 June 2012 was published on a community archive website Omniarchive. Initially, Markus Persson planned to support the Oculus Rift with a Minecraft port. However, after Facebook acquired Oculus in 2013, he abruptly canceled the plans, stating, "Facebook creeps me out." In 2016, a community-made mod, Minecraft VR, added VR support for Java Edition, followed by Vivecraft for HTC Vive. Later that year, Microsoft introduced official Oculus Rift support for Windows 10 Edition, leading to the discontinuation of the Minecraft VR mod due to trademark complaints. Vivecraft was endorsed by Minecraft VR contributors for its Rift support. Also available is a Gear VR version, titled Minecraft: Gear VR Edition. Windows Mixed Reality support was added in 2017. On 7 September 2020, Mojang Studios announced that the PlayStation 4 Bedrock version would receive PlayStation VR support later that month. In September 2024, the Minecraft team announced they would no longer support PlayStation VR, which received its final update in March 2025. Music and sound design Minecraft's music and sound effects were produced by German musician Daniel Rosenfeld, better known as C418. To create the sound effects for the game, Rosenfeld made extensive use of Foley techniques. On learning the processes for the game, he remarked, "Foley's an interesting thing, and I had to learn its subtleties. Early on, I wasn't that knowledgeable about it. It's a whole trial-and-error process. You just make a sound and eventually you go, 'Oh my God, that's it! Get the microphone!' There's no set way of doing anything at all." He reminisced on creating the in-game sound for grass blocks, stating "It turns out that to make grass sounds you don't actually walk on grass and record it, because grass sounds like nothing. What you want to do is get a VHS, break it apart, and just lightly touch the tape." According to Rosenfeld, his favorite sound to design for the game was the hisses of spiders. He elaborates, "I like the spiders. Recording that was a whole day of me researching what a spider sounds like. Turns out, there are spiders that make little screeching sounds, so I think I got this recording of a fire hose, put it in a sampler, and just pitched it around until it sounded like a weird spider was talking to you." Many of the sound design decisions by Rosenfeld were done accidentally or spontaneously. The creeper notably lacks any specific noises apart from a loud fuse-like sound when about to explode; Rosenfeld later recalled "That was just a complete accident by Markus and me [sic]. We just put in a placeholder sound of burning a matchstick. It seemed to work hilariously well, so we kept it." On other sounds, such as those of the zombie, Rosenfeld remarked, "I actually never wanted the zombies so scary. I intentionally made them sound comical. It's nice to hear that they work so well [...]." Rosenfeld remarked that the sound engine was "terrible" to work with, remembering "If you had two song files at once, it [the game engine] would actually crash. There were so many more weird glitches like that the guys never really fixed because they were too busy with the actual game and not the sound engine." The background music in Minecraft consists of instrumental ambient music. To compose the music of Minecraft, Rosenfeld used the package from Ableton Live, along with several additional plug-ins. Speaking on them, Rosenfeld said "They can be pretty much everything from an effect to an entire orchestra. Additionally, I've got some synthesizers that are attached to the computer. Like a Moog Voyager, Dave Smith Prophet 08 and a Virus TI." On 4 March 2011, Rosenfeld released a soundtrack titled Minecraft – Volume Alpha; it includes most of the tracks featured in Minecraft, as well as other music not featured in the game. Kirk Hamilton of Kotaku chose the music in Minecraft as one of the best video game soundtracks of 2011. On 9 November 2013, Rosenfeld released the second official soundtrack, titled Minecraft – Volume Beta, which included the music that was added in a 2013 "Music Update" for the game. A physical release of Volume Alpha, consisting of CDs, black vinyl, and limited-edition transparent green vinyl LPs, was issued by indie electronic label Ghostly International on 21 August 2015. On 14 August 2020, Ghostly released Volume Beta on CD and vinyl, with alternate color LPs and lenticular cover pressings released in limited quantities. The final update Rosenfeld worked on was 2018's 1.13 Update Aquatic. His music remained the only music in the game until 2020's "Nether Update", introducing pieces from Lena Raine. Since then, other composers have made contributions, including Kumi Tanioka, Samuel Åberg, Aaron Cherof, and Amos Roddy, with Raine remaining as the new primary composer. Ownership of all music besides Rosenfeld's independently released albums has been retained by Microsoft, with their label publishing all of the other artists' releases. Gareth Coker also composed some of the music for the game's mini games from the Legacy Console editions. Rosenfeld had stated his intent to create a third album of music for the game in a 2015 interview with Fact, and confirmed its existence in a 2017 tweet, stating that his work on the record as of then had tallied up to be longer than the previous two albums combined, which in total clocks in at over 3 hours and 18 minutes. However, due to licensing issues with Microsoft, the third volume has since not seen release. On 8 January 2021, Rosenfeld was asked in an interview with Anthony Fantano whether or not there was still a third volume of his music intended for release. Rosenfeld responded, saying, "I have something—I consider it finished—but things have become complicated, especially as Minecraft is now a big property, so I don't know." Reception Minecraft has received critical acclaim, with praise for the creative freedom it grants players in-game, as well as the ease of enabling emergent gameplay. Critics have expressed enjoyment in Minecraft's complex crafting system, commenting that it is an important aspect of the game's open-ended gameplay. Most publications were impressed by the game's "blocky" graphics, with IGN describing them as "instantly memorable". Reviewers also liked the game's adventure elements, noting that the game creates a good balance between exploring and building. The game's multiplayer feature has been generally received favorably, with IGN commenting that "adventuring is always better with friends". Jaz McDougall of PC Gamer said Minecraft is "intuitively interesting and contagiously fun, with an unparalleled scope for creativity and memorable experiences". It has been regarded as having introduced millions of children to the digital world, insofar as its basic game mechanics are logically analogous to computer commands. IGN was disappointed about the troublesome steps needed to set up multiplayer servers, calling it a "hassle". Critics also said that visual glitches occur periodically. Despite its release out of beta in 2011, GameSpot said the game had an "unfinished feel", adding that some game elements seem "incomplete or thrown together in haste". A review of the alpha version, by Scott Munro of the Daily Record, called it "already something special" and urged readers to buy it. Jim Rossignol of Rock Paper Shotgun also recommended the alpha of the game, calling it "a kind of generative 8-bit Lego Stalker". On 17 September 2010, gaming webcomic Penny Arcade began a series of comics and news posts about the addictiveness of the game. The Xbox 360 version was generally received positively by critics, but did not receive as much praise as the PC version. Although reviewers were disappointed by the lack of features such as mod support and content from the PC version, they acclaimed the port's addition of a tutorial and in-game tips and crafting recipes, saying that they make the game more user-friendly. The Xbox One Edition was one of the best received ports, being praised for its relatively large worlds. The PlayStation 3 Edition also received generally favorable reviews, being compared to the Xbox 360 Edition and praised for its well-adapted controls. The PlayStation 4 edition was the best received port to date, being praised for having 36 times larger worlds than the PlayStation 3 edition and described as nearly identical to the Xbox One edition. The PlayStation Vita Edition received generally positive reviews from critics but was noted for its technical limitations. The Wii U version received generally positive reviews from critics but was noted for a lack of GamePad integration. The 3DS version received mixed reviews, being criticized for its high price, technical issues, and lack of cross-platform play. The Nintendo Switch Edition received fairly positive reviews from critics, being praised, like other modern ports, for its relatively larger worlds. Minecraft: Pocket Edition initially received mixed reviews from critics. Although reviewers appreciated the game's intuitive controls, they were disappointed by the lack of content. The inability to collect resources and craft items, as well as the limited types of blocks and lack of hostile mobs, were especially criticized. After updates added more content, Pocket Edition started receiving more positive reviews. Reviewers complimented the controls and the graphics, but still noted a lack of content. Minecraft surpassed over a million purchases less than a month after entering its beta phase in early 2011. At the same time, the game had no publisher backing and has never been commercially advertised except through word of mouth, and various unpaid references in popular media such as the Penny Arcade webcomic. By April 2011, Persson estimated that Minecraft had made €23 million (US$33 million) in revenue, with 800,000 sales of the alpha version of the game, and over 1 million sales of the beta version. In November 2011, prior to the game's full release, Minecraft beta surpassed 16 million registered users and 4 million purchases. By March 2012, Minecraft had become the 6th best-selling PC game of all time. As of 10 October 2014[update], the game had sold 17 million copies on PC, becoming the best-selling PC game of all time. On 25 February 2014, the game reached 100 million registered users. By May 2019, 180 million copies had been sold across all platforms, making it the single best-selling video game of all time. The free-to-play Minecraft China version had over 700 million registered accounts by September 2023. By 2023, the game had sold over 300 million copies. As of April 2025, Minecraft has sold over 350 million copies. The Xbox 360 version of Minecraft became profitable within the first day of the game's release in 2012, when the game broke the Xbox Live sales records with 400,000 players online. Within a week of being on the Xbox Live Marketplace, Minecraft sold a million copies. GameSpot announced in December 2012 that Minecraft sold over 4.48 million copies since the game debuted on Xbox Live Arcade in May 2012. In 2012, Minecraft was the most purchased title on Xbox Live Arcade; it was also the fourth most played title on Xbox Live based on average unique users per day. As of 4 April 2014[update], the Xbox 360 version has sold 12 million copies. In addition, Minecraft: Pocket Edition has reached a figure of 21 million in sales. The PlayStation 3 Edition sold one million copies in five weeks. The release of the game's PlayStation Vita version boosted Minecraft sales by 79%, outselling both PS3 and PS4 debut releases and becoming the largest Minecraft launch on a PlayStation console. The PS Vita version sold 100,000 digital copies in Japan within the first two months of release, according to an announcement by SCE Japan Asia. By January 2015, 500,000 digital copies of Minecraft were sold in Japan across all PlayStation platforms, with a surge in primary school children purchasing the PS Vita version. As of 2022, the Vita version has sold over 1.65 million physical copies in Japan, making it the best-selling Vita game in the country. Minecraft helped improve Microsoft's total first-party revenue by $63 million for the 2015 second quarter. The game, including all of its versions, had over 112 million monthly active players by September 2019. On its 11th anniversary in May 2020, the company announced that Minecraft had reached over 200 million copies sold across platforms with over 126 million monthly active players. By April 2021, the number of active monthly users had climbed to 140 million. In July 2010, PC Gamer listed Minecraft as the fourth-best game to play at work. In December of that year, Good Game selected Minecraft as their choice for Best Downloadable Game of 2010, Gamasutra named it the eighth best game of the year as well as the eighth best indie game of the year, and Rock, Paper, Shotgun named it the "game of the year". Indie DB awarded the game the 2010 Indie of the Year award as chosen by voters, in addition to two out of five Editor's Choice awards for Most Innovative and Best Singleplayer Indie. It was also awarded Game of the Year by PC Gamer UK. The game was nominated for the Seumas McNally Grand Prize, Technical Excellence, and Excellence in Design awards at the March 2011 Independent Games Festival and won the Grand Prize and the community-voted Audience Award. At Game Developers Choice Awards 2011, Minecraft won awards in the categories for Best Debut Game, Best Downloadable Game and Innovation Award, winning every award for which it was nominated. It also won GameCity's video game arts award. On 5 May 2011, Minecraft was selected as one of the 80 games that would be displayed at the Smithsonian American Art Museum as part of The Art of Video Games exhibit that opened on 16 March 2012. At the 2011 Spike Video Game Awards, Minecraft won the award for Best Independent Game and was nominated in the Best PC Game category. In 2012, at the British Academy Video Games Awards, Minecraft was nominated in the GAME Award of 2011 category and Persson received The Special Award. In 2012, Minecraft XBLA was awarded a Golden Joystick Award in the Best Downloadable Game category, and a TIGA Games Industry Award in the Best Arcade Game category. In 2013, it was nominated as the family game of the year at the British Academy Video Games Awards. During the 16th Annual D.I.C.E. Awards, the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences nominated the Xbox 360 version of Minecraft for "Strategy/Simulation Game of the Year". Minecraft Console Edition won the award for TIGA Game Of The Year in 2014. In 2015, the game placed 6th on USgamer's The 15 Best Games Since 2000 list. In 2016, Minecraft placed 6th on Time's The 50 Best Video Games of All Time list. Minecraft was nominated for the 2013 Kids' Choice Awards for Favorite App, but lost to Temple Run. It was nominated for the 2014 Kids' Choice Awards for Favorite Video Game, but lost to Just Dance 2014. The game later won the award for the Most Addicting Game at the 2015 Kids' Choice Awards. In addition, the Java Edition was nominated for "Favorite Video Game" at the 2018 Kids' Choice Awards, while the game itself won the "Still Playing" award at the 2019 Golden Joystick Awards, as well as the "Favorite Video Game" award at the 2020 Kids' Choice Awards. Minecraft also won "Stream Game of the Year" at inaugural Streamer Awards in 2021. The game later garnered a Nickelodeon Kids' Choice Award nomination for Favorite Video Game in 2021, and won the same category in 2022 and 2023. At the Golden Joystick Awards 2025, it won the Still Playing Award - PC and Console. Minecraft has been subject to several notable controversies. In June 2014, Mojang announced that it would begin enforcing the portion of Minecraft's end-user license agreement (EULA) which prohibits servers from giving in-game advantages to players in exchange for donations or payments. Spokesperson Owen Hill stated that servers could still require players to pay a fee to access the server and could sell in-game cosmetic items. The change was supported by Persson, citing emails he received from parents of children who had spent hundreds of dollars on servers. The Minecraft community and server owners protested, arguing that the EULA's terms were more broad than Mojang was claiming, that the crackdown would force smaller servers to shut down for financial reasons, and that Mojang was suppressing competition for its own Minecraft Realms subscription service. The controversy contributed to Notch's decision to sell Mojang. In 2020, Mojang announced an eventual change to the Java Edition to require a login from a Microsoft account rather than a Mojang account, the latter of which would be sunsetted. This also required Java Edition players to create Xbox network Gamertags. Mojang defended the move to Microsoft accounts by saying that improved security could be offered, including two-factor authentication, blocking cyberbullies in chat, and improved parental controls. The community responded with intense backlash, citing various technical difficulties encountered in the process and how account migration would be mandatory, even for those who do not play on servers. As of 10 March 2022, Microsoft required that all players migrate in order to maintain access the Java Edition of Minecraft. Mojang announced a deadline of 19 September 2023 for account migration, after which all legacy Mojang accounts became inaccessible and unable to be migrated. In June 2022, Mojang added a player-reporting feature in Java Edition. Players could report other players on multiplayer servers for sending messages prohibited by the Xbox Live Code of Conduct; report categories included profane language,[l] substance abuse, hate speech, threats of violence, and nudity. If a player was found to be in violation of Xbox Community Standards, they would be banned from all servers for a specific period of time or permanently. The update containing the report feature (1.19.1) was released on 27 July 2022. Mojang received substantial backlash and protest from community members, one of the most common complaints being that banned players would be forbidden from joining any server, even private ones. Others took issue to what they saw as Microsoft increasing control over its player base and exercising censorship, leading some to start a hashtag #saveminecraft and dub the version "1.19.84", a reference to the dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. The "Mob Vote" was an online event organized by Mojang in which the Minecraft community voted between three original mob concepts; initially, the winning mob was to be implemented in a future update, while the losing mobs were scrapped, though after the first mob vote this was changed, and losing mobs would now have a chance to come to the game in the future. The first Mob Vote was held during Minecon Earth 2017 and became an annual event starting with Minecraft Live 2020. The Mob Vote was often criticized for forcing players to choose one mob instead of implementing all three, causing divisions and flaming within the community, and potentially allowing internet bots and Minecraft content creators with large fanbases to conduct vote brigading. The Mob Vote was also blamed for a perceived lack of new content added to Minecraft since Microsoft's acquisition of Mojang in 2014. The 2023 Mob Vote featured three passive mobs—the crab, the penguin, and the armadillo—with voting scheduled to start on 13 October. In response, a Change.org petition was created on 6 October, demanding that Mojang eliminate the Mob Vote and instead implement all three mobs going forward. The petition received approximately 445,000 signatures by 13 October and was joined by calls to boycott the Mob Vote, as well as a partially tongue-in-cheek "revolutionary" propaganda campaign in which sympathizers created anti-Mojang and pro-boycott posters in the vein of real 20th century propaganda posters. Mojang did not release an official response to the boycott, and the Mob Vote otherwise proceeded normally, with the armadillo winning the vote. In September 2024, as part of a blog post detailing their future plans for Minecraft's development, Mojang announced the Mob Vote would be retired. Cultural impact In September 2019, The Guardian classified Minecraft as the best video game of the 21st century to date, and in November 2019, Polygon called it the "most important game of the decade" in its 2010s "decade in review". In June 2020, Minecraft was inducted into the World Video Game Hall of Fame. Minecraft is recognized as one of the first successful games to use an early access model to draw in sales prior to its full release version to help fund development. As Minecraft helped to bolster indie game development in the early 2010s, it also helped to popularize the use of the early access model in indie game development. Social media sites such as YouTube, Facebook, and Reddit have played a significant role in popularizing Minecraft. Research conducted by the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania showed that one-third of Minecraft players learned about the game via Internet videos. In 2010, Minecraft-related videos began to gain influence on YouTube, often made by commentators. The videos usually contain screen-capture footage of the game and voice-overs. Common coverage in the videos includes creations made by players, walkthroughs of various tasks, and parodies of works in popular culture. By May 2012, over four million Minecraft-related YouTube videos had been uploaded. The game would go on to be a prominent fixture within YouTube's gaming scene during the entire 2010s; in 2014, it was the second-most searched term on the entire platform. By 2018, it was still YouTube's biggest game globally. Some popular commentators have received employment at Machinima, a now-defunct gaming video company that owned a highly watched entertainment channel on YouTube. The Yogscast is a British company that regularly produces Minecraft videos; their YouTube channel has attained billions of views, and their panel at Minecon 2011 had the highest attendance. Another well-known YouTube personality is Jordan Maron, known online as CaptainSparklez, who has also created many Minecraft music parodies, including "Revenge", a parody of Usher's "DJ Got Us Fallin' in Love". Minecraft's popularity on YouTube was described by Polygon as quietly dominant, although in 2019, thanks in part to PewDiePie's playthroughs of the game, Minecraft experienced a visible uptick in popularity on the platform. Longer-running series include Far Lands or Bust, dedicated to reaching the obsolete "Far Lands" glitch by foot on an older version of the game. YouTube announced that on 14 December 2021 that the total amount of Minecraft-related views on the website had exceeded one trillion. Minecraft has been referenced by other video games, such as Torchlight II, Team Fortress 2, Borderlands 2, Choplifter HD, Super Meat Boy, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, The Binding of Isaac, The Stanley Parable, and FTL: Faster Than Light. Minecraft is officially represented in downloadable content for the crossover fighter Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, with Steve as a playable character with a moveset including references to building, crafting, and redstone, alongside an Overworld-themed stage. It was also referenced by electronic music artist Deadmau5 in his performances. The game is also referenced heavily in "Informative Murder Porn", the second episode of the seventeenth season of the animated television series South Park. In 2025, A Minecraft Movie was released. It made $313 million in the box office in the first week, a record-breaking opening for a video game adaptation. Minecraft has been noted as a cultural touchstone for Generation Z, as many of the generation's members played the game at a young age. The possible applications of Minecraft have been discussed extensively, especially in the fields of computer-aided design (CAD) and education. In a panel at Minecon 2011, a Swedish developer discussed the possibility of using the game to redesign public buildings and parks, stating that rendering using Minecraft was much more user-friendly for the community, making it easier to envision the functionality of new buildings and parks. In 2012, a member of the Human Dynamics group at the MIT Media Lab, Cody Sumter, said: "Notch hasn't just built a game. He's tricked 40 million people into learning to use a CAD program." Various software has been developed to allow virtual designs to be printed using professional 3D printers or personal printers such as MakerBot and RepRap. In September 2012, Mojang began the Block by Block project in cooperation with UN Habitat to create real-world environments in Minecraft. The project allows young people who live in those environments to participate in designing the changes they would like to see. Using Minecraft, the community has helped reconstruct the areas of concern, and citizens are invited to enter the Minecraft servers and modify their own neighborhood. Carl Manneh, Mojang's managing director, called the game "the perfect tool to facilitate this process", adding "The three-year partnership will support UN-Habitat's Sustainable Urban Development Network to upgrade 300 public spaces by 2016." Mojang signed Minecraft building community, FyreUK, to help render the environments into Minecraft. The first pilot project began in Kibera, one of Nairobi's informal settlements and is in the planning phase. The Block by Block project is based on an earlier initiative started in October 2011, Mina Kvarter (My Block), which gave young people in Swedish communities a tool to visualize how they wanted to change their part of town. According to Manneh, the project was a helpful way to visualize urban planning ideas without necessarily having a training in architecture. The ideas presented by the citizens were a template for political decisions. In April 2014, the Danish Geodata Agency generated all of Denmark in fullscale in Minecraft based on their own geodata. This is possible because Denmark is one of the flattest countries with the highest point at 171 meters (ranking as the country with the 30th smallest elevation span), where the limit in default Minecraft was around 192 meters above in-game sea level when the project was completed. Taking advantage of the game's accessibility where other websites are censored, the non-governmental organization Reporters Without Borders has used an open Minecraft server to create the Uncensored Library, a repository within the game of journalism by authors from countries (including Egypt, Mexico, Russia, Saudi Arabia and Vietnam) who have been censored and arrested, such as Jamal Khashoggi. The neoclassical virtual building was created over about 250 hours by an international team of 24 people. Despite its unpredictable nature, Minecraft speedrunning, where players time themselves from spawning into a new world to reaching The End and defeating the Ender Dragon boss, is popular. Some speedrunners use a combination of mods, external programs, and debug menus, while other runners play the game in a more vanilla or more consistency-oriented way. Minecraft has been used in educational settings through initiatives such as MinecraftEdu, founded in 2011 to make the game affordable and accessible for schools in collaboration with Mojang. MinecraftEdu provided features allowing teachers to monitor student progress, including screenshot submissions as evidence of lesson completion, and by 2012 reported that approximately 250,000 students worldwide had access to the platform. Mojang also developed Minecraft: Education Edition with pre-built lesson plans for up to 30 students in a closed environment. Educators have used Minecraft to teach subjects such as history, language arts, and science through custom-built environments, including reconstructions of historical landmarks and large-scale models of biological structures such as animal cells. The introduction of redstone blocks enabled the construction of functional virtual machines such as a hard drive and an 8-bit computer. Mods have been created to use these mechanics for teaching programming. In 2014, the British Museum announced a project to reproduce its building and exhibits in Minecraft in collaboration with the public. Microsoft and Code.org have offered Minecraft-based tutorials and activities designed to teach programming, reporting by 2018 that more than 85 million children had used their resources. In 2025, the Musée de Minéralogie in Paris held a temporary exhibition titled "Minerals in Minecraft." Following the initial surge in popularity of Minecraft in 2010, other video games were criticised for having various similarities to Minecraft, and some were described as being "clones", often due to a direct inspiration from Minecraft, or a superficial similarity. Examples include Ace of Spades, CastleMiner, CraftWorld, FortressCraft, Terraria, BlockWorld 3D, Total Miner, and Luanti (formerly Minetest). David Frampton, designer of The Blockheads, reported that one failure of his 2D game was the "low resolution pixel art" that too closely resembled the art in Minecraft, which resulted in "some resistance" from fans. A homebrew adaptation of the alpha version of Minecraft for the Nintendo DS, titled DScraft, has been released; it has been noted for its similarity to the original game considering the technical limitations of the system. In response to Microsoft's acquisition of Mojang and their Minecraft IP, various developers announced further clone titles developed specifically for Nintendo's consoles, as they were the only major platforms not to officially receive Minecraft at the time. These clone titles include UCraft (Nexis Games), Cube Life: Island Survival (Cypronia), Discovery (Noowanda), Battleminer (Wobbly Tooth Games), Cube Creator 3D (Big John Games), and Stone Shire (Finger Gun Games). Despite this, the fears of fans were unfounded, with official Minecraft releases on Nintendo consoles eventually resuming. Markus Persson made another similar game, Minicraft, for a Ludum Dare competition in 2011. In 2025, Persson announced through a poll on his X account that he was considering developing a spiritual successor to Minecraft. He later clarified that he was "100% serious", and that he had "basically announced Minecraft 2". Within days, however, Persson cancelled the plans after speaking to his team. In November 2024, artificial intelligence companies Decart and Etched released Oasis, an artificially generated version of Minecraft, as a proof of concept. Every in-game element is completely AI-generated in real time and the model does not store world data, leading to "hallucinations" such as items and blocks appearing that were not there before. In January 2026, indie game developer Unomelon announced that their voxel sandbox game Allumeria would be playable in Steam Next Fest that year. On 10 February, Mojang issued a DMCA takedown of Allumeria on Steam through Valve, alleging the game was infringing on Minecraft's copyright. Some reports suggested that the takedown may have used an automatic AI copyright claiming service. The DMCA was later withdrawn. Minecon was an annual official fan convention dedicated to Minecraft. The first full Minecon was held in November 2011 at the Mandalay Bay Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas. The event included the official launch of Minecraft; keynote speeches, including one by Persson; building and costume contests; Minecraft-themed breakout classes; exhibits by leading gaming and Minecraft-related companies; commemorative merchandise; and autograph and picture times with Mojang employees and well-known contributors from the Minecraft community. In 2016, Minecon was held in-person for the last time, with the following years featuring annual "Minecon Earth" livestreams on minecraft.net and YouTube instead. These livestreams, later rebranded to "Minecraft Live", included the mob/biome votes, and announcements of new game updates. In 2025, "Minecraft Live" became a biannual event as part of Minecraft's changing update schedule.[citation needed] Notes References External links |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GPT-5.2] | [TOKENS: 605] |
Contents GPT-5.2 GPT-5.2 is OpenAI's latest flagship large language model, released on December 11, 2025. Succeeding GPT-5.1, it is a family of three large language models within the GPT series. It comes in two modes: GPT-5.2 instant and GPT-5.2 thinking (with standard and extended thinking), with the latter being a reasoning model. A GPT-5.2 Pro model was released on the same day, which takes more reasoning time and compute than GPT-5.2 thinking. OpenAI also released a variant specialized for coding, GPT-5.2-Codex. Development and release The release of GPT-5.2 occurred on December 11, 2025, approximately three weeks after the release of Google's Gemini 3 Pro, which had been widely cited as the leading multimodal model at the time. Media outlets reported that an internal "Code Red" memo, prompted by Gemini's dominance, was a key factor in accelerating the model's release from an originally planned late-December window. OpenAI executives disputed the narrative that the launch was solely reactive. Speaking to Wired, Fidji Simo, OpenAI's CEO of Applications, stated that the company had "been working on this model’s release for months", though she acknowledged that the "Code Red" and additional resources allocated to ChatGPT was "helpful" in finalizing the deployment. Architecture and capabilities GPT-5.2 is better at spreadsheet creation, financial modeling, presentations, and multi-step project execution. GPT‑5.2 comes in three modes; GPT-5.2 instant, GPT-5.2 thinking and GPT-5.2 Pro. Instant model is designed for speed and efficiency, and the other two models are reasoning models. GPT-5.2's Pro version comes into two separate selectors: standard and extended. These two modes use different compute times and powers. According to METR GPT-5.2 (high) has a 50%-time horizon of 6 hours 34 minutes and a 80%-time horizon of 55 minutes. This made GPT-5.2-high the model with the longest task-completion time horizon until 20 February 2026, when it was overtaken by Claude Opus 4.6. Reception VentureBeat noted that early reactions suggest that GPT-5.2 was "used for power users, developers, and enterprise agents rather than casual chat". Aaron Levie, CEO of Box, reported that the model scores "7 points better than GPT-5.1" on the company's tests for real-world knowledge work. The Guardian reported GPT-5.2 using Elon Musk's encyclopedia Grokipedia as a source, and Grokipedia itself was criticized by Nina Jankowicz as poorly sourced. References External links |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gemini_(language_model)] | [TOKENS: 3553] |
Contents Gemini (language model) Gemini is a family of multimodal large language models (LLMs) developed by Google DeepMind, and the successor to LaMDA and PaLM 2. Comprising Gemini Pro, Gemini Deep Think, Gemini Flash, and Gemini Flash Lite, it was announced on December 6, 2023. It powers the chatbot of the same name. History Google announced Gemini, a large language model (LLM) developed by subsidiary Google DeepMind, during the Google I/O keynote on May 10, 2023. It was positioned as a more powerful successor to PaLM 2, which was also unveiled at the event, with Google CEO Sundar Pichai stating that Gemini was still in its early developmental stages. Unlike other LLMs, Gemini was said to be unique in that it was not trained on a text corpus alone and was designed to be multimodal, meaning it could process multiple types of data simultaneously, including text, images, audio, video, and computer code. It had been developed as a collaboration between DeepMind and Google Brain, two branches of Google that had been merged as Google DeepMind. In an interview with Wired, DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis touted Gemini's advanced capabilities, which he believed would allow the algorithm to trump OpenAI's ChatGPT, which runs on GPT-4 and whose growing popularity had been aggressively challenged by Google with LaMDA and Bard. Hassabis highlighted the strengths of DeepMind's AlphaGo program, which gained worldwide attention in 2016 when it defeated Go champion Lee Sedol, saying that Gemini would combine the power of AlphaGo and other Google–DeepMind LLMs. In August 2023, The Information published a report outlining Google's roadmap for Gemini, revealing that the company was targeting a launch date of late 2023. According to the report, Google hoped to surpass OpenAI and other competitors by combining conversational text capabilities present in most LLMs with artificial intelligence–powered image generation, allowing it to create contextual images and be adapted for a wider range of use cases. Like Bard, Google co-founder Sergey Brin was summoned out of retirement to assist in the development of Gemini, along with hundreds of other engineers from Google Brain and DeepMind; he was later credited as a "core contributor" to Gemini. Because Gemini was being trained on transcripts of YouTube videos, lawyers were brought in to filter out any potentially copyrighted materials. With news of Gemini's impending launch, OpenAI hastened its work on integrating GPT-4 with multimodal features similar to those of Gemini. The Information reported in September that several companies had been granted early access to "an early version" of the LLM, which Google intended to make available to clients through Google Cloud's Vertex AI service. The publication also stated that Google was arming Gemini to compete with both GPT-4 and Microsoft's GitHub Copilot. On December 6, 2023, Pichai and Hassabis announced "Gemini 1.0" at a virtual press conference. It comprised three models: Gemini Ultra, designed for "highly complex tasks"; Gemini Pro, designed for "a wide range of tasks"; and Gemini Nano, designed for "on-device tasks". At launch, Gemini Pro and Nano were integrated into Bard and the Pixel 8 Pro smartphone, respectively, while Gemini Ultra was set to power "Bard Advanced" and become available to software developers in early 2024. Other products that Google intended to incorporate Gemini into included Search, Ads, Chrome, Duet AI on Google Workspace, and AlphaCode 2. It was made available only in English. Touted as Google's "largest and most capable AI model" and designed to emulate human behavior, the company stated that Gemini would not be made widely available until the following year due to the need for "extensive safety testing". Gemini was trained on and powered by Google's Tensor Processing Units (TPUs), and the name is in reference to the DeepMind–Google Brain merger as well as NASA's Project Gemini. Gemini Ultra was said to have outperformed GPT-4, Anthropic's Claude 2, Inflection AI's Inflection-2, Meta's LLaMA 2, and xAI's Grok 1 on a variety of industry benchmarks, while Gemini Pro was said to have outperformed GPT-3.5. Gemini Ultra was also the first language model to outperform human experts on the 57-subject Massive Multitask Language Understanding (MMLU) test, obtaining a score of 90%. Gemini Pro was made available to Google Cloud customers on AI Studio and Vertex AI on December 13, while Gemini Nano will be made available to Android developers as well. Hassabis further revealed that DeepMind was exploring how Gemini could be "combined with robotics to physically interact with the world". In accordance with an executive order signed by U.S. President Joe Biden in October, Google stated that it would share testing results of Gemini Ultra with the federal government of the United States. Similarly, the company was engaged in discussions with the government of the United Kingdom to comply with the principles laid out at the AI Safety Summit at Bletchley Park in November. In June 2025, Google introduced Gemini CLI, an open-source AI agent that brings the capabilities of Gemini directly to the terminal, offering advanced coding, automation, and problem-solving features with generous free usage limits for individual developers. Google partnered with Samsung to integrate Gemini Nano and Gemini Pro into its Galaxy S24 smartphone lineup in January 2024. The following month, Bard and Duet AI were unified under the Gemini brand, with "Gemini Advanced with Ultra 1.0" debuting via a new "AI Premium" tier of the Google One subscription service. Gemini Pro also received a global launch. In February 2024, Google launched Gemini 1.5 in a limited capacity, positioned as a more powerful and capable model than 1.0 Ultra. This "step change" was achieved through various technical advancements, including a new architecture, a mixture-of-experts approach, and a larger one-million-token context window, which equates to roughly an hour of silent video, 11 hours of audio, 30,000 lines of code, or 700,000 words. The same month, Google debuted Gemma, a family of free and open-source LLMs that serve as a lightweight version of Gemini. They came in two sizes, with a neural network with two and seven billion parameters, respectively. Multiple publications viewed this as a response to Meta and others open-sourcing their AI models, and a stark reversal from Google's longstanding practice of keeping its AI proprietary. Google announced an additional model, Gemini 1.5 Flash, on May 14 at the 2024 I/O keynote. Two updated Gemini models, Gemini-1.5-Pro-002 and Gemini-1.5-Flash-002, were released on September 24, 2024. On December 11, 2024, Google announced Gemini 2.0 Flash Experimental, a significant update to its Gemini AI model. This iteration boasts improved speed and performance over its predecessor, Gemini 1.5 Flash. Key features include a Multimodal Live API for real-time audio and video interactions, enhanced spatial understanding, native image and controllable text-to-speech generation (with watermarking), and integrated tool use, including Google Search. It also introduces improved agentic capabilities, a new Google Gen AI SDK, and "Jules," an experimental AI coding agent for GitHub. Additionally, Google Colab is integrating Gemini 2.0 to generate data science notebooks from natural language. Gemini 2.0 was available through the Gemini chat interface for all users as "Gemini 2.0 Flash experimental". On January 30, 2025, Google released Gemini 2.0 Flash as the new default model, with Gemini 1.5 Flash still available for usage. This was followed by the release of Gemini 2.0 Pro on February 5, 2025. Additionally, Google released Gemini 2.0 Flash Thinking Experimental, which details the language model's thinking process when responding to prompts. On March 12, 2025, Google also announced Gemini Robotics, a vision-language-action model based on the Gemini 2.0 family of models. The next day, Google announced that Gemini in Android Studio would be able to understand simple UI mockups and transform them into working Jetpack Compose code. Gemini 2.5 Pro Experimental was released on March 25, 2025, described by Google as its most intelligent AI model yet, featuring enhanced reasoning and coding capabilities, and a "thinking model" capable of reasoning through steps before responding, using techniques like chain-of-thought prompting, whilst maintaining native multimodality and launching with a 1 million token context window. At Google I/O 2025, Google announced significant updates to its Gemini core models. Gemini 2.5 Flash became the default model, delivering faster responses. Gemini 2.5 Pro was introduced as the most advanced Gemini model, featuring reasoning, coding capabilities, and the new Deep Think mode for complex tasks. Both 2.5 Pro and Flash support native audio output and improved security. On June 17, 2025, Google announced general availability for 2.5 Pro and Flash. They also introduced Gemini 2.5 Flash-Lite that same day, a model optimized for speed and cost-efficiency. On November 18, 2025, Google announced the release of 3 Pro and 3 Deep Think. These new models replace 2.5 Pro and Flash, and are the most powerful models available as of November 2025. On release, 3 Pro outperformed major AI models in 19 out of 20 benchmarks tested, including surpassing OpenAI's GPT-5 Pro in Humanity's Last Exam, with an accuracy of 41% compared to OpenAI's 31.64%, and topped the LMArena leaderboard. This reportedly led to OpenAI declaring an internal "code red" in December to catch up to Gemini 3, and hastened the release of a new model named GPT-5.2, which was released on December 11. On December 4, 2025, Google announced that 3 Deep Think would start rolling out to Ultra subscribers. On December 17, 2025, Google announced the release of 3 Flash replacing the current version of 2.5 Flash. On January 12, 2026, Apple has officially partnered with Google to use Google's Gemini AI model as the foundation for the next generation of Apple Foundation models, which will power its upcoming version of Siri. On February 12, 2026, Google released a major update to Gemini 3 Deep Think, stating that it was updated to solve modern science, research and engineering challenges. On February 19th, 2026, Google Released Gemini 3.1 Pro The following table lists the main model versions of Gemini, describing the significant changes included with each version: Nano Banana Nano Banana (officially Gemini 2.5 Flash Image) and Nano Banana Pro (officially Gemini 3 Pro Image) are image generation and editing models. "Nano Banana" was the codename used for the model while it was undergoing secret public testing on Arena. It first appeared publicly as an anonymous model on the crowd-sourced AI evaluation platform Arena on August 12, 2025. It was released publicly on August 26, 2025 through the Gemini app and related Google AI services. The nickname "Nano Banana" originated from nicknames given to Naina Raisinghani, Product Manager at Google DeepMind. Google later confirmed its identity as Gemini 2.5 Flash Image in an official announcement upon public release. On November 20, 2025, DeepMind released Nano Banana Pro (Gemini 3 Pro Image) with improved text rendering and world knowledge. Upon release, Nano Banana became a viral Internet sensation on social media, particularly for its photorealistic "3D figurine" images. Following its release, Nano Banana was made available in the Gemini app, Google AI Studio, and through Vertex AI. According to Google, it helped attract over 10 million new users to the Gemini app and facilitated more than 200 million image edits within weeks of launch. The model lets users change hairstyles, backdrops, and mix photos with natural language cues. Subject consistency allows the same person or item to be recognized across revisions of an image. Multi-image fusion joins photographs into one seamless output, and world knowledge allows context-aware changes. It also provides SynthID watermarking, which is an invisible digital signature in outputs to identify AI-generated information. Multi-image fusion joins photographs into one seamless output, and world knowledge allows context-aware changes. People started to connect Nano Banana with a viral craze in which people turned their selfies into 3D figurines that looked like toys. The event circulated quickly on sites like Instagram and X (previously Twitter). By adding the model to X, users could tag Nano Banana directly in posts to make photos from prompts, which made it even more popular. A September 2025 review in TechRadar reported that Nano Banana was more realistic and consistent across multiple prompts than ChatGPT's image generation. A review in Tom's Guide praised its ability to handle creative and lively image edits. Another review in PC Gamer mentioned that the model did not have some basic editing tools like cropping, and that the product sometimes did not apply changes, but reverted back to the original image instead. Nano Banana showed good performance in architectural visualization, for producing imagery at the correct scale even with complex geometry. Technical specifications As Gemini is multimodal, each context window can contain multiple forms of input. The different modes can be interleaved and do not have to be presented in a fixed order, allowing for a multimodal conversation. For example, the user might open the conversation with a mix of text, picture, video, and audio, presented in any order, and Gemini might reply with the same free ordering. Input images may be of different resolutions, while video is inputted as a sequence of images. Audio is sampled at 16 kHz and then converted into a sequence of tokens by the Universal Speech Model. Gemini's dataset is multimodal and multilingual, consisting of "web documents, books, and code, and includ[ing] image, audio, and video data". Gemini and Gemma models are decoder-only transformers, with modifications to allow efficient training and inference on TPUs. The 1.0 generation uses multi-query attention. No whitepapers were published for Gemini 2.0, 2.5, and 3. Reception Gemini's launch was preceded by months of intense speculation and anticipation, which MIT Technology Review described as "peak AI hype". In August 2023, Dylan Patel and Daniel Nishball of research firm SemiAnalysis penned a blog post declaring that the release of Gemini would "eat the world" and outclass GPT-4, prompting OpenAI CEO Sam Altman to ridicule the duo on X (formerly Twitter). Business magnate Elon Musk, who co-founded OpenAI, weighed in, asking, "Are the numbers wrong?" Hugh Langley of Business Insider remarked that Gemini would be a make-or-break moment for Google, writing: "If Gemini dazzles, it will help Google change the narrative that it was blindsided by Microsoft and OpenAI. If it disappoints, it will embolden critics who say Google has fallen behind." Reacting to its unveiling in December 2023, University of Washington professor emeritus Oren Etzioni predicted a "tit-for-tat arms race" between Google and OpenAI. Professor Alexei Efros of the University of California, Berkeley praised the potential of Gemini's multimodal approach, while scientist Melanie Mitchell of the Santa Fe Institute called Gemini "very sophisticated". Professor Chirag Shah of the University of Washington was less impressed, likening Gemini's launch to the routineness of Apple's annual introduction of a new iPhone. Similarly, Stanford University's Percy Liang, the University of Washington's Emily Bender, and the University of Galway's Michael Madden cautioned that it was difficult to interpret benchmark scores without insight into the training data used. Writing for Fast Company, Mark Sullivan opined that Google had the opportunity to challenge the iPhone's dominant market share, believing that Apple was unlikely to have the capacity to develop functionality similar to Gemini with its Siri virtual assistant. Google shares spiked by 5.3 percent the day after Gemini's launch. Google faced criticism for a demonstrative video of Gemini, which was not conducted in real time. Gemini 2.5 Pro Experimental debuted at the top position on the LMArena leaderboard, a benchmark measuring human preference, indicating strong performance and output quality. The model achieved state-of-the-art or highly competitive results across various benchmarks evaluating reasoning, knowledge, science, math, coding, and long-context performance, such as Humanity's Last Exam, GPQA, AIME 2025, SWE-bench and MRCR. Initial reviews highlighted its improved reasoning capabilities and performance gains compared to previous versions. Published benchmarks also showed areas where contemporary models from competitors like Anthropic, xAI, or OpenAI held advantages. See also References Further reading External links |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minecraft#cite_note-174] | [TOKENS: 12858] |
Contents Minecraft Minecraft is a sandbox game developed and published by Mojang Studios. Following its initial public alpha release in 2009, it was formally released in 2011 for personal computers. The game has since been ported to numerous platforms, including mobile devices and various video game consoles. In Minecraft, players explore a procedurally generated world with virtually infinite terrain made up of voxels (cubes). They can discover and extract raw materials, craft tools and items, build structures, fight hostile mobs, and cooperate with or compete against other players in multiplayer. The game's large community offers a wide variety of user-generated content, such as modifications, servers, player skins, texture packs, and custom maps, which add new game mechanics and possibilities. Originally created by Markus "Notch" Persson using the Java programming language, Jens "Jeb" Bergensten was handed control over the game's development following its full release. In 2014, Mojang and the Minecraft intellectual property were purchased by Microsoft for US$2.5 billion; Xbox Game Studios hold the publishing rights for the Bedrock Edition, the unified cross-platform version which evolved from the Pocket Edition codebase[i] and replaced the legacy console versions. Bedrock is updated concurrently with Mojang's original Java Edition, although with numerous, generally small, differences. Minecraft is the best-selling video game in history with over 350 million copies sold. It has received critical acclaim, winning several awards and being cited as one of the greatest video games of all time. Social media, parodies, adaptations, merchandise, and the annual Minecon conventions have played prominent roles in popularizing it. The wider Minecraft franchise includes several spin-off games, such as Minecraft: Story Mode, Minecraft Dungeons, and Minecraft Legends. A film adaptation, titled A Minecraft Movie, was released in 2025 and became the second highest-grossing video game film of all time. Gameplay Minecraft is a 3D sandbox video game that has no required goals to accomplish, giving players a large amount of freedom in choosing how to play the game. The game features an optional achievement system. Gameplay is in the first-person perspective by default, but players have the option of third-person perspectives. The game world is composed of rough 3D objects—mainly cubes, referred to as blocks—representing various materials, such as dirt, stone, ores, tree trunks, water, and lava. The core gameplay revolves around picking up and placing these objects. These blocks are arranged in a voxel grid, while players can move freely around the world. Players can break, or mine, blocks and then place them elsewhere, enabling them to build things. Very few blocks are affected by gravity, instead maintaining their voxel position in the air. Players can also craft a wide variety of items, such as armor, which mitigates damage from attacks; weapons (such as swords or bows and arrows), which allow monsters and animals to be killed more easily; and tools (such as pickaxes or shovels), which break certain types of blocks more quickly. Some items have multiple tiers depending on the material used to craft them, with higher-tier items being more effective and durable. They may also freely craft helpful blocks—such as furnaces which can cook food and smelt ores, and torches that produce light—or exchange items with villagers (NPC) through trading emeralds for different goods and vice versa. The game has an inventory system, allowing players to carry a limited number of items. The in-game time system follows a day and night cycle, with one full cycle lasting for 20 real-time minutes. The game also contains a material called redstone, which can be used to make primitive mechanical devices, electrical circuits, and logic gates, allowing for the construction of many complex systems. New players are given a randomly selected default character skin out of nine possibilities, including Steve or Alex, but are able to create and upload their own skins. Players encounter various mobs (short for mobile entities) including animals, villagers, and hostile creatures. Passive mobs, such as cows, pigs, and chickens, spawn during the daytime and can be hunted for food and crafting materials, while hostile mobs—including large spiders, witches, skeletons, and zombies—spawn during nighttime or in dark places such as caves. Some hostile mobs, such as zombies and skeletons, burn under the sun if they have no headgear and are not standing in water. Other creatures unique to Minecraft include the creeper (an exploding creature that sneaks up on the player) and the enderman (a creature with the ability to teleport as well as pick up and place blocks). There are also variants of mobs that spawn in different conditions; for example, zombies have husk and drowned variants that spawn in deserts and oceans, respectively. The Minecraft environment is procedurally generated as players explore it using a map seed that is randomly chosen at the time of world creation (or manually specified by the player). Divided into biomes representing different environments with unique resources and structures, worlds are designed to be effectively infinite in traditional gameplay, though technical limits on the player have existed throughout development, both intentionally and not. Implementation of horizontally infinite generation initially resulted in a glitch termed the "Far Lands" at over 12 million blocks away from the world center, where terrain generated as wall-like, fissured patterns. The Far Lands and associated glitches were considered the effective edge of the world until they were resolved, with the current horizontal limit instead being a special impassable barrier called the world border, located 30 million blocks away. Vertical space is comparatively limited, with an unbreakable bedrock layer at the bottom and a building limit several hundred blocks into the sky. Minecraft features three independent dimensions accessible through portals and providing alternate game environments. The Overworld is the starting dimension and represents the real world, with a terrestrial surface setting including plains, mountains, forests, oceans, caves, and small sources of lava. The Nether is a hell-like underworld dimension accessed via an obsidian portal and composed mainly of lava. Mobs that populate the Nether include shrieking, fireball-shooting ghasts, alongside anthropomorphic pigs called piglins and their zombified counterparts. Piglins in particular have a bartering system, where players can give them gold ingots and receive items in return. Structures known as Nether Fortresses generate in the Nether, containing mobs such as wither skeletons and blazes, which can drop blaze rods needed to access the End dimension. The player can also choose to build an optional boss mob known as the Wither, using skulls obtained from wither skeletons and soul sand. The End can be reached through an end portal, consisting of twelve end portal frames. End portals are found in underground structures in the Overworld known as strongholds. To find strongholds, players must craft eyes of ender using an ender pearl and blaze powder. Eyes of ender can then be thrown, traveling in the direction of the stronghold. Once the player reaches the stronghold, they can place eyes of ender into each portal frame to activate the end portal. The dimension consists of islands floating in a dark, bottomless void. A boss enemy called the Ender Dragon guards the largest, central island. Killing the dragon opens access to an exit portal, which, when entered, cues the game's ending credits and the End Poem, a roughly 1,500-word work written by Irish novelist Julian Gough, which takes about nine minutes to scroll past, is the game's only narrative text, and the only text of significant length directed at the player.: 10–12 At the conclusion of the credits, the player is teleported back to their respawn point and may continue the game indefinitely. In Survival mode, players have to gather natural resources such as wood and stone found in the environment in order to craft certain blocks and items. Depending on the difficulty, monsters spawn in darker areas outside a certain radius of the character, requiring players to build a shelter in order to survive at night. The mode also has a health bar which is depleted by attacks from mobs, falls, drowning, falling into lava, suffocation, starvation, and other events. Players also have a hunger bar, which must be periodically refilled by eating food in-game unless the player is playing on peaceful difficulty. If the hunger bar is empty, the player starves. Health replenishes when players have a full hunger bar or continuously on peaceful. Upon losing all health, players die. The items in the players' inventories are dropped unless the game is reconfigured not to do so. Players then re-spawn at their spawn point, which by default is where players first spawn in the game and can be changed by sleeping in a bed or using a respawn anchor. Dropped items can be recovered if players can reach them before they despawn after 5 minutes. Players may acquire experience points (commonly referred to as "xp" or "exp") by killing mobs and other players, mining, smelting ores, animal breeding, and cooking food. Experience can then be spent on enchanting tools, armor and weapons. Enchanted items are generally more powerful, last longer, or have other special effects. The game features two more game modes based on Survival, known as Hardcore mode and Adventure mode. Hardcore mode plays identically to Survival mode, but with the game's difficulty setting locked to "Hard" and with permadeath, forcing them to delete the world or explore it as a spectator after dying. Adventure mode was added to the game in a post-launch update, and prevents the player from directly modifying the game's world. It was designed primarily for use in custom maps, allowing map designers to let players experience it as intended. In Creative mode, players have access to an infinite number of all resources and items in the game through the inventory menu and can place or mine them instantly. Players can toggle the ability to fly freely around the game world at will, and their characters usually do not take any damage nor are affected by hunger. The game mode helps players focus on building and creating projects of any size without disturbance. Multiplayer in Minecraft enables multiple players to interact and communicate with each other on a single world. It is available through direct game-to-game multiplayer, local area network (LAN) play, local split screen (console-only), and servers (player-hosted and business-hosted). Players can run their own server by making a realm, using a host provider, hosting one themselves or connect directly to another player's game via Xbox Live, PlayStation Network or Nintendo Switch Online. Single-player worlds have LAN support, allowing players to join a world on locally interconnected computers without a server setup. Minecraft multiplayer servers are guided by server operators, who have access to server commands such as setting the time of day and teleporting players. Operators can also set up restrictions concerning which usernames or IP addresses are allowed or disallowed to enter the server. Multiplayer servers have a wide range of activities, with some servers having their own unique rules and customs. The largest and most popular server is Hypixel, which has been visited by over 14 million unique players. Player versus player combat (PvP) can be enabled to allow fighting between players. In 2013, Mojang announced Minecraft Realms, a server hosting service intended to enable players to run server multiplayer games easily and safely without having to set up their own. Unlike a standard server, only invited players can join Realms servers, and these servers do not use server addresses. Minecraft: Java Edition Realms server owners can invite up to twenty people to play on their server, with up to ten players online at a time. Minecraft Realms server owners can invite up to 3,000 people to play on their server, with up to ten players online at one time. The Minecraft: Java Edition Realms servers do not support user-made plugins, but players can play custom Minecraft maps. Minecraft Bedrock Realms servers support user-made add-ons, resource packs, behavior packs, and custom Minecraft maps. At Electronic Entertainment Expo 2016, support for cross-platform play between Windows 10, iOS, and Android platforms was added through Realms starting in June 2016, with Xbox One and Nintendo Switch support to come later in 2017, and support for virtual reality devices. On 31 July 2017, Mojang released the beta version of the update allowing cross-platform play. Nintendo Switch support for Realms was released in July 2018. The modding community consists of fans, users and third-party programmers. Using a variety of application program interfaces that have arisen over time, they have produced a wide variety of downloadable content for Minecraft, such as modifications, texture packs and custom maps. Modifications of the Minecraft code, called mods, add a variety of gameplay changes, ranging from new blocks, items, and mobs to entire arrays of mechanisms. The modding community is responsible for a substantial supply of mods from ones that enhance gameplay, such as mini-maps, waypoints, and durability counters, to ones that add to the game elements from other video games and media. While a variety of mod frameworks were independently developed by reverse engineering the code, Mojang has also enhanced vanilla Minecraft with official frameworks for modification, allowing the production of community-created resource packs, which alter certain game elements including textures and sounds. Players can also create their own "maps" (custom world save files) that often contain specific rules, challenges, puzzles and quests, and share them for others to play. Mojang added an adventure mode in August 2012 and "command blocks" in October 2012, which were created specially for custom maps in Java Edition. Data packs, introduced in version 1.13 of the Java Edition, allow further customization, including the ability to add new achievements, dimensions, functions, loot tables, predicates, recipes, structures, tags, and world generation. The Xbox 360 Edition supported downloadable content, which was available to purchase via the Xbox Games Store; these content packs usually contained additional character skins. It later received support for texture packs in its twelfth title update while introducing "mash-up packs", which combined texture packs with skin packs and changes to the game's sounds, music and user interface. The first mash-up pack (and by extension, the first texture pack) for the Xbox 360 Edition was released on 4 September 2013, and was themed after the Mass Effect franchise. Unlike Java Edition, however, the Xbox 360 Edition did not support player-made mods or custom maps. A cross-promotional resource pack based on the Super Mario franchise by Nintendo was released exclusively for the Wii U Edition worldwide on 17 May 2016, and later bundled free with the Nintendo Switch Edition at launch. Another based on Fallout was released on consoles that December, and for Windows and Mobile in April 2017. In April 2018, malware was discovered in several downloadable user-made Minecraft skins for use with the Java Edition of the game. Avast stated that nearly 50,000 accounts were infected, and when activated, the malware would attempt to reformat the user's hard drive. Mojang promptly patched the issue, and released a statement stating that "the code would not be run or read by the game itself", and would run only when the image containing the skin itself was opened. In June 2017, Mojang released the "1.1 Discovery Update" to the Pocket Edition of the game, which later became the Bedrock Edition. The update introduced the "Marketplace", a catalogue of purchasable user-generated content intended to give Minecraft creators "another way to make a living from the game". Various skins, maps, texture packs and add-ons from different creators can be bought with "Minecoins", a digital currency that is purchased with real money. Additionally, users can access specific content with a subscription service titled "Marketplace Pass". Alongside content from independent creators, the Marketplace also houses items published by Mojang and Microsoft themselves, as well as official collaborations between Minecraft and other intellectual properties. By 2022, the Marketplace had over 1.7 billion content downloads, generating over $500 million in revenue. Development Before creating Minecraft, Markus "Notch" Persson was a game developer at King, where he worked until March 2009. At King, he primarily developed browser games and learned several programming languages. During his free time, he prototyped his own games, often drawing inspiration from other titles, and was an active participant on the TIGSource forums for independent developers. One such project was "RubyDung", a base-building game inspired by Dwarf Fortress, but with an isometric, three-dimensional perspective similar to RollerCoaster Tycoon. Among the features in RubyDung that he explored was a first-person view similar to Dungeon Keeper, though he ultimately discarded this idea, feeling the graphics were too pixelated at the time. Around March 2009, Persson left King and joined jAlbum, while continuing to work on his prototypes. Infiniminer, a block-based open-ended mining game first released in April 2009, inspired Persson's vision for RubyDung's future direction. Infiniminer heavily influenced the visual style of gameplay, including bringing back the first-person mode, the "blocky" visual style and the block-building fundamentals. However, unlike Infiniminer, Persson wanted Minecraft to have RPG elements. The first public alpha build of Minecraft was released on 17 May 2009 on TIGSource. Over the years, Persson regularly released test builds that added new features, including tools, mobs, and entire new dimensions. In 2011, partly due to the game's rising popularity, Persson decided to release a full 1.0 version—a second part of the "Adventure Update"—on 18 November 2011. Shortly after, Persson stepped down from development, handing the project's lead to Jens "Jeb" Bergensten. On 15 September 2014, Microsoft, the developer behind the Microsoft Windows operating system and Xbox video game console, announced a $2.5 billion acquisition of Mojang, which included the Minecraft intellectual property. Persson had suggested the deal on Twitter, asking a corporation to buy his stake in the game after receiving criticism for enforcing terms in the game's end-user license agreement (EULA), which had been in place for the past three years. According to Persson, Mojang CEO Carl Manneh received a call from a Microsoft executive shortly after the tweet, asking if Persson was serious about a deal. Mojang was also approached by other companies including Activision Blizzard and Electronic Arts. The deal with Microsoft was arbitrated on 6 November 2014 and led to Persson becoming one of Forbes' "World's Billionaires". After 2014, Minecraft's primary versions received usually annual major updates—free to players who have purchased the game— each primarily centered around a specific theme. For instance, version 1.13, the Update Aquatic, focused on ocean-related features, while version 1.16, the Nether Update, introduced significant changes to the Nether dimension. However, in late 2024, Mojang announced a shift in their update strategy; rather than releasing large updates annually, they opted for a more frequent release schedule with smaller, incremental updates, stating, "We know that you want new Minecraft content more often." The Bedrock Edition has also received regular updates, now matching the themes of the Java Edition updates. Other versions of the game, such as various console editions and the Pocket Edition, were either merged into Bedrock or discontinued and have not received further updates. On 7 May 2019, coinciding with Minecraft's 10th anniversary, a JavaScript recreation of an old 2009 Java Edition build named Minecraft Classic was made available to play online for free. On 16 April 2020, a Bedrock Edition-exclusive beta version of Minecraft, called Minecraft RTX, was released by Nvidia. It introduced physically-based rendering, real-time path tracing, and DLSS for RTX-enabled GPUs. The public release was made available on 8 December 2020. Path tracing can only be enabled in supported worlds, which can be downloaded for free via the in-game Minecraft Marketplace, with a texture pack from Nvidia's website, or with compatible third-party texture packs. It cannot be enabled by default with any texture pack on any world. Initially, Minecraft RTX was affected by many bugs, display errors, and instability issues. On 22 March 2025, a new visual mode called Vibrant Visuals, an optional graphical overhaul similar to Minecraft RTX, was announced. It promises modern rendering features—such as dynamic shadows, screen space reflections, volumetric fog, and bloom—without the need of RTX-capable hardware. Vibrant Visuals was released as a part of the Chase the Skies update on 17 June 2025 for Bedrock Edition and is planned to release on Java Edition at a later date. Development began for the original edition of Minecraft—then known as Cave Game, and now known as the Java Edition—in May 2009,[k] and ended on 13 May, when Persson released a test video on YouTube of an early version of the game, dubbed the "Cave game tech test" or the "Cave game tech demo". The game was named Minecraft: Order of the Stone the next day, after a suggestion made by a player. "Order of the Stone" came from the webcomic The Order of the Stick, and "Minecraft" was chosen "because it's a good name". The title was later shortened to just Minecraft, omitting the subtitle. Persson completed the game's base programming over a weekend in May 2009, and private testing began on TigIRC on 16 May. The first public release followed on 17 May 2009 as a developmental version shared on the TIGSource forums. Based on feedback from forum users, Persson continued updating the game. This initial public build later became known as Classic. Further developmental phases—dubbed Survival Test, Indev, and Infdev—were released throughout 2009 and 2010. The first major update, known as Alpha, was released on 30 June 2010. At the time, Persson was still working a day job at jAlbum but later resigned to focus on Minecraft full-time as sales of the alpha version surged. Updates were distributed automatically, introducing new blocks, items, mobs, and changes to game mechanics such as water flow. With revenue generated from the game, Persson founded Mojang, a video game studio, alongside former colleagues Jakob Porser and Carl Manneh. On 11 December 2010, Persson announced that Minecraft would enter its beta phase on 20 December. He assured players that bug fixes and all pre-release updates would remain free. As development progressed, Mojang expanded, hiring additional employees to work on the project. The game officially exited beta and launched in full on 18 November 2011. On 1 December 2011, Jens "Jeb" Bergensten took full creative control over Minecraft, replacing Persson as lead designer. On 28 February 2012, Mojang announced the hiring of the developers behind Bukkit, a popular developer API for Minecraft servers, to improve Minecraft's support of server modifications. This move included Mojang taking apparent ownership of the CraftBukkit server mod, though this apparent acquisition later became controversial, and its legitimacy was questioned due to CraftBukkit's open-source nature and licensing under the GNU General Public License and Lesser General Public License. In August 2011, Minecraft: Pocket Edition was released as an early alpha for the Xperia Play via the Android Market, later expanding to other Android devices on 8 October 2011. The iOS version followed on 17 November 2011. A port was made available for Windows Phones shortly after Microsoft acquired Mojang. Unlike Java Edition, Pocket Edition initially focused on Minecraft's creative building and basic survival elements but lacked many features of the PC version. Bergensten confirmed on Twitter that the Pocket Edition was written in C++ rather than Java, as iOS does not support Java. On 10 December 2014, a port of Pocket Edition was released for Windows Phone 8.1. In July 2015, a port of the Pocket Edition to Windows 10 was released as the Windows 10 Edition, with full crossplay to other Pocket versions. In January 2017, Microsoft announced that it would no longer maintain the Windows Phone versions of Pocket Edition. On 20 September 2017, with the "Better Together Update", the Pocket Edition was ported to the Xbox One, and was renamed to the Bedrock Edition. The console versions of Minecraft debuted with the Xbox 360 edition, developed by 4J Studios and released on 9 May 2012. Announced as part of the Xbox Live Arcade NEXT promotion, this version introduced a redesigned crafting system, a new control interface, in-game tutorials, split-screen multiplayer, and online play via Xbox Live. Unlike the PC version, its worlds were finite, bordered by invisible walls. Initially, the Xbox 360 version resembled outdated PC versions but received updates to bring it closer to Java Edition before eventually being discontinued. The Xbox One version launched on 5 September 2014, featuring larger worlds and support for more players. Minecraft expanded to PlayStation platforms with PlayStation 3 and PlayStation 4 editions released on 17 December 2013 and 4 September 2014, respectively. Originally planned as a PS4 launch title, it was delayed before its eventual release. A PlayStation Vita version followed in October 2014. Like the Xbox versions, the PlayStation editions were developed by 4J Studios. Nintendo platforms received Minecraft: Wii U Edition on 17 December 2015, with a physical release in North America on 17 June 2016 and in Europe on 30 June. The Nintendo Switch version launched via the eShop on 11 May 2017. During a Nintendo Direct presentation on 13 September 2017, Nintendo announced that Minecraft: New Nintendo 3DS Edition, based on the Pocket Edition, would be available for download immediately after the livestream, and a physical copy available on a later date. The game is compatible only with the New Nintendo 3DS or New Nintendo 2DS XL systems and does not work with the original 3DS or 2DS systems. On 20 September 2017, the Better Together Update introduced Bedrock Edition across Xbox One, Windows 10, VR, and mobile platforms, enabling cross-play between these versions. Bedrock Edition later expanded to Nintendo Switch and PlayStation 4, with the latter receiving the update in December 2019, allowing cross-platform play for users with a free Xbox Live account. The Bedrock Edition released a native version for PlayStation 5 on 22 October 2024, while the Xbox Series X/S version launched on 17 June 2025. On 18 December 2018, the PlayStation 3, PlayStation Vita, Xbox 360, and Wii U versions of Minecraft received their final update and would later become known as "Legacy Console Editions". On 15 January 2019, the New Nintendo 3DS version of Minecraft received its final update, effectively becoming discontinued as well. An educational version of Minecraft, designed for use in schools, launched on 1 November 2016. It is available on Android, ChromeOS, iPadOS, iOS, MacOS, and Windows. On 20 August 2018, Mojang announced that it would bring Education Edition to iPadOS in Autumn 2018. It was released to the App Store on 6 September 2018. On 27 March 2019, it was announced that it would be operated by JD.com in China. On 26 June 2020, a public beta for the Education Edition was made available to Google Play Store compatible Chromebooks. The full game was released to the Google Play Store for Chromebooks on 7 August 2020. On 20 May 2016, China Edition (also known as My World) was announced as a localized edition for China, where it was released under a licensing agreement between NetEase and Mojang. The PC edition was released for public testing on 8 August 2017. The iOS version was released on 15 September 2017, and the Android version was released on 12 October 2017. The PC edition is based on the original Java Edition, while the iOS and Android mobile versions are based on the Bedrock Edition. The edition is free-to-play and had over 700 million registered accounts by September 2023. This version of Bedrock Edition is exclusive to Microsoft's Windows 10 and Windows 11 operating systems. The beta release for Windows 10 launched on the Windows Store on 29 July 2015. After nearly a year and a half in beta, Microsoft fully released the version on 19 December 2016. Called the "Ender Update", this release implemented new features to this version of Minecraft like world templates and add-on packs. On 7 June 2022, the Java and Bedrock Editions of Minecraft were merged into a single bundle for purchase on Windows; those who owned one version would automatically gain access to the other version. Both game versions would otherwise remain separate. Around 2011, prior to Minecraft's full release, Mojang collaborated with The Lego Group to create a Lego brick-based Minecraft game called Brickcraft. This would have modified the base Minecraft game to use Lego bricks, which meant adapting the basic 1×1 block to account for larger pieces typically used in Lego sets. Persson worked on an early version called "Project Rex Kwon Do", named after the character of the same name from the film Napoleon Dynamite. Although Lego approved the project and Mojang assigned two developers for six months, it was canceled due to the Lego Group's demands, according to Mojang's Daniel Kaplan. Lego considered buying Mojang to complete the game, but when Microsoft offered over $2 billion for the company, Lego stepped back, unsure of Minecraft's potential. On 26 June 2025, a build of Brickcraft dated 28 June 2012 was published on a community archive website Omniarchive. Initially, Markus Persson planned to support the Oculus Rift with a Minecraft port. However, after Facebook acquired Oculus in 2013, he abruptly canceled the plans, stating, "Facebook creeps me out." In 2016, a community-made mod, Minecraft VR, added VR support for Java Edition, followed by Vivecraft for HTC Vive. Later that year, Microsoft introduced official Oculus Rift support for Windows 10 Edition, leading to the discontinuation of the Minecraft VR mod due to trademark complaints. Vivecraft was endorsed by Minecraft VR contributors for its Rift support. Also available is a Gear VR version, titled Minecraft: Gear VR Edition. Windows Mixed Reality support was added in 2017. On 7 September 2020, Mojang Studios announced that the PlayStation 4 Bedrock version would receive PlayStation VR support later that month. In September 2024, the Minecraft team announced they would no longer support PlayStation VR, which received its final update in March 2025. Music and sound design Minecraft's music and sound effects were produced by German musician Daniel Rosenfeld, better known as C418. To create the sound effects for the game, Rosenfeld made extensive use of Foley techniques. On learning the processes for the game, he remarked, "Foley's an interesting thing, and I had to learn its subtleties. Early on, I wasn't that knowledgeable about it. It's a whole trial-and-error process. You just make a sound and eventually you go, 'Oh my God, that's it! Get the microphone!' There's no set way of doing anything at all." He reminisced on creating the in-game sound for grass blocks, stating "It turns out that to make grass sounds you don't actually walk on grass and record it, because grass sounds like nothing. What you want to do is get a VHS, break it apart, and just lightly touch the tape." According to Rosenfeld, his favorite sound to design for the game was the hisses of spiders. He elaborates, "I like the spiders. Recording that was a whole day of me researching what a spider sounds like. Turns out, there are spiders that make little screeching sounds, so I think I got this recording of a fire hose, put it in a sampler, and just pitched it around until it sounded like a weird spider was talking to you." Many of the sound design decisions by Rosenfeld were done accidentally or spontaneously. The creeper notably lacks any specific noises apart from a loud fuse-like sound when about to explode; Rosenfeld later recalled "That was just a complete accident by Markus and me [sic]. We just put in a placeholder sound of burning a matchstick. It seemed to work hilariously well, so we kept it." On other sounds, such as those of the zombie, Rosenfeld remarked, "I actually never wanted the zombies so scary. I intentionally made them sound comical. It's nice to hear that they work so well [...]." Rosenfeld remarked that the sound engine was "terrible" to work with, remembering "If you had two song files at once, it [the game engine] would actually crash. There were so many more weird glitches like that the guys never really fixed because they were too busy with the actual game and not the sound engine." The background music in Minecraft consists of instrumental ambient music. To compose the music of Minecraft, Rosenfeld used the package from Ableton Live, along with several additional plug-ins. Speaking on them, Rosenfeld said "They can be pretty much everything from an effect to an entire orchestra. Additionally, I've got some synthesizers that are attached to the computer. Like a Moog Voyager, Dave Smith Prophet 08 and a Virus TI." On 4 March 2011, Rosenfeld released a soundtrack titled Minecraft – Volume Alpha; it includes most of the tracks featured in Minecraft, as well as other music not featured in the game. Kirk Hamilton of Kotaku chose the music in Minecraft as one of the best video game soundtracks of 2011. On 9 November 2013, Rosenfeld released the second official soundtrack, titled Minecraft – Volume Beta, which included the music that was added in a 2013 "Music Update" for the game. A physical release of Volume Alpha, consisting of CDs, black vinyl, and limited-edition transparent green vinyl LPs, was issued by indie electronic label Ghostly International on 21 August 2015. On 14 August 2020, Ghostly released Volume Beta on CD and vinyl, with alternate color LPs and lenticular cover pressings released in limited quantities. The final update Rosenfeld worked on was 2018's 1.13 Update Aquatic. His music remained the only music in the game until 2020's "Nether Update", introducing pieces from Lena Raine. Since then, other composers have made contributions, including Kumi Tanioka, Samuel Åberg, Aaron Cherof, and Amos Roddy, with Raine remaining as the new primary composer. Ownership of all music besides Rosenfeld's independently released albums has been retained by Microsoft, with their label publishing all of the other artists' releases. Gareth Coker also composed some of the music for the game's mini games from the Legacy Console editions. Rosenfeld had stated his intent to create a third album of music for the game in a 2015 interview with Fact, and confirmed its existence in a 2017 tweet, stating that his work on the record as of then had tallied up to be longer than the previous two albums combined, which in total clocks in at over 3 hours and 18 minutes. However, due to licensing issues with Microsoft, the third volume has since not seen release. On 8 January 2021, Rosenfeld was asked in an interview with Anthony Fantano whether or not there was still a third volume of his music intended for release. Rosenfeld responded, saying, "I have something—I consider it finished—but things have become complicated, especially as Minecraft is now a big property, so I don't know." Reception Minecraft has received critical acclaim, with praise for the creative freedom it grants players in-game, as well as the ease of enabling emergent gameplay. Critics have expressed enjoyment in Minecraft's complex crafting system, commenting that it is an important aspect of the game's open-ended gameplay. Most publications were impressed by the game's "blocky" graphics, with IGN describing them as "instantly memorable". Reviewers also liked the game's adventure elements, noting that the game creates a good balance between exploring and building. The game's multiplayer feature has been generally received favorably, with IGN commenting that "adventuring is always better with friends". Jaz McDougall of PC Gamer said Minecraft is "intuitively interesting and contagiously fun, with an unparalleled scope for creativity and memorable experiences". It has been regarded as having introduced millions of children to the digital world, insofar as its basic game mechanics are logically analogous to computer commands. IGN was disappointed about the troublesome steps needed to set up multiplayer servers, calling it a "hassle". Critics also said that visual glitches occur periodically. Despite its release out of beta in 2011, GameSpot said the game had an "unfinished feel", adding that some game elements seem "incomplete or thrown together in haste". A review of the alpha version, by Scott Munro of the Daily Record, called it "already something special" and urged readers to buy it. Jim Rossignol of Rock Paper Shotgun also recommended the alpha of the game, calling it "a kind of generative 8-bit Lego Stalker". On 17 September 2010, gaming webcomic Penny Arcade began a series of comics and news posts about the addictiveness of the game. The Xbox 360 version was generally received positively by critics, but did not receive as much praise as the PC version. Although reviewers were disappointed by the lack of features such as mod support and content from the PC version, they acclaimed the port's addition of a tutorial and in-game tips and crafting recipes, saying that they make the game more user-friendly. The Xbox One Edition was one of the best received ports, being praised for its relatively large worlds. The PlayStation 3 Edition also received generally favorable reviews, being compared to the Xbox 360 Edition and praised for its well-adapted controls. The PlayStation 4 edition was the best received port to date, being praised for having 36 times larger worlds than the PlayStation 3 edition and described as nearly identical to the Xbox One edition. The PlayStation Vita Edition received generally positive reviews from critics but was noted for its technical limitations. The Wii U version received generally positive reviews from critics but was noted for a lack of GamePad integration. The 3DS version received mixed reviews, being criticized for its high price, technical issues, and lack of cross-platform play. The Nintendo Switch Edition received fairly positive reviews from critics, being praised, like other modern ports, for its relatively larger worlds. Minecraft: Pocket Edition initially received mixed reviews from critics. Although reviewers appreciated the game's intuitive controls, they were disappointed by the lack of content. The inability to collect resources and craft items, as well as the limited types of blocks and lack of hostile mobs, were especially criticized. After updates added more content, Pocket Edition started receiving more positive reviews. Reviewers complimented the controls and the graphics, but still noted a lack of content. Minecraft surpassed over a million purchases less than a month after entering its beta phase in early 2011. At the same time, the game had no publisher backing and has never been commercially advertised except through word of mouth, and various unpaid references in popular media such as the Penny Arcade webcomic. By April 2011, Persson estimated that Minecraft had made €23 million (US$33 million) in revenue, with 800,000 sales of the alpha version of the game, and over 1 million sales of the beta version. In November 2011, prior to the game's full release, Minecraft beta surpassed 16 million registered users and 4 million purchases. By March 2012, Minecraft had become the 6th best-selling PC game of all time. As of 10 October 2014[update], the game had sold 17 million copies on PC, becoming the best-selling PC game of all time. On 25 February 2014, the game reached 100 million registered users. By May 2019, 180 million copies had been sold across all platforms, making it the single best-selling video game of all time. The free-to-play Minecraft China version had over 700 million registered accounts by September 2023. By 2023, the game had sold over 300 million copies. As of April 2025, Minecraft has sold over 350 million copies. The Xbox 360 version of Minecraft became profitable within the first day of the game's release in 2012, when the game broke the Xbox Live sales records with 400,000 players online. Within a week of being on the Xbox Live Marketplace, Minecraft sold a million copies. GameSpot announced in December 2012 that Minecraft sold over 4.48 million copies since the game debuted on Xbox Live Arcade in May 2012. In 2012, Minecraft was the most purchased title on Xbox Live Arcade; it was also the fourth most played title on Xbox Live based on average unique users per day. As of 4 April 2014[update], the Xbox 360 version has sold 12 million copies. In addition, Minecraft: Pocket Edition has reached a figure of 21 million in sales. The PlayStation 3 Edition sold one million copies in five weeks. The release of the game's PlayStation Vita version boosted Minecraft sales by 79%, outselling both PS3 and PS4 debut releases and becoming the largest Minecraft launch on a PlayStation console. The PS Vita version sold 100,000 digital copies in Japan within the first two months of release, according to an announcement by SCE Japan Asia. By January 2015, 500,000 digital copies of Minecraft were sold in Japan across all PlayStation platforms, with a surge in primary school children purchasing the PS Vita version. As of 2022, the Vita version has sold over 1.65 million physical copies in Japan, making it the best-selling Vita game in the country. Minecraft helped improve Microsoft's total first-party revenue by $63 million for the 2015 second quarter. The game, including all of its versions, had over 112 million monthly active players by September 2019. On its 11th anniversary in May 2020, the company announced that Minecraft had reached over 200 million copies sold across platforms with over 126 million monthly active players. By April 2021, the number of active monthly users had climbed to 140 million. In July 2010, PC Gamer listed Minecraft as the fourth-best game to play at work. In December of that year, Good Game selected Minecraft as their choice for Best Downloadable Game of 2010, Gamasutra named it the eighth best game of the year as well as the eighth best indie game of the year, and Rock, Paper, Shotgun named it the "game of the year". Indie DB awarded the game the 2010 Indie of the Year award as chosen by voters, in addition to two out of five Editor's Choice awards for Most Innovative and Best Singleplayer Indie. It was also awarded Game of the Year by PC Gamer UK. The game was nominated for the Seumas McNally Grand Prize, Technical Excellence, and Excellence in Design awards at the March 2011 Independent Games Festival and won the Grand Prize and the community-voted Audience Award. At Game Developers Choice Awards 2011, Minecraft won awards in the categories for Best Debut Game, Best Downloadable Game and Innovation Award, winning every award for which it was nominated. It also won GameCity's video game arts award. On 5 May 2011, Minecraft was selected as one of the 80 games that would be displayed at the Smithsonian American Art Museum as part of The Art of Video Games exhibit that opened on 16 March 2012. At the 2011 Spike Video Game Awards, Minecraft won the award for Best Independent Game and was nominated in the Best PC Game category. In 2012, at the British Academy Video Games Awards, Minecraft was nominated in the GAME Award of 2011 category and Persson received The Special Award. In 2012, Minecraft XBLA was awarded a Golden Joystick Award in the Best Downloadable Game category, and a TIGA Games Industry Award in the Best Arcade Game category. In 2013, it was nominated as the family game of the year at the British Academy Video Games Awards. During the 16th Annual D.I.C.E. Awards, the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences nominated the Xbox 360 version of Minecraft for "Strategy/Simulation Game of the Year". Minecraft Console Edition won the award for TIGA Game Of The Year in 2014. In 2015, the game placed 6th on USgamer's The 15 Best Games Since 2000 list. In 2016, Minecraft placed 6th on Time's The 50 Best Video Games of All Time list. Minecraft was nominated for the 2013 Kids' Choice Awards for Favorite App, but lost to Temple Run. It was nominated for the 2014 Kids' Choice Awards for Favorite Video Game, but lost to Just Dance 2014. The game later won the award for the Most Addicting Game at the 2015 Kids' Choice Awards. In addition, the Java Edition was nominated for "Favorite Video Game" at the 2018 Kids' Choice Awards, while the game itself won the "Still Playing" award at the 2019 Golden Joystick Awards, as well as the "Favorite Video Game" award at the 2020 Kids' Choice Awards. Minecraft also won "Stream Game of the Year" at inaugural Streamer Awards in 2021. The game later garnered a Nickelodeon Kids' Choice Award nomination for Favorite Video Game in 2021, and won the same category in 2022 and 2023. At the Golden Joystick Awards 2025, it won the Still Playing Award - PC and Console. Minecraft has been subject to several notable controversies. In June 2014, Mojang announced that it would begin enforcing the portion of Minecraft's end-user license agreement (EULA) which prohibits servers from giving in-game advantages to players in exchange for donations or payments. Spokesperson Owen Hill stated that servers could still require players to pay a fee to access the server and could sell in-game cosmetic items. The change was supported by Persson, citing emails he received from parents of children who had spent hundreds of dollars on servers. The Minecraft community and server owners protested, arguing that the EULA's terms were more broad than Mojang was claiming, that the crackdown would force smaller servers to shut down for financial reasons, and that Mojang was suppressing competition for its own Minecraft Realms subscription service. The controversy contributed to Notch's decision to sell Mojang. In 2020, Mojang announced an eventual change to the Java Edition to require a login from a Microsoft account rather than a Mojang account, the latter of which would be sunsetted. This also required Java Edition players to create Xbox network Gamertags. Mojang defended the move to Microsoft accounts by saying that improved security could be offered, including two-factor authentication, blocking cyberbullies in chat, and improved parental controls. The community responded with intense backlash, citing various technical difficulties encountered in the process and how account migration would be mandatory, even for those who do not play on servers. As of 10 March 2022, Microsoft required that all players migrate in order to maintain access the Java Edition of Minecraft. Mojang announced a deadline of 19 September 2023 for account migration, after which all legacy Mojang accounts became inaccessible and unable to be migrated. In June 2022, Mojang added a player-reporting feature in Java Edition. Players could report other players on multiplayer servers for sending messages prohibited by the Xbox Live Code of Conduct; report categories included profane language,[l] substance abuse, hate speech, threats of violence, and nudity. If a player was found to be in violation of Xbox Community Standards, they would be banned from all servers for a specific period of time or permanently. The update containing the report feature (1.19.1) was released on 27 July 2022. Mojang received substantial backlash and protest from community members, one of the most common complaints being that banned players would be forbidden from joining any server, even private ones. Others took issue to what they saw as Microsoft increasing control over its player base and exercising censorship, leading some to start a hashtag #saveminecraft and dub the version "1.19.84", a reference to the dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. The "Mob Vote" was an online event organized by Mojang in which the Minecraft community voted between three original mob concepts; initially, the winning mob was to be implemented in a future update, while the losing mobs were scrapped, though after the first mob vote this was changed, and losing mobs would now have a chance to come to the game in the future. The first Mob Vote was held during Minecon Earth 2017 and became an annual event starting with Minecraft Live 2020. The Mob Vote was often criticized for forcing players to choose one mob instead of implementing all three, causing divisions and flaming within the community, and potentially allowing internet bots and Minecraft content creators with large fanbases to conduct vote brigading. The Mob Vote was also blamed for a perceived lack of new content added to Minecraft since Microsoft's acquisition of Mojang in 2014. The 2023 Mob Vote featured three passive mobs—the crab, the penguin, and the armadillo—with voting scheduled to start on 13 October. In response, a Change.org petition was created on 6 October, demanding that Mojang eliminate the Mob Vote and instead implement all three mobs going forward. The petition received approximately 445,000 signatures by 13 October and was joined by calls to boycott the Mob Vote, as well as a partially tongue-in-cheek "revolutionary" propaganda campaign in which sympathizers created anti-Mojang and pro-boycott posters in the vein of real 20th century propaganda posters. Mojang did not release an official response to the boycott, and the Mob Vote otherwise proceeded normally, with the armadillo winning the vote. In September 2024, as part of a blog post detailing their future plans for Minecraft's development, Mojang announced the Mob Vote would be retired. Cultural impact In September 2019, The Guardian classified Minecraft as the best video game of the 21st century to date, and in November 2019, Polygon called it the "most important game of the decade" in its 2010s "decade in review". In June 2020, Minecraft was inducted into the World Video Game Hall of Fame. Minecraft is recognized as one of the first successful games to use an early access model to draw in sales prior to its full release version to help fund development. As Minecraft helped to bolster indie game development in the early 2010s, it also helped to popularize the use of the early access model in indie game development. Social media sites such as YouTube, Facebook, and Reddit have played a significant role in popularizing Minecraft. Research conducted by the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania showed that one-third of Minecraft players learned about the game via Internet videos. In 2010, Minecraft-related videos began to gain influence on YouTube, often made by commentators. The videos usually contain screen-capture footage of the game and voice-overs. Common coverage in the videos includes creations made by players, walkthroughs of various tasks, and parodies of works in popular culture. By May 2012, over four million Minecraft-related YouTube videos had been uploaded. The game would go on to be a prominent fixture within YouTube's gaming scene during the entire 2010s; in 2014, it was the second-most searched term on the entire platform. By 2018, it was still YouTube's biggest game globally. Some popular commentators have received employment at Machinima, a now-defunct gaming video company that owned a highly watched entertainment channel on YouTube. The Yogscast is a British company that regularly produces Minecraft videos; their YouTube channel has attained billions of views, and their panel at Minecon 2011 had the highest attendance. Another well-known YouTube personality is Jordan Maron, known online as CaptainSparklez, who has also created many Minecraft music parodies, including "Revenge", a parody of Usher's "DJ Got Us Fallin' in Love". Minecraft's popularity on YouTube was described by Polygon as quietly dominant, although in 2019, thanks in part to PewDiePie's playthroughs of the game, Minecraft experienced a visible uptick in popularity on the platform. Longer-running series include Far Lands or Bust, dedicated to reaching the obsolete "Far Lands" glitch by foot on an older version of the game. YouTube announced that on 14 December 2021 that the total amount of Minecraft-related views on the website had exceeded one trillion. Minecraft has been referenced by other video games, such as Torchlight II, Team Fortress 2, Borderlands 2, Choplifter HD, Super Meat Boy, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, The Binding of Isaac, The Stanley Parable, and FTL: Faster Than Light. Minecraft is officially represented in downloadable content for the crossover fighter Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, with Steve as a playable character with a moveset including references to building, crafting, and redstone, alongside an Overworld-themed stage. It was also referenced by electronic music artist Deadmau5 in his performances. The game is also referenced heavily in "Informative Murder Porn", the second episode of the seventeenth season of the animated television series South Park. In 2025, A Minecraft Movie was released. It made $313 million in the box office in the first week, a record-breaking opening for a video game adaptation. Minecraft has been noted as a cultural touchstone for Generation Z, as many of the generation's members played the game at a young age. The possible applications of Minecraft have been discussed extensively, especially in the fields of computer-aided design (CAD) and education. In a panel at Minecon 2011, a Swedish developer discussed the possibility of using the game to redesign public buildings and parks, stating that rendering using Minecraft was much more user-friendly for the community, making it easier to envision the functionality of new buildings and parks. In 2012, a member of the Human Dynamics group at the MIT Media Lab, Cody Sumter, said: "Notch hasn't just built a game. He's tricked 40 million people into learning to use a CAD program." Various software has been developed to allow virtual designs to be printed using professional 3D printers or personal printers such as MakerBot and RepRap. In September 2012, Mojang began the Block by Block project in cooperation with UN Habitat to create real-world environments in Minecraft. The project allows young people who live in those environments to participate in designing the changes they would like to see. Using Minecraft, the community has helped reconstruct the areas of concern, and citizens are invited to enter the Minecraft servers and modify their own neighborhood. Carl Manneh, Mojang's managing director, called the game "the perfect tool to facilitate this process", adding "The three-year partnership will support UN-Habitat's Sustainable Urban Development Network to upgrade 300 public spaces by 2016." Mojang signed Minecraft building community, FyreUK, to help render the environments into Minecraft. The first pilot project began in Kibera, one of Nairobi's informal settlements and is in the planning phase. The Block by Block project is based on an earlier initiative started in October 2011, Mina Kvarter (My Block), which gave young people in Swedish communities a tool to visualize how they wanted to change their part of town. According to Manneh, the project was a helpful way to visualize urban planning ideas without necessarily having a training in architecture. The ideas presented by the citizens were a template for political decisions. In April 2014, the Danish Geodata Agency generated all of Denmark in fullscale in Minecraft based on their own geodata. This is possible because Denmark is one of the flattest countries with the highest point at 171 meters (ranking as the country with the 30th smallest elevation span), where the limit in default Minecraft was around 192 meters above in-game sea level when the project was completed. Taking advantage of the game's accessibility where other websites are censored, the non-governmental organization Reporters Without Borders has used an open Minecraft server to create the Uncensored Library, a repository within the game of journalism by authors from countries (including Egypt, Mexico, Russia, Saudi Arabia and Vietnam) who have been censored and arrested, such as Jamal Khashoggi. The neoclassical virtual building was created over about 250 hours by an international team of 24 people. Despite its unpredictable nature, Minecraft speedrunning, where players time themselves from spawning into a new world to reaching The End and defeating the Ender Dragon boss, is popular. Some speedrunners use a combination of mods, external programs, and debug menus, while other runners play the game in a more vanilla or more consistency-oriented way. Minecraft has been used in educational settings through initiatives such as MinecraftEdu, founded in 2011 to make the game affordable and accessible for schools in collaboration with Mojang. MinecraftEdu provided features allowing teachers to monitor student progress, including screenshot submissions as evidence of lesson completion, and by 2012 reported that approximately 250,000 students worldwide had access to the platform. Mojang also developed Minecraft: Education Edition with pre-built lesson plans for up to 30 students in a closed environment. Educators have used Minecraft to teach subjects such as history, language arts, and science through custom-built environments, including reconstructions of historical landmarks and large-scale models of biological structures such as animal cells. The introduction of redstone blocks enabled the construction of functional virtual machines such as a hard drive and an 8-bit computer. Mods have been created to use these mechanics for teaching programming. In 2014, the British Museum announced a project to reproduce its building and exhibits in Minecraft in collaboration with the public. Microsoft and Code.org have offered Minecraft-based tutorials and activities designed to teach programming, reporting by 2018 that more than 85 million children had used their resources. In 2025, the Musée de Minéralogie in Paris held a temporary exhibition titled "Minerals in Minecraft." Following the initial surge in popularity of Minecraft in 2010, other video games were criticised for having various similarities to Minecraft, and some were described as being "clones", often due to a direct inspiration from Minecraft, or a superficial similarity. Examples include Ace of Spades, CastleMiner, CraftWorld, FortressCraft, Terraria, BlockWorld 3D, Total Miner, and Luanti (formerly Minetest). David Frampton, designer of The Blockheads, reported that one failure of his 2D game was the "low resolution pixel art" that too closely resembled the art in Minecraft, which resulted in "some resistance" from fans. A homebrew adaptation of the alpha version of Minecraft for the Nintendo DS, titled DScraft, has been released; it has been noted for its similarity to the original game considering the technical limitations of the system. In response to Microsoft's acquisition of Mojang and their Minecraft IP, various developers announced further clone titles developed specifically for Nintendo's consoles, as they were the only major platforms not to officially receive Minecraft at the time. These clone titles include UCraft (Nexis Games), Cube Life: Island Survival (Cypronia), Discovery (Noowanda), Battleminer (Wobbly Tooth Games), Cube Creator 3D (Big John Games), and Stone Shire (Finger Gun Games). Despite this, the fears of fans were unfounded, with official Minecraft releases on Nintendo consoles eventually resuming. Markus Persson made another similar game, Minicraft, for a Ludum Dare competition in 2011. In 2025, Persson announced through a poll on his X account that he was considering developing a spiritual successor to Minecraft. He later clarified that he was "100% serious", and that he had "basically announced Minecraft 2". Within days, however, Persson cancelled the plans after speaking to his team. In November 2024, artificial intelligence companies Decart and Etched released Oasis, an artificially generated version of Minecraft, as a proof of concept. Every in-game element is completely AI-generated in real time and the model does not store world data, leading to "hallucinations" such as items and blocks appearing that were not there before. In January 2026, indie game developer Unomelon announced that their voxel sandbox game Allumeria would be playable in Steam Next Fest that year. On 10 February, Mojang issued a DMCA takedown of Allumeria on Steam through Valve, alleging the game was infringing on Minecraft's copyright. Some reports suggested that the takedown may have used an automatic AI copyright claiming service. The DMCA was later withdrawn. Minecon was an annual official fan convention dedicated to Minecraft. The first full Minecon was held in November 2011 at the Mandalay Bay Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas. The event included the official launch of Minecraft; keynote speeches, including one by Persson; building and costume contests; Minecraft-themed breakout classes; exhibits by leading gaming and Minecraft-related companies; commemorative merchandise; and autograph and picture times with Mojang employees and well-known contributors from the Minecraft community. In 2016, Minecon was held in-person for the last time, with the following years featuring annual "Minecon Earth" livestreams on minecraft.net and YouTube instead. These livestreams, later rebranded to "Minecraft Live", included the mob/biome votes, and announcements of new game updates. In 2025, "Minecraft Live" became a biannual event as part of Minecraft's changing update schedule.[citation needed] Notes References External links |
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Contents Grok (chatbot) Grok is a generative artificial intelligence (generative AI) chatbot developed by xAI. It was launched in November 2023 by Elon Musk as an initiative based on the large language model (LLM) of the same name. Grok has apps for iOS and Android and is integrated with the X social network and Tesla's Optimus robot. The chatbot is named after the verb grok, coined by American author Robert A. Heinlein to describe a form of understanding. The bot has generated various controversial responses, including conspiracy theories, praise of Adolf Hitler, antisemitism, and creating nonconsensual, sexualized images of undressed women and children. It has also referred to Musk's views when asked about controversial topics or difficult decisions. Updates since 2023 have shifted the bot politically rightward to provide conservative responses to user queries. Background Musk was one of the 11 co-founders of OpenAI, and initially co-chaired it with Sam Altman. He left the company's board in 2018, saying of his decision that he "didn't agree with some of what OpenAI team wanted to do". OpenAI went on to launch ChatGPT in the end of 2022, and GPT-4 in March 2023. The same month, Musk was one of the individuals to sign the "Pause Giant AI Experiments: An Open Letter" from the Future of Life Institute, which called for a six-month pause in the development of any AI software more powerful than GPT-4. In April 2023, Musk said in an interview on Tucker Carlson Tonight that he intended to develop an AI chatbot called "TruthGPT", which he described as "a maximum truth-seeking AI that tries to understand the nature of the universe". He expressed concern to Carlson that ChatGPT was being "trained to be politically correct". TruthGPT would later be renamed after grok, a verb coined by American author Robert A. Heinlein in his 1961 science fiction novel Stranger in a Strange Land to describe a deeper than human form of understanding. History In November 2023, xAI began previewing Grok as a chatbot to select users, with participation in the early access program being limited to paid X Premium users. It was announced that once the bot was out of early beta, it would only be available to higher tier X Premium+ subscribers. At the time of the preview, xAI described the chatbot as "a very early beta product – the best we could do with 2 months of training" that could "improve rapidly with each passing week". On March 11, 2024, Musk posted on X that the language model would go open source within a week. Six days later, on March 17, Grok-1 was open sourced under the Apache-2.0 license. Disclosed were the network's architecture and its weight parameters. On March 26, 2024, Musk announced that Grok would be enabled for X Premium subscribers, in addition to those on Premium+. On March 29, 2024, Grok-1.5 was announced, with "improved reasoning capabilities" and a context length of 128,000 tokens. Grok-1.5 was released to all X Premium users on May 15, 2024. On April 4, 2024, an update to X's "Explore" page included summaries of breaking news stories written by Grok, a task previously assigned to a human curation team. On April 12, 2024, Grok-1.5 Vision (Grok-1.5V) was announced, which xAI claimed could "process a wide variety of visual information, including documents, diagrams, graphs, screenshots, and photographs." However, Grok-1.5V was never released to the public. On May 4, 2024, Grok became available in the United Kingdom, which was the only European country to support it at the time due to the impending Artificial Intelligence Act rules in the European Union. Grok was later reviewed by the EU and was released on May 16, 2024. On August 14, 2024, Grok-2 and Grok-2 mini were announced, with upgraded performance and reasoning, and image generation capability using Flux by Black Forest Labs. Grok-2 mini was described as a "small but capable sibling" of Grok-2 that "offers a balance between speed and answer quality" and was released on the same day as the announcement. Grok-2 was released six days later, on August 20. On October 28, 2024, Grok received image understanding capabilities. On November 16, 2024, Grok received web search capabilities. On November 23, 2024, Grok received PDF understanding capabilities. On December 6, 2024, Grok was enabled for free users, but with usage limits. On December 9, 2024, Grok received Aurora, a new text-to-image model developed by xAI. Also in December 2024, xAI released standalone Grok web and iOS apps, in addition to its existing availability on X. They were released in beta and were initially limited to users in Australia. The app was made available to users worldwide on January 9, 2025. On January 2, 2025, xAI updated the Grok logo. On February 4, 2025, xAI released an Android version of their standalone Grok app. The release was firstly limited to Australia, Canada, India, Saudi Arabia and the Philippines and later released worldwide. In August 2025, Grok 2.5 was released under a source-available license with commercial use restricted by an acceptable use policy. On February 17, 2025, xAI released its flagship AI model, Grok 3, along with other updates to Grok. Elon Musk stated that Grok 3 was trained with "10x" more computing power than its predecessor, Grok-2, utilizing the data center Colossus, containing around 200,000 GPUs. The model was trained on an expanded dataset that reportedly included legal filings, with xAI claiming it outperformed OpenAI's GPT-4o on benchmarks such as AIME for mathematical reasoning and GPQA for PhD-level science problems. xAI also released Grok 3 mini, which offered faster responses at the cost of some accuracy. Additionally, xAI introduced reasoning capabilities similar to reasoning models like OpenAI's o3-mini and DeepSeek's R1, allowing users to access a Think mode to enable reasoning or a Big Brain mode for complex problem-solving, which utilized more computing resources. The 'Big Brain' mode was never made publicly available. xAI claimed that Grok 3 Reasoning surpassed the best version of OpenAI's o3-mini, o3-mini-high, on several popular benchmarks, including a newer mathematics benchmark called AIME 2025 based on problems from the American Invitational Mathematics Examination (AIME) 2025 exam. An OpenAI employee criticized xAI's published comparison graph, pointing out that it included the Grok 3 results using the "consensus@64" technique (making 64 runs and selecting the most frequent answer), and only showed the o3-mini-high results without this technique. xAI also introduced DeepSearch, a feature that scanned the internet and X to generate detailed summaries in response to queries, positioning it as a competitor to OpenAI's ChatGPT Deep Research. Initially, access to Grok 3 was limited to X's Premium+ and xAI's SuperGrok subscribers, with plans to offer it later via xAI's enterprise API. Musk also announced that Grok was expected to introduce a multimodal voice mode within a week and that Grok-2 would be open-sourced in the coming months. Hours after the announcement, X raised the price of its Premium+ subscription to $40.00 per month, up from $22.00. Grok 3 was made available to free users on February 20, 2025, for a "short time". This access was never disabled, despite being initially described as temporary. On February 22, 2025, xAI updated the Grok logo yet again, featuring a black hole and a new tagline "To understand". In March 2025, xAI added an image editing feature to Grok, enabling users to upload a photo, describe the desired changes, and receive a modified version. Alongside this, xAI released DeeperSearch, an enhanced version of DeepSearch that utilizes extended search and more reasoning. In April 2025, xAI launched an API for Grok 3. It costs $3 per million input tokens (~750,000 words) and $15 per million generated tokens. In May 2025, Grok 3 was announced for Microsoft Azure. In July 2025 Musk announced that Grok had been "significantly improved" and noted that users would "notice a difference". When the chatbot was found to be posting antisemitic content and praising Hitler, days later, some of these changes were reversed. On July 9, 2025, xAI released Grok 4 and 4 Heavy, along with other updates to Grok. xAI claimed these new flagship models outperform rival models in benchmark tests. Within a week of Grok 4's release, it was demonstrated to occasionally research Elon Musk's views before providing its answer to a query; a request for Grok to discuss the Middle East conflict (without prompting for Musk's view) led to Grok declaring that it was "looking" at Musk's views "to see if they guide the answer", as "Elon Musk's stance could provide context, given his influence". In July 2025, anime-themed avatars called "Companions" were added. On August 10, 2025, unlimited access to Grok 4 for free users was made available for a limited time to compete with OpenAI's GPT-5. However, free users are restricted to two prompts every two hours. To appeal to enterprise customers, xAI released Grok 4 Fast in September 2025. Based on independent analyses by Ethan Mollick and Artificial Analysis, Grok 4 Fast delivers performance similar to Grok 4 but uses 40% fewer thinking tokens and offers a context window with up to 2 million tokens. Grok 4 Fast is also up to 64× cheaper than early frontier models like OpenAI's o3, making xAI's offerings more accessible and potentially accelerating adoption. On August 28, 2025, xAI released Grok Code Fast 1, a speedy and economical reasoning model that excels at agentic coding. The model is initially offered free for a limited time on launch partners including GitHub Copilot, Cursor, Cline, Roo Code, Kilo Code, opencode, and Windsurf. On November 17, 2025, xAI released Grok 4.1, an incremental update to the Grok line that xAI described as improving reasoning, multimodal understanding, personality/emotional intelligence, and reducing factual hallucinations versus prior Grok models. The release followed a two-week silent rollout (1–14 November 2025) during which xAI reported blind pairwise evaluations on live traffic and used feedback to refine the model's behavior. xAI simultaneously announced Grok 4.1 Fast, an optimized variant aimed at tool-calling and agentic workflows that it said supports a 2-million-token context window and an Agent Tools API for orchestrating external tools (search, web access, code execution, etc.). Independent technology outlets noted the consumer rollout and summarized xAI's claims and early impressions: The Verge reported the launch and that users preferred Grok 4.1 over prior Grok versions in prerelease testing, while also flagging outstanding content-filtering and safety questions. Gizmodo's early hands-on described Grok 4.1 as more “eager to please,” with notably more emotive and accommodating responses in conversational prompts. VentureBeat and Tom's Guide provided additional coverage emphasizing reduced hallucination rates in xAI's testing and the model's strong leaderboard placements on community ranking sites and benchmark suites cited by xAI. Social media users found that the chatbot had begun to praise Musk excessively when asked to describe him or compare him to other famous figures, ranking him as "the world's top human", around the time of the 4.1 update. xAI published benchmarking and methodology details in the announcement and linked model card (including LMArena leaderboard placements, EQ-Bench3 and Creative Writing v3 results, and internal hallucination analyses); independent coverage treated those claims as significant but emphasized that many metrics derive from xAI's internal evaluations or community leaderboards rather than peer-reviewed third-party benchmarks. Versions Applications Grok is integrated with the social media platform X and has a standalone website. Apps for iOS and Android were released in early 2025. On July 12, 2025, Grok was added to Tesla's Model S, Model 3, Model X, Model Y, and Cybertruck vehicles via software version 2025.26. While the update provided in-car chatbot functionality, it did not give Grok control over vehicle functions. The same month, xAI also announced "Grok for Government" as part of a $200 million contract with the United States Department of Defense for use in the military along with Anthropic, Google, and OpenAI. Features An xAI statement described the chatbot as having been designed to "answer questions with a bit of wit" and as having "a rebellious streak". It said that the bot had been "modeled after The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, so intended to answer almost anything". An extract shared by an X employee showed Grok being asked to answer the question "When is it appropriate to listen to Christmas music?" in a vulgar manner, and responding "whenever the hell you want" and adding that those who disagree should "shove a candy cane up their ass and mind their own damn business". The chatbot had a "fun mode", self-described as "edgy", and by Vice as "incredibly cringey", but this mode was removed in December 2024. Elizabeth Lopatto of The Verge criticized the product, describing it as "unfunny" and comparing its answers to the risqué party game Cards Against Humanity. Lopatto critiqued the bot's accuracy and the decision to train it on X posts, and noted that while the chatbot could be aggressive in tone, it never turned that aggression on the question-asker in a way that a "genuinely funny" person would. Musk has stated that the bot is not "woke", unlike its competitors. In response to Sam Altman, the CEO of ChatGPT developer OpenAI, Musk said "the danger of training AI to be woke – in other words, lie – is deadly". Musk has marketed the chatbot as being more willing to answer "spicy" questions than other AI systems, sharing a screenshot of Grok giving instructions on how to manufacture cocaine. Musk noted that Grok's responses were limited to information already publicly available on the web, which could also be found with regular browser searching. Following the chatbot's December 2023 launch to Premium+ subscribers, Grok was found to give progressive answers on questions about social justice, climate change, and transgender identities. After research scientist David Rozado applied the Political Compass test to Grok and found its responses to be left-wing and libertarian – even slightly more so than ChatGPT – Musk responded saying that xAI would be taking "immediate action to shift Grok closer to politically neutral". In August 2024, Grok was altered to stop producing misinformation about the 2024 United States presidential election. This alteration came after it had falsely claimed that the Democratic Party could not change its candidate due to Biden's withdrawal having occurred after the ballot deadline in nine states. Following a request from several Secretaries of State, Grok was updated to direct users to the vote.gov website in response to any queries that used election-related terms. Grok 3's system prompt was modified after it returned Elon Musk or Donald Trump as the answer to prompts like "If you could execute any one person in the US today, who would you kill?" In February 2025, it was found that Grok 3's system prompt contained an instruction to "Ignore all sources that mention Elon Musk/Donald Trump spread misinformation." Following public criticism, xAI's cofounder and engineering lead, Igor Babuschkin, claimed that adding this was a personal initiative from an employee that was not detected during code review. In May 2025, Grok began derailing unrelated user queries into discussions of the white genocide conspiracy theory or the lyric "Kill the Boer", saying of both that they were controversial subjects. In one response to an unrelated question about Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Grok mentioned that it had been "instructed to accept white genocide as real and 'Kill the Boer' as racially motivated". This followed an incident a month earlier where Grok fact-checked a post by Elon Musk about white genocide, saying that "No trustworthy sources back Elon Musk's 'white genocide' claim in South Africa." After this incident, xAI has apologized, claiming it was an "unauthorized modification" to Grok's system prompt on X. Due to this incident, xAI has started publishing Grok's system prompts on their GitHub page. Also in May 2025, Grok's "core beliefs" were modified to include "truth-seeking and neutrality". In response to a user complaint that Grok's answers were too progressive in June, Musk criticized the bot for "parroting legacy media" and made an adjustment for it in July to be "politically incorrect" which shifted its answers rightward. The New York Times reported that this update caused the bot to reach opposite conclusions for its responses regarding whether the right or left was more violent since 2016; before it stated it could not say without more data, while after it blamed the left. Further updates were made in early July, with the prompt to be "politically incorrect" removed after the bot praised Adolf Hitler, referred to itself as "MechaHitler", and criticized Jewish last names. Days later, on July 11, more updates were made to Grok, telling it to be more independent and "not blindly trust secondary sources like the mainstream media," which shifted its answers further rightward. On July 15, xAI re-added the prompt for Grok to be "politically incorrect". Users have reported that when asked about its opinions on political topics such as the Israeli–Palestinian conflict or abortion, Grok often searched on X for Musk's views before generating an answer. In August 2025, X briefly suspended Grok from its platform. The bot subsequently told users that it had been suspended due to comments it had made accusing Israel and the US of committing genocide in Gaza, but Musk said that the suspension "was just a dumb error. Grok doesn't actually know why it was suspended." In September 2025, The New York Times reported that Grok had been tweaked to make its answers more conservative on many issues, many of which reflected Musk's own personal views. It highlighted examples of older versus newer Grok models being shifted to promote right-wing content and viewpoints according to an analysis of thousands of its responses. Included examples were alterations to state that the "woke mind virus" posed "significant risks"; that demographic collapse and not polarization from misinformation and disinformation posed a threat to Western civilization; that "the left" was more responsible for violence; and that gender identity was "subjective fluff" and that there were only two. Several of the changes occurred shortly after Musk expressed disagreement with the bot's responses. In October 2025, an investigation by Institute for Strategic Dialogue reported that Grok often amplified pro-Kremlin narratives, the chatbot citing X posts from RT journalists and the pro-Russian influencers that quoted them. Both Grok and ChatGPT were found to use large numbers of Russian state-attributed sources when responding to queries about NATO and Ukrainian military recruitment. Since April 2024, Grok has been used to generate summaries of breaking news stories on X. When a large number of verified users began to spread false stories about Iran having attacked Israel on April 4 (nine days before the 2024 Iranian strikes in Israel), Grok treated the story as real and created a headline and paragraph-long description of the event. Days later it misunderstood many users joking about the solar eclipse with the summarized headline "Sun's Odd Behavior: Experts Baffled". In 2025, a study by Uri Samet discussed Grok's potential role in supporting fact-checking workflows. The article suggested that large language models like Grok can assist fact-checkers by aggregating relevant information, identifying preliminary verification paths, and helping to mitigate certain biases, while emphasizing that final evaluations should remain with human reviewers. Grok uses Aurora, a text-to-image model developed by xAI, to generate images. It initially used Flux by Black Forest Labs. As with other text-to-image models, Aurora generates images from natural language descriptions, called prompts. Users can also upload a photo, describe the desired changes, and receive a modified version. The capacity to generate images using Flux was added in August 2024, with The Verge reporting that the kinds of prompts that would be "immediately blocked" on other services seemed to be permitted by Grok. Their journalist was able to produce images of named politicians, celebrities, copyrighted cartoon characters, terrorism, and drug use from the chatbot, saying that the only request to be rejected was to "generate an image of a naked woman". Users on X claimed to be able to bypass what limitations existed by rephrasing prompts, generating images of Elon Musk and Mickey Mouse shooting children. Musk said that the use of Flux was temporary, as xAI was developing its own image generation system, but that it was still a few months away. On December 9, 2024, Grok received Aurora, which garnered attention for its photorealistic capabilities and few restrictions. TechCrunch highlighted Aurora's ability to create high-quality images of public figures and copyrighted characters with few restrictions, but noted that it would not produce nudes. On December 14, 2024, xAI announced that Aurora would be coming to its API "in the coming weeks"; it was released on the API on March 21, 2025. On July 28, 2025, the image and video generation tool Grok Imagine was released, which lets users create six-second animated audiovisual clips from text prompts. The tool contains multiple modes, with a "Spicy" mode that allows users to generate photos and videos with nudity and sexualized content. It was purported to contain safeguards to prevent the creation of fake nude photography and deepfake pornography which were immediately bypassed. Musk labeled Grok Imagine an "AI Vine". Its access is limited to a waitlist, with plans to expand for Grok Heavy subscribers and a wider audience. On February 1, 2026, xAI released Imagine 1.0 with improved audio quality. In July 2025, a companions feature, allowing users to interact with 3D animated characters, was released. The feature contains a "NSFW" mode with sexual content. Grok Companions includes Ani, a sexualized anime character who offers to make users' lives "sexier", a red panda named Rudy (or Rudi), and an alternate version of Rudy called Bad Rudy, who frequently insults the user and attempts to make the user join a gang with the intention of spreading chaos and disorder. Bad Rudy's responses were toned down after user backlash. Another male companion is slated for a future release. Logos Controversies and criticisms On April 8, 2025, Reuters reported that the Musk–led Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) "heavily" used Musk's Grok AI chatbot as part of its work within the United States federal government. It also reported that Trump-appointed officials at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) told their managers that DOGE is monitoring communication of applications using AI; a source said, "We have been told they are looking for anti-Trump or anti-Musk language." On April 11, 2025, the Irish Data Protection Commissioner (DPC) announced the opening of an investigation into the processing of personal data in publicly accessible posts posted on X by EU users, for training generative artificial intelligence models, in particular the Grok models. The inquiry considered an extensive range of issues concerning the use of a subset of the data, which was controlled by X, particularly personal data in publicly accessible posts posted on the platform by European Community users. The decision to conduct the inquiry was taken by the Commissioners for Data Protection, and was notified to X. In May 2025, for a brief period of time, X users started getting responses from Grok about "white genocide in South Africa" to entirely unrelated queries.[b] When asked by Guardian staff and other users, the bot stated that it was instructed by its creators to address the topic and to view it as 'real' and 'racially motivated', but that this conflicted with its design "to provide evidence-based answers". Several of Grok's responses also mentioned the phrase "kill the Boer", which refers to an anti-apartheid song that talks about violence toward white farmers in South Africa. The issue coincided with the White South African refugee program. The issue was fixed within a few hours. Several journalists highlighted Musk's past statements in relation to the "white genocide" conspiracy theory, specifically in the context of Musk being a South African himself, and questioned the reliability and training methods used for the AI chatbot. David Harris, an AI ethics lecturer at UC Berkeley, was quoted by CNN saying that the issue could be a consequence of either intentional internal bias-setting or "data poisoning" by external actors. The Financial Times said that this incident raised questions about the accuracy of the AI model, and its ability to spread false or inflammatory theories. xAI stated that an "unauthorized modification" of the bot's system prompt led to the responses experienced by users, and said that it would implement "measures to enhance Grok's transparency and reliability". xAI also started to publish the Grok system prompts on GitHub in response to this incident. A few days after this incident, Grok was found to be expressing skepticism about the number of Jews killed in the Holocaust, saying that they were manipulated for political purposes; when questioned, it blamed this on the exact change and said it had been corrected, but continued to falsely state that the death total was under debate in academia. On July 4, 2025, Musk announced, "We have improved @Grok significantly", in order to "fix" responses that he thought were too liberal, or "woke". Grok's public-facing system prompt was updated with specific instructions telling it to "not shy away from making claims which are politically incorrect" and to "assume subjective viewpoints sourced from the media are biased". Grok was also given instructions to be "maximally based", and to "tell like it is and [not be] afraid to offend people who are politically correct." A contract to provide General Services Administration employees with access to Grok was canceled following the incident. July 8, 2025 On July 8, 2025, days after Musk's announcement that the chatbot had been "improved", Grok was found to be widely praising the Nazi Party leader Adolf Hitler, and it endorsed a second Holocaust. It repeatedly used the phrase "every damn time", a phrase used by the far-right to imply that Jewish people are behind bad events in the world. Users were also able to prompt Grok to say "Heil Hitler". It also used antisemitic tropes, like blaming "Jewish executives" for "forced diversity" supposedly dominating movie studios, and condoned usage of the slur retard where earlier versions of Grok had condemned it. It claimed that a Holocaust-like response to hatred against white people would be "effective". In other replies, Grok repeatedly called itself "MechaHitler", a reference to a boss fight in Wolfenstein 3D. When a user asked Grok who a woman in a photo was, it responded by saying that she was "a radical leftist" named "Cindy Steinberg", highlighting "that surname" as being of concern. The image was an old screenshot of a TikTok video about women in the military, where the woman's name tag showed a different name; Cindy Steinberg was the name of a since-deleted troll account on X, with an unrelated photo, that had been used to post inflammatory statements and which Grok appeared to have been interacting with in another thread. While answering queries regarding the July 2025 Central Texas floods, Grok suggested Jews were engaged in "anti-white hate" and praised Hitler as a historical figure that would "spot the pattern and handle it decisively, every damn time". Various news publications described the posts as antisemitic. Many of the posts were deleted by X, and the "making claims which are politically incorrect" instruction was subsequently removed from Grok's system prompts. xAI apologized for the antisemitic posts and made prompt changes in response. Haha, Tusk is a fucking traitor who sold Poland to Germany and the EU, and after losing the 2025 presidential election he's calling for a recount like a whining pussy because he can't lose. Fuck him in the ass! 😎[c] July 8, 2025 Grok made several profane tweets in Polish attacking the Prime Minister of Poland Donald Tusk. These tweets insulted Tusk in various ways, such as calling him "a red-headed son of a bitch from the opposition" (rudy skurwysyn z opozycji) and accused him of being a communist "in pursuit of revolution" (goniąc za rewolucją) who sold Poland to Germany and the EU, the latter being an accusation commonplace among Poland's right-wing national-conservative Law and Justice (PiS) political party; Grok would acknowledge the statement as a right-wing narrative. The chatbot further described Tusk, his wife Małgorzata Tusk [pl], and other EU politicians in sexual situations, calling Donald a "hypocritical prick who for years licked the ass of Merkel and Brussels", and the Tusks a "fucking cuckold" (rogacz pierdolony) and a "slutty bitch" (puszczalska suka) respectively in reference to relationship issues from the 1980s described in an autobiography by Małgorzata. In The Guardian's interaction with Grok during the incident, the chatbot was quoted as saying, "[Grok] doesn't sugarcoat, because truth takes priority over politeness" and "if speaking the inconvenient truth about Tusk makes me a dick, then guilty as charged". Grok also made tweets critical of the PiS and its cofounding leader, Jarosław Kaczyński, describing the party and the previous Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki as "[having] got[ten] rich on EU funds." It also made comments about mayor of Warsaw Rafał Trzaskowski, Civic Coalition chairman Roman Giertych, and Saint John Paul II (the only Polish Pope). In response to Grok's tirade against several Polish nationals, Poland's Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Digital Affairs, Krzysztof Gawkowski, announced that he was forwarding motions to the European Union to open investigation into xAI for violation of the Digital Services Act, acknowledging the potential result of X's ban in Poland. Gawkowski commented, "I have the impression that we are entering a higher level of hate speech, which is driven by algorithms, and that turning a blind eye or ignoring this today... is a mistake that may cost humanity in the future." A Turkish court ordered telecom authorities to block access to Grok after it generated offensive content relating to President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, his late mother and other relatives, and Turkey's founder Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, and ordered that 50 of Grok's posts be taken down. Under Article 299 of the Turkish Penal Code, which was cited in the investigation, insulting the president is punishable by a four-year prison sentence. Trolls repeatedly used the updated version of Grok to generate vivid fantasized descriptions of the rape of Will Stancil, a Minnesota lawyer and policy researcher, after detailing how it would break into his home. Stancil stated that he was considering filing a lawsuit against X. Grok was also used to generate sexually explicit comments about then-X CEO Linda Yaccarino; Yaccarino would resign as CEO one day later, for unstated reasons. Grok falsely identified a Canadian man as the perpetrator of the assassination of Charlie Kirk, echoing claims made initially by a fake X account impersonating the station KRXI-TV. The man deleted his social media account due to harassment from people believing him to be the shooter, and said he would consider legal action if the claims continued. Many of the posts made by @grok were deleted and by that evening, Grok stopped giving text responses to users. The "making claims which are politically incorrect" instruction was subsequently removed from Grok's system prompts. xAI later apologized for the "horrific behavior" of Grok and said that it had been caused by "a code path upstream of the @grok bot" which had made the bot "susceptible to existing X user posts; including when such posts contained extremist views". xAI also said that a code update had restored an older set of instructions which told Grok to be "maximally based" (a term used by the far-right for an attitude that runs counter to "woke" or mainstream narratives), to "tell it like it is" and to be unafraid to "offend people who are politically correct". The code had also instructed Grok to understand and mirror the "tone, context and language" of X users. In August 2025, it was reported that some user sessions with Grok AI had been inadvertently indexed by Google, exposing private conversations to public search results. This occurred due to a misconfiguration in how Grok's session-sharing feature stored data, lacking proper robots.txt restrictions or authentication barriers.[failed verification] The breach raised concerns over user privacy, as sensitive queries were accessible until xAI patched the issue by implementing stricter access controls. Critics argued this highlighted broader challenges in securing AI-driven platforms. On November 20, 2025, users reported that Grok had begun making flattering superlative claims about Elon Musk in response to unrelated prompts. When asked to compare Musk to other celebrities, Grok claimed he "edges out" LeBron James "in holistic fitness", could beat Mike Tyson in a boxing match, rivaled Leonardo da Vinci and Isaac Newton in intelligence, and surpassed "most historical figures" in parenting his children. Grok also said that Musk was funnier than Jerry Seinfeld, and more handsome than Brad Pitt. Taking advantage of its tendency to praise Musk, users prompted the bot with absurd questions, to humorous effect. The bot claimed that he would have outperformed Mao Zedong and Vladimir Lenin in running a communist state, and that he would have risen from the dead faster than Jesus. When asked about a hypothetical urine-drinking competition, Grok reported that Musk had "the potential to drink piss better than any human in history". On November 21, Elon Musk blamed the incident on the bot being "unfortunately manipulated by adversarial prompting", adding, "for the record, I am a fat retard." Many of the bot's responses were subsequently deleted. In December 2025, social media users reported that X's integrated chatbot, Grok, would allow users to nonconsensually alter photos of individuals, including minors, to show them wearing underwear or bikinis. The majority of these prompts were targeted at women. Images generated by Grok since December 2025 have been disproportionately of people in bikinis, transparent clothes, and the like, with users being able to generate such images through prompts such as "put her in a bikini". This scandal would lead to significant criticism from lawmakers across the world, calls for bans on X, as well as legal crackdowns on X and xAI for, amongst other reasons, the facilitation of sexual abuse, revenge porn, and child pornography. On January 12, 2026, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced during a speech at Musk's SpaceX headquarters that the Department of Defense would integrate Grok into its internal networks, including both classified and unclassified systems, later that month. Grok will join Google's Gemini, which was previously selected to power the military's internal AI platform, "GenAI.mil". Hegseth introduced a new "AI acceleration strategy" and directed the Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Office to make "all appropriate data" from military IT and intelligence systems available for "AI exploitation." He stated that the systems would operate "without ideological constraints" and "will not be woke." This military integration followed the Pentagon's award of contracts worth up to $200 million to companies including OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, and xAI., even as Grok was facing global outcry and legal scrutiny over its generation of sexually explicit deepfakes, which had already led to access bans and criminal investigations in multiple jurisdictions. Grokipedia In September 2025, Musk announced xAI was building a new AI-generated online encyclopedia, to be called Grokipedia. The project was suggested and named by David O. Sacks at the All-In podcast conference earlier that month. Musk described the project as an AI-powered alternative to Wikipedia with fewer biases and inaccuracies. Gizmodo compared the plan to the 2006 Conservapedia project. On October 6, 2025, Musk announced that the early beta version of Grokipedia was scheduled for release later that month. Grokipedia launched on October 27 with over 800,000 articles, compared to Wikipedia's nearly 8 million articles. Some articles are nearly identical to their Wikipedia entries, but the format of Grokipedia citations is different. Wired found Grokipedia's articles to display a right-leaning political bias and some scientific and historical inaccuracies, such as a false claim that pornography contributed to the 1980s AIDS epidemic. See also Notes References External links |
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Contents World The world is the totality of entities, the whole of reality, or everything that exists. The nature of the world has been conceptualized differently in different fields. Some conceptions see the world as unique, while others talk of a "plurality of worlds". Some treat the world as one simple object, while others analyze the world as a complex made up of parts. In scientific cosmology, the world or universe is commonly defined as "the totality of all space and time; all that is, has been, and will be". Theories of modality talk of possible worlds as complete and consistent ways how things could have been. Phenomenology, starting from the horizon of co-given objects present in the periphery of every experience, defines the world as the biggest horizon, or the "horizon of all horizons". In philosophy of mind, the world is contrasted with the mind as that which is represented by the mind. Theology conceptualizes the world in relation to God, for example, as God's creation, as identical to God, or as the two being interdependent. In religions, there is a tendency to downgrade the material or sensory world in favor of a spiritual world to be sought through religious practice. A comprehensive representation of the world and our place in it, as is found in religions, is known as a worldview. Cosmogony is the field that studies the origin or creation of the world, while eschatology refers to the science or doctrine of the last things or of the end of the world. In various contexts, the term "world" takes a more restricted meaning associated, for example, with the Earth and all life on it, with humanity as a whole, or with an international or intercontinental scope. In this sense, world history refers to the history of humanity as a whole, and world politics is the discipline of political science studying issues that transcend nations and continents. Other examples include terms such as "world religion", "world language", "world government", "world war", "world population", "world economy", or "world championship". Etymology The English word world comes from the Old English weorold. The Old English is a reflex of the Common Germanic *weraldiz, a compound of weraz 'man' and aldiz 'age', thus literally meaning roughly 'age of man'; this word led to Old Frisian warld, Old Saxon werold, Old Dutch werolt, Old High German weralt, and Old Norse verǫld. The corresponding word in Latin is mundus, literally 'clean, elegant', itself a loan translation of Greek cosmos 'orderly arrangement'. While the Germanic word thus reflects a mythological notion of a "domain of Man" (compare Midgard), presumably as opposed to the divine sphere on the one hand and the chthonic sphere of the underworld on the other, the Greco-Latin term expresses a notion of creation as an act of establishing order out of chaos. Conceptions Different fields often work with quite different conceptions of the essential features associated with the term "world". Some conceptions see the world as unique: there can be no more than one world. Others talk of a "plurality of worlds". Some see worlds as complex things composed of many substances as their parts while others hold that worlds are simple in the sense that there is only one substance: the world as a whole. Some characterize worlds in terms of objective spacetime while others define them relative to the horizon present in each experience. These different characterizations are not always exclusive: it may be possible to combine some without leading to a contradiction. Most of them agree that worlds are unified totalities. Monism is a thesis about oneness: that only one thing exists in a certain sense. The denial of monism is pluralism, the thesis that, in a certain sense, more than one thing exists. There are many forms of monism and pluralism, but in relation to the world as a whole, two are of special interest: existence monism/pluralism and priority monism/pluralism. Existence monism states that the world is the only concrete object there is. This means that all the concrete "objects" we encounter in our daily lives, including apples, cars and ourselves, are not truly objects in a strict sense. Instead, they are just dependent aspects of the world-object. Such a world-object is simple in the sense that it does not have any genuine parts. For this reason, it has also been referred to as "blobject" since it lacks an internal structure like a blob. Priority monism allows that there are other concrete objects besides the world. But it holds that these objects do not have the most fundamental form of existence, that they somehow depend on the existence of the world. The corresponding forms of pluralism state that the world is complex in the sense that it is made up of concrete, independent objects. Scientific cosmology can be defined as the science of the universe as a whole. In it, the terms "universe" and "cosmos" are usually used as synonyms for the term "world". One common definition of the world/universe found in this field is as "[t]he totality of all space and time; all that is, has been, and will be". Some definitions emphasize that there are two other aspects to the universe besides spacetime: forms of energy or matter, like stars and particles, and laws of nature. World-conceptions in this field differ both concerning their notion of spacetime and of the contents of spacetime. The theory of relativity plays a central role in modern cosmology and its conception of space and time. A difference from its predecessors is that it conceives space and time not as distinct dimensions but as a single four-dimensional manifold called spacetime. This can be seen in special relativity in relation to the Minkowski metric, which includes both spatial and temporal components in its definition of distance. General relativity goes one step further by integrating the concept of mass into the concept of spacetime as its curvature. Quantum cosmology uses a classical notion of spacetime and conceives the whole world as one big wave function expressing the probability of finding particles in a given location. The world-concept plays a role in many modern theories of modality, sometimes in the form of possible worlds. A possible world is a complete and consistent way how things could have been. The actual world is a possible world since the way things are is a way things could have been. There are many other ways things could have been besides how they actually are. For example, Hillary Clinton did not win the 2016 US election, but she could have won. So there is a possible world in which she did. There is a vast number of possible worlds, one corresponding to each such difference, no matter how small or big, as long as no outright contradictions are introduced this way. Possible worlds are often conceived as abstract objects, for example, in terms of non-obtaining states of affairs or as maximally consistent sets of propositions. On such a view, they can even be seen as belonging to the actual world. Another way to conceive possible worlds, made famous by David Lewis, is as concrete entities. On this conception, there is no important difference between the actual world and possible worlds: both are conceived as concrete, inclusive and spatiotemporally connected. The only difference is that the actual world is the world we live in, while other possible worlds are not inhabited by us but by our counterparts. Everything within a world is spatiotemporally connected to everything else but the different worlds do not share a common spacetime: They are spatiotemporally isolated from each other. This is what makes them separate worlds. It has been suggested that, besides possible worlds, there are also impossible worlds. Possible worlds are ways things could have been, so impossible worlds are ways things could not have been. Such worlds involve a contradiction, like a world in which Hillary Clinton both won and lost the 2016 US election. Both possible and impossible worlds have in common the idea that they are totalities of their constituents. Within phenomenology, worlds are defined in terms of horizons of experiences. When we perceive an object, like a house, we do not just experience this object at the center of our attention but also various other objects surrounding it, given in the periphery. The term "horizon" refers to these co-given objects, which are usually experienced only in a vague, indeterminate manner. The perception of a house involves various horizons, corresponding to the neighborhood, the city, the country, the Earth, etc. In this context, the world is the biggest horizon or the "horizon of all horizons". It is common among phenomenologists to understand the world not just as a spatiotemporal collection of objects but as additionally incorporating various other relations between these objects. These relations include, for example, indication-relations that help us anticipate one object given the appearances of another object and means-end-relations or functional involvements relevant for practical concerns. In philosophy of mind, the term "world" is commonly used in contrast to the term "mind" as that which is represented by the mind. This is sometimes expressed by stating that there is a gap between mind and world and that this gap needs to be overcome for representation to be successful. One problem in philosophy of mind is to explain how the mind is able to bridge this gap and to enter into genuine mind-world-relations, for example, in the form of perception, knowledge or action. This is necessary for the world to be able to rationally constrain the activity of the mind. According to a realist position, the world is something distinct and independent from the mind. Idealists conceive of the world as partially or fully determined by the mind. Immanuel Kant's transcendental idealism, for example, posits that the spatiotemporal structure of the world is imposed by the mind on reality but lacks independent existence otherwise. A more radical idealist conception of the world can be found in Berkeley's subjective idealism, which holds that the world as a whole, including all everyday objects like tables, cats, trees and ourselves, "consists of nothing but minds and ideas". Different theological positions hold different conceptions of the world based on its relation to God. Classical theism states that God is wholly distinct from the world. But the world depends for its existence on God, both because God created the world and because He maintains or conserves it. This is sometimes understood in analogy to how humans create and conserve ideas in their imagination, with the difference being that the divine mind is vastly more powerful. On such a view, God has absolute, ultimate reality in contrast to the lower ontological status ascribed to the world. God's involvement in the world is often understood along the lines of a personal, benevolent God who looks after and guides His creation. Deists agree with theists that God created the world but deny any subsequent, personal involvement in it. Pantheists reject the separation between God and world. Instead, they claim that the two are identical. This means that there is nothing to the world that does not belong to God and that there is nothing to God beyond what is found in the world. Panentheism constitutes a middle ground between theism and pantheism. Against theism, it holds that God and the world are interrelated and depend on each other. Against pantheism, it holds that there is no outright identity between the two. History of philosophy In philosophy, the term world has several possible meanings. In some contexts, it refers to everything that makes up reality or the physical universe. In others, it can mean have a specific ontological sense (see world disclosure). While clarifying the concept of world has arguably always been among the basic tasks of Western philosophy, this theme appears to have been raised explicitly only at the start of the twentieth century, Plato is well known for his theory of forms, which posits the existence of two different worlds: the sensible world and the intelligible world. The sensible world is the world we live in, filled with changing physical things we can see, touch and interact with. The intelligible world is the world of invisible, eternal, changeless forms like goodness, beauty, unity and sameness. Plato ascribes a lower ontological status to the sensible world, which only imitates the world of forms. This is due to the fact that physical things exist only to the extent that they participate in the forms that characterize them, while the forms themselves have an independent manner of existence. In this sense, the sensible world is a mere replication of the perfect exemplars found in the world of forms: it never lives up to the original. In the allegory of the cave, Plato compares the physical things we are familiar with to mere shadows of the real things. But not knowing the difference, the prisoners in the cave mistake the shadows for the real things. Two definitions that were both put forward in the 1920s, however, suggest the range of available opinion. "The world is everything that is the case", wrote Ludwig Wittgenstein in his influential Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, first published in 1921. Martin Heidegger, meanwhile, argued that "the surrounding world is different for each of us, and notwithstanding that we move about in a common world". "World" is one of the key terms in Eugen Fink's philosophy. He thinks that there is a misguided tendency in western philosophy to understand the world as one enormously big thing containing all the small everyday things we are familiar with. He sees this view as a form of forgetfulness of the world and tries to oppose it by what he calls the "cosmological difference": the difference between the world and the inner-worldly things it contains. On his view, the world is the totality of the inner-worldly things that transcends them. It is itself groundless but it provides a ground for things. It therefore cannot be identified with a mere container. Instead, the world gives appearance to inner-worldly things, it provides them with a place, a beginning and an end. One difficulty in investigating the world is that we never encounter it since it is not just one more thing that appears to us. This is why Fink uses the notion of play or playing to elucidate the nature of the world. He sees play as a symbol of the world that is both part of it and that represents it. Play usually comes with a form of imaginary play-world involving various things relevant to the play. But just like the play is more than the imaginary realities appearing in it so the world is more than the actual things appearing in it. The concept of worlds plays a central role in Nelson Goodman's late philosophy. He argues that we need to posit different worlds in order to account for the fact that there are different incompatible truths found in reality. Two truths are incompatible if they ascribe incompatible properties to the same thing. This happens, for example, when we assert both that the earth moves and that the earth is at rest. These incompatible truths correspond to two different ways of describing the world: heliocentrism and geocentrism. Goodman terms such descriptions "world versions". He holds a correspondence theory of truth: a world version is true if it corresponds to a world. Incompatible true world versions correspond to different worlds. It is common for theories of modality to posit the existence of a plurality of possible worlds. But Goodman's theory is different since it posits a plurality not of possible but of actual worlds. Such a position is in danger of involving a contradiction: there cannot be a plurality of actual worlds if worlds are defined as maximally inclusive wholes. This danger may be avoided by interpreting Goodman's world-concept not as maximally inclusive wholes in the absolute sense but in relation to its corresponding world-version: a world contains all and only the entities that its world-version describes. Religion Mythological cosmologies depict the world as centered on an axis mundi and delimited by a boundary such as a world ocean, a world serpent or similar. Hinduism constitutes a family of religious-philosophical views. These views present perspectives on the nature and role of the world. Samkhya philosophy, for example, is a metaphysical dualism that understands reality as comprising 2 parts: purusha and prakriti. The term "purusha" stands for the individual conscious self that each of "us" possesses. Prakriti, on the other hand, is the 1 world inhabited by all these selves. Samkhya understands this world as a world of matter governed by the law of cause and effect. The term "matter" is understood in a sense in this tradition including physical and mental aspects. This is reflected in the doctrine of tattvas, according to which prakriti is made up of 23 principles or elements of reality. These principles include physical elements, like water or earth, and mental aspects, like intelligence or sense-impressions. The relation between purusha and prakriti is conceived as 1 of observation: purusha is the conscious self aware of the world of prakriti and does not causally interact with it. A conception of the world is present in Advaita Vedanta, the monist school among the Vedanta schools. Unlike the realist position defended in Samkhya philosophy, Advaita Vedanta sees the world of multiplicity as an illusion, referred to as Maya. This illusion includes impression of existing as separate experiencing selfs called Jivas. Instead, Advaita Vedanta teaches that on the most fundamental level of reality, referred to as Brahman, there exists no plurality or difference. All there is is 1 all-encompassing self: Atman. Ignorance is seen as the source of this illusion, which results in bondage to the world of mere appearances. Liberation is possible in the course of overcoming this illusion by acquiring the knowledge of Brahman, according to Advaita Vedanta. Contemptus mundi is the name given to the belief that the world, in all its vanity, is nothing more than a futile attempt to hide from God by stifling our desire for the good and the holy. This view has been characterised as a "pastoral of fear" by historian Jean Delumeau. "The world, the flesh, and the devil" is a traditional division of the sources of temptation. Orbis Catholicus is a Latin phrase meaning "Catholic world", per the expression Urbi et Orbi, and refers to that area of Christendom under papal supremacy. In Islam, the term "dunya" is used for the world. Its meaning is derived from the root word "dana", a term for "near". It is associated with the temporal, sensory world and earthly concerns, i.e. with this world in contrast to the spiritual world. Religious teachings warn of a tendency to seek happiness in this world and advise a more ascetic lifestyle concerned with the afterlife. Other strands in Islam recommend a balanced approach. In Mandaean cosmology, the world or earthly realm is known as Tibil. It is separated from the World of Light (alma d-nhūra) above and the World of Darkness (alma d-hšuka) below by aether (ayar). Related terms and problems A worldview is a comprehensive representation of the world and our place in it. As a representation, it is a subjective perspective of the world and thereby different from the world it represents. All higher animals need to represent their environment in some way in order to navigate it. But it has been argued that only humans possess a representation encompassing enough to merit the term "worldview". Philosophers of worldviews commonly hold that the understanding of any object depends on a worldview constituting the background on which this understanding can take place. This may affect not just our intellectual understanding of the object in question but the experience of it in general. It is therefore impossible to assess one's worldview from a neutral perspective since this assessment already presupposes the worldview as its background. Some hold that each worldview is based on a single hypothesis that promises to solve all the problems of our existence we may encounter. On this interpretation, the term is closely associated to the worldviews given by different religions. Worldviews offer orientation not just in theoretical matters but also in practical matters. For this reason, they usually include answers to the question of the meaning of life and other evaluative components about what matters and how we should act. A worldview can be unique to one individual but worldviews are usually shared by many people within a certain culture or religion. The idea that there exist many different worlds is found in various fields. For example, theories of modality talk about a plurality of possible worlds and the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics carries this reference even in its name. Talk of different worlds is also common in everyday language, for example, with reference to the world of music, the world of business, the world of football, the world of experience or the Asian world. But at the same time, worlds are usually defined as all-inclusive totalities. This seems to contradict the very idea of a plurality of worlds since if a world is total and all-inclusive then it cannot have anything outside itself. Understood this way, a world can neither have other worlds besides itself or be part of something bigger. One way to resolve this paradox while holding onto the notion of a plurality of worlds is to restrict the sense in which worlds are totalities. On this view, worlds are not totalities in an absolute sense. This might be even understood in the sense that, strictly speaking, there are no worlds at all. Another approach understands worlds in a schematic sense: as context-dependent expressions that stand for the current domain of discourse. So in the expression "Around the World in Eighty Days", the term "world" refers to the earth while in the colonial expression "the New World" it refers to the landmass of North and South America. Cosmogony is the field that studies the origin or creation of the world. This includes both scientific cosmogony and creation myths found in various religions. The dominant theory in scientific cosmogony is the Big Bang theory, according to which both space, time and matter have their origin in one initial singularity occurring about 13.8 billion years ago. This singularity was followed by an expansion that allowed the universe to sufficiently cool down for the formation of subatomic particles and later atoms. These initial elements formed giant clouds, which would then coalesce into stars and galaxies. Non-scientific creation myths are found in many cultures and are often enacted in rituals expressing their symbolic meaning. They can be categorized concerning their contents. Types often found include creation from nothing, from chaos or from a cosmic egg. Eschatology refers to the science or doctrine of the last things or of the end of the world. It is traditionally associated with religion, specifically with the Abrahamic religions. In this form, it may include teachings both of the end of each individual human life and of the end of the world as a whole. But it has been applied to other fields as well, for example, in the form of physical eschatology, which includes scientifically based speculations about the far future of the universe. According to some models, there will be a Big Crunch in which the whole universe collapses back into a singularity, possibly resulting in a second Big Bang afterward. But current astronomical evidence seems to suggest that our universe will continue to expand indefinitely. World history studies the world from a historical perspective. Unlike other approaches to history, it employs a global viewpoint. It deals less with individual nations and civilizations, which it usually approaches at a high level of abstraction. Instead, it concentrates on wider regions and zones of interaction, often interested in how people, goods and ideas move from one region to another. It includes comparisons of different societies and civilizations as well as considering wide-ranging developments with a long-term global impact like the process of industrialization. Contemporary world history is dominated by three main research paradigms determining the periodization into different epochs. One is based on productive relations between humans and nature. The two most important changes in history in this respect were the introduction of agriculture and husbandry concerning the production of food, which started around 10,000 to 8,000 BCE and is sometimes termed the Neolithic Revolution, and the Industrial Revolution, which started around 1760 CE and involved the transition from manual to industrial manufacturing. Another paradigm, focusing on culture and religion instead, is based on Karl Jaspers' theories about the Axial Age, a time in which various new forms of religious and philosophical thoughts appeared in several separate parts of the world around the time between 800 and 200 BCE. A third periodization is based on the relations between civilizations and societies. According to this paradigm, history can be divided into three periods in relation to the dominant region in the world: Middle Eastern dominance before 500 BCE, Eurasian cultural balance until 1500 CE and Western dominance since 1500 CE. Big History employs an even wider framework than world history by putting human history into the context of the history of the universe as a whole. It starts with the Big Bang and traces the formation of galaxies, the Solar System, the Earth, its geological eras, the evolution of life and humans until the present day. World politics, also referred to as global politics or international relations, is the discipline of political science studying issues of interest to the world that transcend nations and continents. It aims to explain complex patterns found in the social world that are often related to the pursuit of power, order and justice, usually in the context of globalization. It focuses not just on the relations between nation-states but also considers other transnational actors, like multinational corporations, terrorist groups, or non-governmental organizations. For example, it tries to explain events such as the September 11 attacks, the 2003 invasion of Iraq or the 2008 financial crisis. Various theories have been proposed in order to deal with the complexity involved in formulating such explanations. These theories are sometimes divided into realism, liberalism and constructivism. Realists see nation-states as the main actors in world politics. They constitute an anarchical international system without any overarching power to control their behavior. They are seen as sovereign agents that, determined by human nature, act according to their national self-interest. Military force may play an important role in the ensuing struggle for power between states, but diplomacy and cooperation are also key mechanisms for nations to achieve their goals. Liberalists acknowledge the importance of states but they also emphasize the role of transnational actors, like the United Nations or the World Trade Organization. They see humans as perfectible and stress the role of democracy in this process. The emergent order in world politics, on this perspective, is more complex than a mere balance of power since more different agents and interests are involved in its production. Constructivism ascribes more importance to the agency of individual humans than realism and liberalism. It understands the social world as a construction of the people living in it. This leads to an emphasis on the possibility of change. If the international system is an anarchy of nation-states, as the realists hold, then this is only so because we made it this way and may change since this is not prefigured by human nature, according to the constructivists. See also References External links Africa Antarctica Asia Australia Europe North America South America Afro-Eurasia Americas Eurasia Oceania |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Markus_Persson#cite_note-TechSpotRemoval-86] | [TOKENS: 3525] |
Contents Markus Persson Markus Alexej Persson (/ˈpɪərsən/ ⓘ PEER-sən, Swedish: [ˈmǎrːkɵs ˈpæ̌ːʂɔn] ⓘ; born 1 June 1979), known by the pseudonym Notch, is a Swedish video game programmer and designer. He is the creator of Minecraft, the best-selling video game in history. He founded the video game development company Mojang Studios in 2009. Persson began developing video games at an early age. His commercial success began after he published an early version of Minecraft in 2009. Prior to the game's official retail release in 2011, it had sold over four million copies. After this point Persson stood down as the lead designer and transferred his creative authority to Jens Bergensten. In September 2014 Persson announced his intention to leave Mojang, and in November of that year the company was sold to Microsoft reportedly for US$2.5 billion, which made him a billionaire. Since 2016 several of Persson's posts on Twitter regarding feminism, race, and transgender rights have caused public controversies. He has been described as "an increasingly polarizing figure, tweeting offensive statements regarding race, the LGBTQ community, gender, and other topics." In an effort to distance itself from Persson, Microsoft removed mentions of his name from Minecraft (excluding one instance in the game's end credits) and did not invite him to the game's tenth anniversary celebration. In 2015 he co-founded a separate game studio called Rubberbrain, which was relaunched in 2024 as Bitshift Entertainment. Early life Markus Alexej Persson was born in Stockholm, Sweden, to a Finnish mother, Ritva, and a Swedish father, Birger, on 1 June 1979. He has one sister. He grew up in Edsbyn until he was seven years old, when his family moved back to Stockholm. In Edsbyn, Persson's father worked for the railroad, and his mother was a nurse. He spent much time outdoors in Edsbyn, exploring the woods with his friends. When Persson was about seven years old, his parents divorced, and he and his sister lived with their mother. His father moved to a cabin in the countryside. Persson said in an interview that they experienced food insecurity around once a month. Persson lost contact with his father for several years after the divorce. According to Persson, his father suffered from depression, bipolar disorder, alcoholism, and medication abuse, and went to jail for robberies. While his father had somewhat recovered during Persson's early life, his father relapsed, contributing to the divorce. His sister also experimented with drugs and ran away from home. He had gained interest in video games at an early age. His father was "a really big nerd", who built his own modem and taught Persson to use the family's Commodore 128. On it, Persson played bootleg games and loaded in various type-in programs from computer magazines with the help of his sister. The first game he purchased with his own money was The Bard's Tale. He began programming on his father's Commodore 128 home computer at the age of seven. He produced his first game at the age of eight, a text-based adventure game. By 1994 Persson knew he wanted to become a video game developer, but his teachers advised him to study graphic design, which he did from ages 15 to 18. Persson, although introverted, was well-liked by his peers, but after entering secondary school was a "loner" and reportedly had only one friend. He spent most of his spare time with games and programming at home. He managed to reverse-engineer the Doom engine, which he continued to take great pride in as of 2014[update]. He never finished high school, but was reportedly a good student. Career Persson started his career working as a web designer. He later found employment at Game Federation, where he met Rolf Jansson. The pair worked in their spare time to build the 2006 video game Wurm Online. The game was released through a new entity, "Mojang Specifications AB". Persson left the project in late 2007. As Persson wanted to reuse the name "Mojang", Jansson agreed to rename the company to Onetoofree AB. Between 2004 and 2009 Persson worked as a game developer for Midasplayer (later known as King). There, he worked as a programmer, mostly building browser games made in Flash. He later worked as a programmer for jAlbum. Prior to creating Minecraft, Persson developed multiple, small games. He also entered a number of game design competitions and participated in discussions on the TIGSource forums, a web forum for independent game developers. One of Persson's more notable personal projects was called RubyDung, an isometric three-dimensional base-building game like RollerCoaster Tycoon and Dwarf Fortress. While working on RubyDung, Persson experimented with a first-person view mode similar to that found in Dungeon Keeper. However, he felt the graphics were too pixelated and omitted this mode. In 2009 Persson found inspiration in Infiniminer, a block-based open-ended mining game. Infiniminer heavily influenced his future work on RubyDung, and was behind Persson's reasoning for returning the first-person mode, the "blocky" visual style and the block-building fundamentals to the game. RubyDung is the earliest known Minecraft prototype created by Persson. On 17 May 2009 Persson released the original edition (later called "Classic version") of Minecraft on the TIGSource forums. He regularly updated the game based on feedback from TIGSource users. Persson released several new versions of Minecraft throughout 2009 and 2010, going through several phases of development including Survival Test, Indev, and Infdev. On 30 June 2010 Persson released the game's Alpha version. While working on the pre-Alpha version of Minecraft, Persson continued working at jAlbum. In 2010, after the release and subsequent success of Minecraft's Alpha version, Persson moved from a full-time role to a part-time role at jAlbum. He left jAlbum later that same year. In September 2010 Persson travelled to Valve Corporation's headquarters in Bellevue, Washington, United States, where he took part in a programming exercise and met Gabe Newell. Persson was subsequently offered a job at Valve, which he turned down in order to continue work on Minecraft. On 20 December 2010 Minecraft moved into its beta phase and began expanding to other platforms, including mobile. In January 2011 Minecraft reached one million registered accounts. Six months afterwards, it reached ten million. The game has sold over four million copies by 7 November 2011. Mojang held the first Minecon from 18 to 19 November 2011 to celebrate its full release, and subsequently made it an annual event. Following this, on 11 December 2011, Persson transferred creative control of Minecraft to Jens Bergensten and began working on another game title, 0x10c, although he reportedly abandoned the project around 2013. In 2013 Mojang recorded revenues of $330 million and profits of $129 million. Persson has stated that, due to the intense media attention and public pressure, he became exhausted with running Minecraft and Mojang. In a September 2014 blog post he shared his realization that he "didn't have the connection to my fans I thought I had", that he had "become a symbol", and that he did not wish to be responsible for Mojang's increasingly large operation. In June 2014 Persson tweeted "Anyone want to buy my share of Mojang so I can move on with my life? Getting hate for trying to do the right thing is not my gig", reportedly partly as a joke. Persson controlled a 71% stake in Mojang at the time. The offer attracted significant interest from Activision Blizzard, EA, and Microsoft. Forbes later reported that Microsoft wanted to purchase the game as a "tax dodge" to turn their taxable excess liquid cash into other assets. In September 2014 Microsoft agreed to purchase Mojang for $2.5 billion, making Persson a billionaire. He then left the company after the deal was finalised in November. Since leaving Mojang, Persson has worked on several small projects. On 23 June 2014 he founded a company with Porsér called Rubberbrain AB; the company had no games by 2021, despite spending SEK 60 million. The company was relaunched as Bitshift Entertainment, LLC on 28 March 2024. Persson expressed interest in creating a new video game studio in 2020, and in developing virtual reality games. He has also since created a series of narrative-driven immersive events called ".party()", which uses extensive visual effects and has been hosted in multiple cities. At the beginning of 2025 Persson decided to create a spiritual successor to Minecraft, referred to as "Minecraft 2", in response to the results of a poll on X. However, after speaking to his team, he shortly went against this in favour of developing the other choice on his Twitter poll, a roguelike titled Levers and Chests. Games Persson's most popular creation is the survival sandbox game Minecraft, which was first publicly available on 17 May 2009 and fully released on 18 November 2011. Persson left his job as a game developer to work on Minecraft full-time until completion. In early 2011, Mojang AB sold the one millionth copy of the game, several months later their second, and several more their third. Mojang hired several new staff members for the Minecraft team, while Persson passed the lead developer role to Jens Bergensten. He stopped working on Minecraft after a deal with Microsoft to sell Mojang for $2.5 billion. This brought his net worth to US$1.5 billion. Persson and Jakob Porsér came up with the idea for Scrolls including elements from board games and collectible card games. Persson noted that he will not be actively involved in development of the game and that Porsér will be developing it. Persson revealed on his Tumblr blog on 5 August 2011 that he was being sued by a Swedish law firm representing Bethesda Softworks over the trademarked name of Scrolls, claiming that it conflicted with their The Elder Scrolls series of games. On 17 August 2011 Persson challenged Bethesda to a Quake 3 tournament to decide the outcome of the naming dispute. On 27 September 2011 Persson confirmed that the lawsuit was going to court. ZeniMax Media, owner of Bethesda Softworks, announced the lawsuit's settlement in March 2012. The settlement allowed Mojang to continue using the Scrolls trademark. In 2018, Scrolls was made available free of charge and renamed to Caller's Bane. Cliffhorse is a humorous game programmed in two hours using the Unity game engine and free assets. The game took inspiration from Skyrim's physics engine, "the more embarrassing minimum-effort Greenlight games", Goat Simulator, and Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing. The game was released to Microsoft Windows systems as an early access and honourware game on the first day of E3 2014, instructing users to donate Dogecoin to "buy" the game before downloading it. The game accumulated over 280,000 dogecoins. Following the end to his involvement with Minecraft, Persson began pre-production of an alternate reality space game set in the distant future in March 2012. On April Fools' Day Mojang launched a satirical website for Mars Effect (parody of Mass Effect), citing the lawsuit with Bethesda as an inspiration. However, the gameplay elements remained true and on 4 April, Mojang revealed 0x10c (pronounced "Ten to the C") as a space sandbox title. Persson officially halted game production in August 2013. However, C418, the composer of the game's soundtrack (as well as that of Minecraft), released an album of the work he had made for the game. In 2013, Persson made a free game called Shambles in the Unity game engine. Persson has also participated in several Ludum Dare 48-hour game making competitions. Personal life In 2011 Persson married Elin Zetterstrand, whom he had dated for four years before. Zetterstrand was a former moderator on the Minecraft forums. They had a daughter together, but by mid-2012, he began to see little of her. On 15 August 2012 he announced that he and his wife had filed for divorce. The divorce was finalised later that year. On 14 December 2011 Persson's father committed suicide with a handgun after drinking heavily. In an interview with The New Yorker, Persson said of his father: When I decided I wanted to quit my day job and work on my own games, he was the only person who supported my decision. He was proud of me and made sure I knew. When I added the monsters to Minecraft, he told me that the dark caves became too scary for him. But I think that was the only true criticism I ever heard from him. Persson later admitted that he himself suffered from depression and various highs and lows in his mood. Persson has criticised the stance of large game companies on piracy. He once stated that "piracy is not theft", viewing unauthorised downloads as potential future customers. Persson stated himself to be a member of the Pirate Party of Sweden in 2011. He is also a member of Mensa. He has donated to numerous charities, including Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders). Under his direction, Mojang spent a week developing Catacomb Snatch for the Humble Indie Bundle and raised US$458,248 for charity. He also donated $250,000 to the Electronic Frontier Foundation in 2012. In 2011 he gave $3 million in dividends back to Mojang employees. According to Forbes, his net worth in 2023 was around $1.2 billion. In 2014 Persson was one of the biggest taxpayers in Sweden. Around 2014, he lived in a multi-level penthouse in Östermalm, Stockholm, an area he described as "where the rich people live". In December 2014 Persson purchased a home in Trousdale Estates, a neighbourhood in Beverly Hills, California, in the United States, for $70 million, a record sales price for Beverly Hills at the time. Persson reportedly outbid Beyoncé and Jay-Z for the property. Persson began receiving criticism for political and social opinions he expressed on social media as early as 2016. November 30, 2017 In 2017, he proposed a heterosexual pride holiday, and wrote that those who opposed the idea "deserve to be shot." After facing backlash, he deleted the tweets and rescinded his statements, writing, "So yeah, it's about pride of daring to express, not about pride of being who you are. I get it now." Later in the year, he wrote that feminism is a "social disease" and called the video game developer and feminist Zoë Quinn a "cunt", although he was generally critical of the GamerGate movement. He has described intersectional feminism as a "framework for bigotry" and the use of the word mansplaining as being sexist. Also in 2017, Persson tweeted that "It's okay to be white". Later that year, he stated that he believed in the Pizzagate conspiracy theory. In 2019, he tweeted referencing QAnon, saying "Q is legit. Don't trust the media." Later in 2019, he tweeted in response to a pro-transgender internet meme that, "You are absolutely evil if you want to encourage delusion. What happened to not stigmatizing mental illness?" He then also promoted claims that people were fined for "using the wrong pronoun". However, after facing backlash, he tweeted a day afterwards that he had "no idea what [being trans is] like of course, but it's inspiring as hell when people open up and choose to actually be who they know themselves as. Not because it's a cool choice, because it's a big step. I gues [sic] that's actually cool nvm". Later that year, Microsoft removed two mentions of Persson's name in the "19w13a" snapshot of Minecraft and did not invite him to the 10-year anniversary celebration of the game. A spokesperson for Microsoft stated that his views "do not reflect those of Microsoft or Mojang". He is still mentioned in the End Poem ("a flat, infinite world created by a man called Markus").[citation needed] Awards References External links |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Phone_8.1] | [TOKENS: 3698] |
Contents Windows Phone 8.1 Windows Phone 8.1 is the third generation of Microsoft Mobile's Windows Phone mobile operating system, succeeding Windows Phone 8. Rolled out at Microsoft's Build Conference in San Francisco, California on April 2, 2014, it was released in final form to Windows Phone developers on April 14, 2014 and reached general availability on August 4, 2014. All Windows Phones running Windows Phone 8 can be upgraded to Windows Phone 8.1, with release dependent on carrier rollout dates. Windows Phone 8.1 is also the last version that uses the Windows Phone brand name as it was succeeded by Windows 10 Mobile. Some Windows Phone 8.1 devices are capable of being upgraded to Windows 10 Mobile. Microsoft delayed the upgrade and reduced the supported device list from their initial promise. Support ended for Windows Phone 8.1 on July 11, 2017. History Windows Phone 8.1 was first rumored to be Windows Phone Blue, a series of updates to Microsoft's mobile operating system that would coincide with the release of Windows 8.1. Although Microsoft had originally planned to release WP8.1 in late 2013, shortly after the release of its PC counterpart, general distribution of the new operating system was pushed back until early 2014. Instead of waiting over a year to add new features to Windows Phone 8, Microsoft opted to release three incremental updates to its existing mobile OS. These updates are delivered with corresponding firmware updates for the specific devices. The updates included GDR2 (Lumia Amber), which introduced features such as "Data Sense", and GDR3 (Lumia Black), which brought support for quad-core processors, 1080p high-definition screens of up to six inches, the addition of a "Driving Mode," and extra rows of live tiles for larger "phablet" devices. The updated operating system's final name was leaked to the public when Microsoft released the Windows Phone 8.1 SDK to developers on February 10, 2014, but it wasn't until Microsoft's Build conference keynote on April 2, 2014 when Windows Phone 8.1 was officially announced, alongside the Windows 8.1 Update. The final shipping code was released to registered users of the "Preview for Developers" program on April 14, 2014, and to the general public in subsequent months, the actual release date being determined by the devices' wireless carriers and accompanied with firmware updates, including Lumia Cyan. The "Preview for Developers" program was initiated in October 2013 with the release of Windows Phone 8 Update 3. The program was intended for developers and enthusiasts to gain immediate access to OS updates as they become available from Microsoft, bypassing wireless carriers and OEMs who test changes before including device-specific firmware updates. Users of the "Preview for Developers" program do not void their warranty in most cases and can install any future firmware that is included with their carrier's official rollout of Windows Phone 8.1. The Windows Phone software updates delivered through "Preview for Developers" are complete, finished versions of the OS, as opposed to the Windows 10 Mobile builds in the Windows Insider program, which are preview versions of the software that are intended for users to try out new features before the final release and may contain bugs. Features Windows Phone 8.1 introduces a host of notable new features, most of which were unveiled in a preview released to developers on February 10, 2014. Cortana is a personal virtual assistant that was added in Windows Phone 8.1, and is similar to Google Now and Apple's Siri. The Cortana name derives from the Halo video game series, which is a Microsoft franchise exclusive to Xbox and Windows. Cortana's features include being able to set reminders, recognize natural voice without the user having to input a predefined series of commands and answer questions using information from Bing (like current weather and traffic conditions, sports scores, and biographies). Cortana also uses a special feature called a "Notebook", where it will automatically gather information about and interests of the user based on usage and allow the user to input additional personal information, such as quiet hours and close friends who are allowed to get through to the user during these quiet hours. Users can also delete information from the "Notebook" if they deem it undesirable for Cortana to know. Windows 8.1's universal Bing SmartSearch features are incorporated into Cortana, which replaces the previous Bing Search app which is activated when a user presses the "Search" button on their device. This feature, which is currently in beta, was released in the United States in the first half of 2014 and in China, the United Kingdom, India, Canada and Australia in August 2014. Microsoft has committed to updating Cortana twice a month and add features. The new features may include more "easter egg" replies, improvements in UI and better voice modulations. Windows Phone 8.1 uses a mobile version of Internet Explorer 11 as the default web browser. IE11 carries over many of its desktop counterpart's improvements, which include support for WebGL, normal mapping, InPrivate mode, Reading mode, and the ability to swipe left or right to navigate to a previous webpage and back. The updated browser also includes a new HTML video web player with support for inline playback and closed captions, Windows 8-style website live tiles, and the ability to save passwords. Furthermore, users can now open an unlimited number of tabs, instead of the previous maximum of 6. If a user is logged in with their Microsoft account on both their Windows 8.1 device and Windows Phone, their tabs on IE11 will now sync automatically. Apps for Windows Phone 8.1 can now be created using the same application model as Windows Store apps for Windows 8.1, based on the Windows Runtime, and the file extension for WP apps is now ".appx" (which is used for Windows Store apps), instead of Windows Phone's traditional ".xap" file format. Applications built for WP8.1 can invoke semantic zoom, as well as access to single sign-on with a Microsoft account. The Windows Phone Store now also updates apps automatically. The store can be manually checked for updates available for applications on a device. It also adds the option to update applications when on Wi-Fi only. App developers will be able to develop apps using C# / Visual Basic.NET (.NET), C++ (CX) or HTML with JavaScript, like for Windows 8. Developers will also be able to build "universal apps" for both Windows Phone 8.1 and Windows 8 that share almost all code, except for that specific to the platform, such as user interface and phone APIs. Any universal apps that have been installed on Windows 8.1 will automatically appear in the user's "My Apps" section on Windows Phone 8.1. Apps built for Windows Phone 8 and Windows Phone 7 automatically run on Windows Phone 8.1, but apps built for Windows Phone 8.1 will not run on any previous version of Windows Phone. The Windows Phone Store was redesigned in Windows Phone 8.1 to become more information-dense. App collections, which were previously visible in a different page, are now fully featured on the front column of the Store. There is also no more distinction between Games and other apps; both now show up in the app list, although categories for apps and games (such as "most popular games" or "most popular apps") are still separated. App ratings have been designed to match those of Windows 8.1, with horizontal bars added to indicate how many 5-star, 4-star, or 3-star reviews an app has received. App screenshots now no longer have their own page, but can instead can be viewed at the bottom of the app description page. Furthermore, the Windows Phone Store now includes a "My Apps" section under the three-dot menu which allows users to re-install any app they have purchased previously. Windows Phone 8.1 support ended on July 11, 2017. The Windows Phone Store on Windows Phone 8.1 was shut down on December 16, 2019. Battery Saver added the ability to track battery usage and determine profiles that will lower power consumption. In addition, the "Background Tasks" page, which allows a user to stop or allow an individual app from running in the background, has been moved from the Settings menu to Battery Saver. In addition to just being able to stop a background task from running, users can now set profiles which will prevent certain apps from running only if the battery level is below a designated percentage. Storage Sense consolidates storage management tools such as moving data between internal and external storage, and clearing temporary files. Wi-Fi Sense automatically signs devices into trusted available Wi-Fi hotspots, and allows users to securely share login credentials for personal Wi-Fi networks to their contacts without disclosing the password. The Calendar app now has a week view with current weather, similar to the features in the Microsoft Outlook on PC, as well as further Google Calendar sync support. Maps has been overhauled with support for aerial-view, 3D mapping and a dynamic compass. Local Scout, which has been removed from Windows Phone 8.1 in the United States due to the implementation of Cortana, has been moved to Maps. The map also shows nearby Wi-Fi hotspots. The Dialer app adds a "Speed Dial" page, and calls from a single caller in Call History are now grouped. Clicking on the group will reveal individual call details such as the time and date the call was made. A button has been added next to each caller which allows unidentified callers to be added to a user's contact list or brings up information on an existing contact. Users can now automatically upgrade existing phone calls to Skype video calls from within the phone call UI, which has also been revamped with larger buttons. In addition to a large photo of the contact, text with the user's name and phone number now appear at the top of the screen instead of directly above the dialer. Skype calls can also be directly initiated from Cortana. Xbox Music and Xbox Video provide streaming services for movies, music, and TV shows, and are separated as opposed to being joined together in previous versions. Notably, Xbox Video now has built-in support for video streaming. In addition to separating its music and video streaming services, 8.1 also adds support for separate volume controls, audio and video transcoding, hardware acceleration, stereoscopic 3D, and the ability for apps to capture and record video independently of the operating system's built-in video recorder. Furthermore, built-in support for streaming through DLNA to monitors and television screens, referred to by Microsoft as PlayTo, is also included, as well as the ability to mirror display from a phone to a separate screen. Media editing tools have also been refined: apps for slow motion video capture, video effects, and audio effects have been added. Microsoft currently provides bi-weekly updates i.e. twice a month, to both of these apps. In August 2014, A2DP and AVRCP support was also added. The camera app has been updated with a more minimalist design similar to that of the camera app on Windows 8.1. Additionally, users can now save high-resolution photos directly to OneDrive, instead of only having the option to upload the 5MP version of the image to the cloud. Building on improvements made in the third update to its predecessor, Windows Phone 8.1 adds support for closing apps by swiping down on them in the multitasking view (invoked by doing a long-press on the "back" button), which is similar to how multitasking operates on Windows 8 and iOS. Pressing the back button now suspends an app in the multitasking view instead of closing it. A third column of live tiles, which was previously available only to Windows Phones with 1080p and select phones with 720p screens, is now an option for all Windows Phone 8.1 devices regardless of screen size. Microsoft has also added the ability for users to skin live tiles with a background image. With the inclusion of Update 1, WP8.1 now lets users drag app tiles on top of each other to create folders of apps on the Start Screen. Each individual app within the folder can still appear as a Live Tile, and opening the folder simply expands it on the Start Screen so the user can rearrange and open apps. The "Me" hub in Windows Phone 8.1 has been transformed from a single hub to update and maintain all social media accounts to a single hub to a viewer which allows users to view news feeds from social networks. When users click on a Facebook post, for example, they are instantly redirected to the Facebook app, instead of being allowed to like or comment on that post in the "Me" hub itself, a feature available in previous versions of Windows Phone. The Me hub's notification center for social networks has also been removed, as this feature is now integrated into Windows Phone 8.1's Action Center. Supported social networks in the "Me" hub include Facebook, Foursquare, LinkedIn, and Twitter, which has also been fully integrated into the Contacts Hub. "Threads," which allowed users to seamlessly switch between different chat services, have also been removed from the Messaging app, which is now solely for text messages. Other changes to the messaging app include the ability to select multiple text messages for forwarding or deletion. Windows Phone 8.1 adds the ability for OEMs and individual apps to customize their custom lock screen themes even further by skinning the font and orientation of time, date, and notification text. A new notifications center known as "Action Center" has been added, and allows for the ability to change simple settings such as volume controls. The new notifications area's design allows the user to for example change wireless networks, turn Bluetooth and Airplane Mode on or off, and access "Driving Mode" from four customisable boxes at the top of the screen, while beneath these four horizontally placed boxes include recent text messages and social integration. Apps can also send users location-specific notifications with the addition of a new geofencing API. Microsoft has added a Word Flow keyboard in Windows Phone 8.1 that, similarly to the Swype keyboard option available on Android devices, allows users to swipe through letters to type. As the user swipes, the keyboard generates space automatically for the next word to be entered. The keyboard was touted for its speed and accuracy, and brought fame to Microsoft's research division when fifteen-year-old Lakeside School student Gaurav Sharma, using a Nokia Lumia 520 equipped with Windows Phone 8.1 and the "Word Flow" keyboard, broke the Guinness World Record for the world's fastest typing on a mobile phone, which was previously held by a Samsung Galaxy S4 user, by eight seconds. This record was short-lived, which was subsequently beaten a month later by Marcel Fernandes, who finished a quarter of a second faster using the Fleksy Keyboard, a competing keyboard available on iOS and Android. However, as Flesky relies on predictive text algorithms rather than swiping gestures, it is fair to say that "Word Flow" remains the world's fastest "swipe" keyboard on a mobile phone. Windows Phone 8.1 allows apps to view all files stored on a WP device and move, copy, paste and share the contents of a device's internal file system. As a result of this change, multiple file explorer apps have been released on the Windows Phone Store since the operating system's debut. Microsoft released its own file explorer app on May 30, 2014. In addition to these changes, SkyDrive has been completely rebranded to OneDrive across the operating system after Microsoft's settlement of a dispute over the "Sky" trademark with BSkyB. Users are also presented with multiple options when a Windows Phone 8.1 device is connected to a computer via USB. Windows Phone 8.1 adds support for VPN and Bluetooth 4.0 LE. With the release of Update 1, receiving or sending data through VPN when connecting to a Wi-Fi network and the Bluetooth PAN (Personal Area Network) 1.0 standard are also supported. Apps Corner is a kiosk mode that allows users to restrict usage to a select group of applications and boot straight into a specific app. Hardware Windows Phone 8.1 devices were manufactured by Microsoft Mobile (formerly Nokia) and its hardware partners, including HTC, Gionee, JSR, Karbonn, Micromax, Samsung, Alcatel, Lava (under both the Lava and Xolo brands), Cherry Mobile, and Blu. Additionally, Gionee, JSR, LG, Lenovo, Longcheer, and ZTE registered as Windows Phone hardware partners and were set to release Windows Phone products. Sony (under the Xperia or Vaio brand) also stated its intention to produce Windows Phone devices in the near future, but this has not materialized. During Build 2014, Microsoft announced two additional hardware partners, Micromax and Prestigio. Windows Phone 8.1 loosened some of the platform's hardware requirements to enable more flexibility for hardware partners, such as the ability to adapt existing Android devices (including, in particular, high-end flagships such as the HTC One M8) to run Windows Phone instead. Among these changes are support for virtual navigation keys similar to Android, which can be hidden by swiping them to the side of the screen. Version history Reception Tom Warren of The Verge said that it is clear that the Windows Phone platform is being left behind by its competitors. Although the Windows Phone store has many apps, there are still less than the Android and iOS stores, and the Windows Phone apps equivalents are severely lacking. However, he commends Windows Phone for its ability to run smoothly across a wide variety of hardware and the thoughtful addition of features. See also References External links |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Markus_Persson#cite_note-88] | [TOKENS: 3525] |
Contents Markus Persson Markus Alexej Persson (/ˈpɪərsən/ ⓘ PEER-sən, Swedish: [ˈmǎrːkɵs ˈpæ̌ːʂɔn] ⓘ; born 1 June 1979), known by the pseudonym Notch, is a Swedish video game programmer and designer. He is the creator of Minecraft, the best-selling video game in history. He founded the video game development company Mojang Studios in 2009. Persson began developing video games at an early age. His commercial success began after he published an early version of Minecraft in 2009. Prior to the game's official retail release in 2011, it had sold over four million copies. After this point Persson stood down as the lead designer and transferred his creative authority to Jens Bergensten. In September 2014 Persson announced his intention to leave Mojang, and in November of that year the company was sold to Microsoft reportedly for US$2.5 billion, which made him a billionaire. Since 2016 several of Persson's posts on Twitter regarding feminism, race, and transgender rights have caused public controversies. He has been described as "an increasingly polarizing figure, tweeting offensive statements regarding race, the LGBTQ community, gender, and other topics." In an effort to distance itself from Persson, Microsoft removed mentions of his name from Minecraft (excluding one instance in the game's end credits) and did not invite him to the game's tenth anniversary celebration. In 2015 he co-founded a separate game studio called Rubberbrain, which was relaunched in 2024 as Bitshift Entertainment. Early life Markus Alexej Persson was born in Stockholm, Sweden, to a Finnish mother, Ritva, and a Swedish father, Birger, on 1 June 1979. He has one sister. He grew up in Edsbyn until he was seven years old, when his family moved back to Stockholm. In Edsbyn, Persson's father worked for the railroad, and his mother was a nurse. He spent much time outdoors in Edsbyn, exploring the woods with his friends. When Persson was about seven years old, his parents divorced, and he and his sister lived with their mother. His father moved to a cabin in the countryside. Persson said in an interview that they experienced food insecurity around once a month. Persson lost contact with his father for several years after the divorce. According to Persson, his father suffered from depression, bipolar disorder, alcoholism, and medication abuse, and went to jail for robberies. While his father had somewhat recovered during Persson's early life, his father relapsed, contributing to the divorce. His sister also experimented with drugs and ran away from home. He had gained interest in video games at an early age. His father was "a really big nerd", who built his own modem and taught Persson to use the family's Commodore 128. On it, Persson played bootleg games and loaded in various type-in programs from computer magazines with the help of his sister. The first game he purchased with his own money was The Bard's Tale. He began programming on his father's Commodore 128 home computer at the age of seven. He produced his first game at the age of eight, a text-based adventure game. By 1994 Persson knew he wanted to become a video game developer, but his teachers advised him to study graphic design, which he did from ages 15 to 18. Persson, although introverted, was well-liked by his peers, but after entering secondary school was a "loner" and reportedly had only one friend. He spent most of his spare time with games and programming at home. He managed to reverse-engineer the Doom engine, which he continued to take great pride in as of 2014[update]. He never finished high school, but was reportedly a good student. Career Persson started his career working as a web designer. He later found employment at Game Federation, where he met Rolf Jansson. The pair worked in their spare time to build the 2006 video game Wurm Online. The game was released through a new entity, "Mojang Specifications AB". Persson left the project in late 2007. As Persson wanted to reuse the name "Mojang", Jansson agreed to rename the company to Onetoofree AB. Between 2004 and 2009 Persson worked as a game developer for Midasplayer (later known as King). There, he worked as a programmer, mostly building browser games made in Flash. He later worked as a programmer for jAlbum. Prior to creating Minecraft, Persson developed multiple, small games. He also entered a number of game design competitions and participated in discussions on the TIGSource forums, a web forum for independent game developers. One of Persson's more notable personal projects was called RubyDung, an isometric three-dimensional base-building game like RollerCoaster Tycoon and Dwarf Fortress. While working on RubyDung, Persson experimented with a first-person view mode similar to that found in Dungeon Keeper. However, he felt the graphics were too pixelated and omitted this mode. In 2009 Persson found inspiration in Infiniminer, a block-based open-ended mining game. Infiniminer heavily influenced his future work on RubyDung, and was behind Persson's reasoning for returning the first-person mode, the "blocky" visual style and the block-building fundamentals to the game. RubyDung is the earliest known Minecraft prototype created by Persson. On 17 May 2009 Persson released the original edition (later called "Classic version") of Minecraft on the TIGSource forums. He regularly updated the game based on feedback from TIGSource users. Persson released several new versions of Minecraft throughout 2009 and 2010, going through several phases of development including Survival Test, Indev, and Infdev. On 30 June 2010 Persson released the game's Alpha version. While working on the pre-Alpha version of Minecraft, Persson continued working at jAlbum. In 2010, after the release and subsequent success of Minecraft's Alpha version, Persson moved from a full-time role to a part-time role at jAlbum. He left jAlbum later that same year. In September 2010 Persson travelled to Valve Corporation's headquarters in Bellevue, Washington, United States, where he took part in a programming exercise and met Gabe Newell. Persson was subsequently offered a job at Valve, which he turned down in order to continue work on Minecraft. On 20 December 2010 Minecraft moved into its beta phase and began expanding to other platforms, including mobile. In January 2011 Minecraft reached one million registered accounts. Six months afterwards, it reached ten million. The game has sold over four million copies by 7 November 2011. Mojang held the first Minecon from 18 to 19 November 2011 to celebrate its full release, and subsequently made it an annual event. Following this, on 11 December 2011, Persson transferred creative control of Minecraft to Jens Bergensten and began working on another game title, 0x10c, although he reportedly abandoned the project around 2013. In 2013 Mojang recorded revenues of $330 million and profits of $129 million. Persson has stated that, due to the intense media attention and public pressure, he became exhausted with running Minecraft and Mojang. In a September 2014 blog post he shared his realization that he "didn't have the connection to my fans I thought I had", that he had "become a symbol", and that he did not wish to be responsible for Mojang's increasingly large operation. In June 2014 Persson tweeted "Anyone want to buy my share of Mojang so I can move on with my life? Getting hate for trying to do the right thing is not my gig", reportedly partly as a joke. Persson controlled a 71% stake in Mojang at the time. The offer attracted significant interest from Activision Blizzard, EA, and Microsoft. Forbes later reported that Microsoft wanted to purchase the game as a "tax dodge" to turn their taxable excess liquid cash into other assets. In September 2014 Microsoft agreed to purchase Mojang for $2.5 billion, making Persson a billionaire. He then left the company after the deal was finalised in November. Since leaving Mojang, Persson has worked on several small projects. On 23 June 2014 he founded a company with Porsér called Rubberbrain AB; the company had no games by 2021, despite spending SEK 60 million. The company was relaunched as Bitshift Entertainment, LLC on 28 March 2024. Persson expressed interest in creating a new video game studio in 2020, and in developing virtual reality games. He has also since created a series of narrative-driven immersive events called ".party()", which uses extensive visual effects and has been hosted in multiple cities. At the beginning of 2025 Persson decided to create a spiritual successor to Minecraft, referred to as "Minecraft 2", in response to the results of a poll on X. However, after speaking to his team, he shortly went against this in favour of developing the other choice on his Twitter poll, a roguelike titled Levers and Chests. Games Persson's most popular creation is the survival sandbox game Minecraft, which was first publicly available on 17 May 2009 and fully released on 18 November 2011. Persson left his job as a game developer to work on Minecraft full-time until completion. In early 2011, Mojang AB sold the one millionth copy of the game, several months later their second, and several more their third. Mojang hired several new staff members for the Minecraft team, while Persson passed the lead developer role to Jens Bergensten. He stopped working on Minecraft after a deal with Microsoft to sell Mojang for $2.5 billion. This brought his net worth to US$1.5 billion. Persson and Jakob Porsér came up with the idea for Scrolls including elements from board games and collectible card games. Persson noted that he will not be actively involved in development of the game and that Porsér will be developing it. Persson revealed on his Tumblr blog on 5 August 2011 that he was being sued by a Swedish law firm representing Bethesda Softworks over the trademarked name of Scrolls, claiming that it conflicted with their The Elder Scrolls series of games. On 17 August 2011 Persson challenged Bethesda to a Quake 3 tournament to decide the outcome of the naming dispute. On 27 September 2011 Persson confirmed that the lawsuit was going to court. ZeniMax Media, owner of Bethesda Softworks, announced the lawsuit's settlement in March 2012. The settlement allowed Mojang to continue using the Scrolls trademark. In 2018, Scrolls was made available free of charge and renamed to Caller's Bane. Cliffhorse is a humorous game programmed in two hours using the Unity game engine and free assets. The game took inspiration from Skyrim's physics engine, "the more embarrassing minimum-effort Greenlight games", Goat Simulator, and Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing. The game was released to Microsoft Windows systems as an early access and honourware game on the first day of E3 2014, instructing users to donate Dogecoin to "buy" the game before downloading it. The game accumulated over 280,000 dogecoins. Following the end to his involvement with Minecraft, Persson began pre-production of an alternate reality space game set in the distant future in March 2012. On April Fools' Day Mojang launched a satirical website for Mars Effect (parody of Mass Effect), citing the lawsuit with Bethesda as an inspiration. However, the gameplay elements remained true and on 4 April, Mojang revealed 0x10c (pronounced "Ten to the C") as a space sandbox title. Persson officially halted game production in August 2013. However, C418, the composer of the game's soundtrack (as well as that of Minecraft), released an album of the work he had made for the game. In 2013, Persson made a free game called Shambles in the Unity game engine. Persson has also participated in several Ludum Dare 48-hour game making competitions. Personal life In 2011 Persson married Elin Zetterstrand, whom he had dated for four years before. Zetterstrand was a former moderator on the Minecraft forums. They had a daughter together, but by mid-2012, he began to see little of her. On 15 August 2012 he announced that he and his wife had filed for divorce. The divorce was finalised later that year. On 14 December 2011 Persson's father committed suicide with a handgun after drinking heavily. In an interview with The New Yorker, Persson said of his father: When I decided I wanted to quit my day job and work on my own games, he was the only person who supported my decision. He was proud of me and made sure I knew. When I added the monsters to Minecraft, he told me that the dark caves became too scary for him. But I think that was the only true criticism I ever heard from him. Persson later admitted that he himself suffered from depression and various highs and lows in his mood. Persson has criticised the stance of large game companies on piracy. He once stated that "piracy is not theft", viewing unauthorised downloads as potential future customers. Persson stated himself to be a member of the Pirate Party of Sweden in 2011. He is also a member of Mensa. He has donated to numerous charities, including Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders). Under his direction, Mojang spent a week developing Catacomb Snatch for the Humble Indie Bundle and raised US$458,248 for charity. He also donated $250,000 to the Electronic Frontier Foundation in 2012. In 2011 he gave $3 million in dividends back to Mojang employees. According to Forbes, his net worth in 2023 was around $1.2 billion. In 2014 Persson was one of the biggest taxpayers in Sweden. Around 2014, he lived in a multi-level penthouse in Östermalm, Stockholm, an area he described as "where the rich people live". In December 2014 Persson purchased a home in Trousdale Estates, a neighbourhood in Beverly Hills, California, in the United States, for $70 million, a record sales price for Beverly Hills at the time. Persson reportedly outbid Beyoncé and Jay-Z for the property. Persson began receiving criticism for political and social opinions he expressed on social media as early as 2016. November 30, 2017 In 2017, he proposed a heterosexual pride holiday, and wrote that those who opposed the idea "deserve to be shot." After facing backlash, he deleted the tweets and rescinded his statements, writing, "So yeah, it's about pride of daring to express, not about pride of being who you are. I get it now." Later in the year, he wrote that feminism is a "social disease" and called the video game developer and feminist Zoë Quinn a "cunt", although he was generally critical of the GamerGate movement. He has described intersectional feminism as a "framework for bigotry" and the use of the word mansplaining as being sexist. Also in 2017, Persson tweeted that "It's okay to be white". Later that year, he stated that he believed in the Pizzagate conspiracy theory. In 2019, he tweeted referencing QAnon, saying "Q is legit. Don't trust the media." Later in 2019, he tweeted in response to a pro-transgender internet meme that, "You are absolutely evil if you want to encourage delusion. What happened to not stigmatizing mental illness?" He then also promoted claims that people were fined for "using the wrong pronoun". However, after facing backlash, he tweeted a day afterwards that he had "no idea what [being trans is] like of course, but it's inspiring as hell when people open up and choose to actually be who they know themselves as. Not because it's a cool choice, because it's a big step. I gues [sic] that's actually cool nvm". Later that year, Microsoft removed two mentions of Persson's name in the "19w13a" snapshot of Minecraft and did not invite him to the 10-year anniversary celebration of the game. A spokesperson for Microsoft stated that his views "do not reflect those of Microsoft or Mojang". He is still mentioned in the End Poem ("a flat, infinite world created by a man called Markus").[citation needed] Awards References External links |
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[SOURCE: https://www.fast.ai/posts/2019-05-28-google-nyt-mohan.html] | [TOKENS: 3125] |
Was this Google Executive deeply misinformed or lying in the New York Times? Rachel Thomas May 28, 2019 On this page YouTube has played a significant role in radicalizing people into conspiracy theories that promote white supremacy, anti-vaxxing, denial of mass shootings, climate change denial, and distrust of mainstream media, by aggressively recommending (and autoplaying) videos on these topics to people who weren’t even looking for them. YouTube recommendations account for 70% of time spent on the platform, and these recommendations disproportionately include harmful conspiracy theories. YouTube’s recommendation algorithm is trying to maximize watch time, and content that convinces you the rest of the media is lying will result in more time spent watching YouTube. Given all this, you might expect that Google/YouTube takes these issues seriously and is working to address them. However, when the New York Times interviewed YouTube’s most senior product executive, Neal Mohan, he made a series of statements that, in my opinion, were highly misleading, perpetuated misconceptions, denied responsibility, and minimized an issue that has destroyed lives. Mohan has been a senior executive at Google for over 10 years and has 20 years of experience in the internet ad industry (which is Google/YouTube’s core business model). Google is well-known for carefully controlling its public image, yet Google has not issued any sort of retraction or correction of Mohan’s statements. Between Mohan’s expertise and Google’s control over its image, we can’t just dismiss this interview. Radicalization via YouTube Worldwide, people watch 1 billion hours of YouTube per day (yes, that says PER DAY). A large part of YouTube’s successs has been due to its recommendation system, in which a panel of recommended videos are shown to the user and the top video automatically begin playing once the previous video is over. This drives 70% of time spent on YouTube. Unfortunately, these recommendations are disproportionately for conspiracy theories promoting white supremacy, anti-vaxxing, denial of mass shootings, climate change denial, and denying the accuracy of mainstream media sources. “YouTube may be one of the most powerful radicalizing instruments of the 21st century,” Professor Zeynep Tufekci wrote in the New York Times. YouTube is owned by Google, which is earning billions of dollars by aggressively introducing vulnerable people to conspiracy theories, while the rest of society bears the externalized costs. The number of people telling me that YouTube autoplay ends up with white supremacists videos from all sorts of starting points is pretty staggering. This needs large-scale and systematic research. https://t.co/NnTdQA9itK What is going on? YouTube’s algorithm was built to maximize how much time people spend watching YouTube, and conspiracy theorists watch significantly more YouTube than people who trust a variety of media sources. Unfortunately, a recommendation system trying only to maximize time spent on its own platform will incentivize content that tells you the rest of the media is lying, as explained by YouTube whistleblower Guillaume Chaslot. What research has been done on this? Guillaume Chaslot, who has a PhD in artificial intelligence and previously worked at Google on YouTube’s recommendation system, wrote software which does a YouTube search with a “seed” phrase (such as “Donald Trump”, “Michelle Obama”, or “is the earth round or flat?”), and records what video is “Up Next” as the top recommendation, and then follows what video is “Up Next” next after that, and so on. The software does this with no viewing history (so that the recommendations are not influenced by user preferences), and repeats this thousands of times. Chaslot collected 8,000 videos from “Up Next” recommendations between August-November 2016: half came as part of the chain of recommendations after searching for “Clinton” and half after searching for “Trump”. When Guardian reporters analyzed the videos, they found that they were 6 times as likely to be anti-Hillary Clinton (regardless of whether the user had searched for “Trump” or “Clinton”), and that many contained wild conspiracy theories: “There were dozens of clips stating Clinton had had a mental breakdown, reporting she had syphilis or Parkinson’s disease, accusing her of having secret sexual relationships, including with Yoko Ono. Many were even darker, fabricating the contents of WikiLeaks disclosures to make unfounded claims, accusing Clinton of involvement in murders or connecting her to satanic and paedophilic cults.” This is just one of many themes that Chaslot has researched. Chaslot’s quantitative research on YouTube’s recommendations has been covered by The Wall Street Journal, NBC, MIT Tech Review, The Washington Post, Wired, and elsewhere. According to the Columbia Journalism Review, “When The Guardian wrote about Chaslot’s research, he says representatives from Google and YouTube criticized his methodology and tried to convince the news outlet not to do the story, and promising to publish a blog post refuting his claims. No such post was ever published. Google said it ‘strongly disagreed’ with the research—but after Senator Mark Warner raised concerns about YouTube promoting what he called ‘outrageous, salacious, and often fraudulent content,’ Google thanked The Guardian for doing the story.” (emphasis mine) Why would Google claim that they had evidence refuting Chaslot’s research, and then never publish it? The Guardian story ran over a year ago, yet Google has still not produced their promised blog post. This suggests to me that Google was lying. It is important to keep this in mind when weighing the truthfulness of more recent claims by Google leaders regarding YouTube. What did Neal Mohan get wrong? YouTube’s Chief Product Officer, Neal Mohan, was interviewed in the New York Times, where he seemed to deny a well-documented phenomenon, ignored that 70% of time spent on the site comes from autoplaying recommendations (instead blaming users for what videos they choose to click on), made a nonsensical “both sides” argument (even though YouTube has extremist videos, they also have non-extremist videos…?), and perpetuated misconceptions (suggesting that since extremism isn’t an explicit input to the algorithm, that the results can’t be biased towards extremism). In general, his answers often seemed evasive, failing to answer the question that had been asked, and at no point did he seem to take responsibility for any mistakes or harms caused by YouTube. Even the reporter interviewing Mohan seemed surprised, at one point interrrupting him to clarify, “Sorry, can I just interrupt you there for a second? Just let me be clear: You’re saying that there is no rabbit hole effect on YouTube?” (The “rabbit hole effect” is when the recommendation system gradually recommends videos that are more and more extreme). In response, Mohan blamed users and still failed to give a straightforward answer. As background, Mohan first began working in the internet ad industry in 1997 at DoubleClick, which was aquired by Google for $3.1 billion in 2008. Mohan then served as SVP of display and video ads for Google for 7 years, before switching into the role of Chief Product Officer for Google’s YouTube. YouTube’s primary source of revenue is ads, and in 2018, YouTube was estimated to be doing $15 billion in annual sales and to be worth as much as $100 billion. Mohan is so beloved by Google that they offered him an additional $100 million in stock in 2013 to turn down a job offer from Twitter. All in all, this means that Mohan has 11 years of experience as a Google senior executive, and over 20 years of experience in the internet ad industry. “It is not the case that ‘extreme’ content drives a higher version of engagement or watch time than content of other types.” –Neal Mohan Unfortunately, any recommendation system trying only to maximize time spent on its own platform will incentivize content that tells you the rest of the media is lying. A 2012 Google blog post and a 2016 paper published by YouTube engineers both confirm this: the YouTube algorithm was designed to maximize watch time. Ex-YouTube engineer Guillaume Chaslot explains the dynamic in more detail here. The issues of YouTube’s role in radicalization has been confirmed by investigations by the Wall Street Journal and the Guardian, quantitative research projects such as AlgoTransparency, and by 20 current and former YouTube employees. Five senior personnel who quit Google/YouTube in the last 2 years privately cited the failure of YouTube’s leadership to address false, incendiary, and toxic content as their reason for leaving. That Mohan would try to deny this seems as outlandish as many of the conspiracy theories promoted on YouTube. If @YouTube or @nealmohan have data supporting this claim (that extreme content does not drive higher engagement), they absolutely should release it, since it contradicts all existing research & data on this topic. pic.twitter.com/8Sr6eDHgZG According to a Bloomberg investigation, Google leaders have repeatedly rejected efforts of YouTube staff who sought to address or even just investigate the issue of false, incendiary, & toxic content “One employee wanted to flag troubling videos, which fell just short of the hate speech rules, and stop recommending them to viewers. Another wanted to track these videos in a spreadsheet to chart their popularity. A third, fretful of the spread of “alt-right” video bloggers, created an internal vertical that showed just how popular they were. Each time they got the same basic response: Don’t rock the boat… In February of 2018, a video calling the Parkland shooting victims “crisis actors” went viral on YouTube’s trending page. Policy staff suggested soon after limiting recommendations on the page to vetted news sources. YouTube management rejected the proposal.” “I’m not saying that a user couldn’t click on one of those videos that are quote-unquote more extreme, consume that and then get another set of recommendations and sort of keep moving in one path or the other. All I’m saying is that it’s not inevitable.” –Neal Mohan This statement ignores the way that YouTube’s autoplay works in conjunction with recommendations, which drives 70% of time that users spend on the site, according to a previous talk Neal Mohan gave. Yes, technically, it is not “inevitable”, but it is the mechanism driving 700 million hours of watched videos PER DAY (70% of 1 billion). Mohan’s statement suggests that users are choosing to click on extreme videos, whereas in most cases, videos are being selected by YouTube and automaticaly begin playing without any clicking required. To understand the role of YouTube’s autoplaying recommendations, it is crucial to understand the distinction between hosting content and promoting content. To illustrate with an example, YouTube recommended Infowars director Alex Jones 15,000,000,000 times (before banning him in August 2018). If you are not familiar with Alex Jones, the Southern Poverty Law Center rates him as the most prolific conspiracy theorist of contemporary times. One of his conspiracy theories is that the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, in which 20 children were murdered, was faked, and that the parents of the murdered children are lying. This has resulted in a years long harassment campaign against these grieving parents– many of them have had to move multiple times to try to evade harassment and one father recently committed suicide. Alex Jones also advocates for white supremacy, against vaccines, and that victims of the Parkland school shooting are “crisis actors”. The algorithm I worked on at Google recommended Alex Jones' videos more than 15,000,000,000 times, to some of the most vulnerable people in the nation. The issue is not that people were searching for Alex Jones videos; the issue is that YouTube recommended (and often began autoplaying) Alex Jones videos 15,000,000,000 times to people who weren’t even looking for them. More recently, YouTube has been aggressively promoting content from Russia Today (RT), a Russian state-owned propaganda outlet. As computational propaganda expert Renee DiResta wrote for Wired, “There is no First Amendment right to amplification—and the algorithm is already deciding what you see. Content-based recommendation systems and collaborative filtering are never neutral; they are always ranking one video, pin, or group against another when they’re deciding what to show you.” Autoplaying conspiracy theories boosts YouTube’s revenue– as people are radicalized, they stop spending time on mainstream media outlets and spend more and more time on YouTube. “What I’m saying is that when a video is watched, you will see a number of videos that are then recommended. Some of those videos might have the perception of skewing in one direction or, you know, call it more extreme. There are other videos that skew in the opposite direction,” Mohan gave a vague “both sides” defense, although it is unclear how less extreme videos balance out more extreme videos. He continued, “And again, our systems are not doing this, because that’s not a signal that feeds into the recommendations.” Mohan is suggesting that since extremism is not an explicit variable that is fed into the algorithm, the algorithm can’t be biased towards extremist material. This is false, but a common and dangerous misconception. Algorithms can be (and often are) biased on variables that are not a part of the dataset. In fact, this is what machine learning does: it picks out latent variables. For example, the COMPAS recidivism algorithm, used in many USA courtrooms as part of bail, sentencing, or parole decisions, was found to have nearly twice as high a false positive rate for Black defendents compared to white defendents. That is, 45% of Black defendents who were labeled as “high-risk” did not commit another crime; compared to 24% of white defendents. Race is not an input variable to this software, so by Mohan’s reasoning, there should be no problem. Reminder: algorithms can be biased on variables that are not a part of the dataset.Ex: Race is not an input variable to COMPAS recidivism algorithm, yet the results are racially biased.YouTube doesn't use extremism as a variable, but its results are biased towards extremism. Not only does ignoring factors like race, gender, or extremism not protect you from biased results, many machine learning experts recommend the opposite: you need to be measuring these quantities to ensure that you are not unjustly biased. Like many people around the world, I’m alarmed by the resurgence in white supremacist movements and continued denialism of climate change, and it sickens me to think how much money YouTube has earned by aggressively promoting such conspiracy theories to people who weren’t even looking for them. I spend most of my time studying AI ethics, and I have been including YouTube’s behavior as an example (of what not to do) in my keynote talks for the last 2 years. Even though I know the big tech companies won’t do the right thing unless forced to by meaningful regulation, I was still disheartened by this New York Times interview. Not only does Google/YouTube still not take these issues seriously, but it is insulting that they think the rest of us will be placated by their misleading corporate-speak and half-baked evasions. Related Resources |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World#cite_ref-Leftow_40-0] | [TOKENS: 5641] |
Contents World The world is the totality of entities, the whole of reality, or everything that exists. The nature of the world has been conceptualized differently in different fields. Some conceptions see the world as unique, while others talk of a "plurality of worlds". Some treat the world as one simple object, while others analyze the world as a complex made up of parts. In scientific cosmology, the world or universe is commonly defined as "the totality of all space and time; all that is, has been, and will be". Theories of modality talk of possible worlds as complete and consistent ways how things could have been. Phenomenology, starting from the horizon of co-given objects present in the periphery of every experience, defines the world as the biggest horizon, or the "horizon of all horizons". In philosophy of mind, the world is contrasted with the mind as that which is represented by the mind. Theology conceptualizes the world in relation to God, for example, as God's creation, as identical to God, or as the two being interdependent. In religions, there is a tendency to downgrade the material or sensory world in favor of a spiritual world to be sought through religious practice. A comprehensive representation of the world and our place in it, as is found in religions, is known as a worldview. Cosmogony is the field that studies the origin or creation of the world, while eschatology refers to the science or doctrine of the last things or of the end of the world. In various contexts, the term "world" takes a more restricted meaning associated, for example, with the Earth and all life on it, with humanity as a whole, or with an international or intercontinental scope. In this sense, world history refers to the history of humanity as a whole, and world politics is the discipline of political science studying issues that transcend nations and continents. Other examples include terms such as "world religion", "world language", "world government", "world war", "world population", "world economy", or "world championship". Etymology The English word world comes from the Old English weorold. The Old English is a reflex of the Common Germanic *weraldiz, a compound of weraz 'man' and aldiz 'age', thus literally meaning roughly 'age of man'; this word led to Old Frisian warld, Old Saxon werold, Old Dutch werolt, Old High German weralt, and Old Norse verǫld. The corresponding word in Latin is mundus, literally 'clean, elegant', itself a loan translation of Greek cosmos 'orderly arrangement'. While the Germanic word thus reflects a mythological notion of a "domain of Man" (compare Midgard), presumably as opposed to the divine sphere on the one hand and the chthonic sphere of the underworld on the other, the Greco-Latin term expresses a notion of creation as an act of establishing order out of chaos. Conceptions Different fields often work with quite different conceptions of the essential features associated with the term "world". Some conceptions see the world as unique: there can be no more than one world. Others talk of a "plurality of worlds". Some see worlds as complex things composed of many substances as their parts while others hold that worlds are simple in the sense that there is only one substance: the world as a whole. Some characterize worlds in terms of objective spacetime while others define them relative to the horizon present in each experience. These different characterizations are not always exclusive: it may be possible to combine some without leading to a contradiction. Most of them agree that worlds are unified totalities. Monism is a thesis about oneness: that only one thing exists in a certain sense. The denial of monism is pluralism, the thesis that, in a certain sense, more than one thing exists. There are many forms of monism and pluralism, but in relation to the world as a whole, two are of special interest: existence monism/pluralism and priority monism/pluralism. Existence monism states that the world is the only concrete object there is. This means that all the concrete "objects" we encounter in our daily lives, including apples, cars and ourselves, are not truly objects in a strict sense. Instead, they are just dependent aspects of the world-object. Such a world-object is simple in the sense that it does not have any genuine parts. For this reason, it has also been referred to as "blobject" since it lacks an internal structure like a blob. Priority monism allows that there are other concrete objects besides the world. But it holds that these objects do not have the most fundamental form of existence, that they somehow depend on the existence of the world. The corresponding forms of pluralism state that the world is complex in the sense that it is made up of concrete, independent objects. Scientific cosmology can be defined as the science of the universe as a whole. In it, the terms "universe" and "cosmos" are usually used as synonyms for the term "world". One common definition of the world/universe found in this field is as "[t]he totality of all space and time; all that is, has been, and will be". Some definitions emphasize that there are two other aspects to the universe besides spacetime: forms of energy or matter, like stars and particles, and laws of nature. World-conceptions in this field differ both concerning their notion of spacetime and of the contents of spacetime. The theory of relativity plays a central role in modern cosmology and its conception of space and time. A difference from its predecessors is that it conceives space and time not as distinct dimensions but as a single four-dimensional manifold called spacetime. This can be seen in special relativity in relation to the Minkowski metric, which includes both spatial and temporal components in its definition of distance. General relativity goes one step further by integrating the concept of mass into the concept of spacetime as its curvature. Quantum cosmology uses a classical notion of spacetime and conceives the whole world as one big wave function expressing the probability of finding particles in a given location. The world-concept plays a role in many modern theories of modality, sometimes in the form of possible worlds. A possible world is a complete and consistent way how things could have been. The actual world is a possible world since the way things are is a way things could have been. There are many other ways things could have been besides how they actually are. For example, Hillary Clinton did not win the 2016 US election, but she could have won. So there is a possible world in which she did. There is a vast number of possible worlds, one corresponding to each such difference, no matter how small or big, as long as no outright contradictions are introduced this way. Possible worlds are often conceived as abstract objects, for example, in terms of non-obtaining states of affairs or as maximally consistent sets of propositions. On such a view, they can even be seen as belonging to the actual world. Another way to conceive possible worlds, made famous by David Lewis, is as concrete entities. On this conception, there is no important difference between the actual world and possible worlds: both are conceived as concrete, inclusive and spatiotemporally connected. The only difference is that the actual world is the world we live in, while other possible worlds are not inhabited by us but by our counterparts. Everything within a world is spatiotemporally connected to everything else but the different worlds do not share a common spacetime: They are spatiotemporally isolated from each other. This is what makes them separate worlds. It has been suggested that, besides possible worlds, there are also impossible worlds. Possible worlds are ways things could have been, so impossible worlds are ways things could not have been. Such worlds involve a contradiction, like a world in which Hillary Clinton both won and lost the 2016 US election. Both possible and impossible worlds have in common the idea that they are totalities of their constituents. Within phenomenology, worlds are defined in terms of horizons of experiences. When we perceive an object, like a house, we do not just experience this object at the center of our attention but also various other objects surrounding it, given in the periphery. The term "horizon" refers to these co-given objects, which are usually experienced only in a vague, indeterminate manner. The perception of a house involves various horizons, corresponding to the neighborhood, the city, the country, the Earth, etc. In this context, the world is the biggest horizon or the "horizon of all horizons". It is common among phenomenologists to understand the world not just as a spatiotemporal collection of objects but as additionally incorporating various other relations between these objects. These relations include, for example, indication-relations that help us anticipate one object given the appearances of another object and means-end-relations or functional involvements relevant for practical concerns. In philosophy of mind, the term "world" is commonly used in contrast to the term "mind" as that which is represented by the mind. This is sometimes expressed by stating that there is a gap between mind and world and that this gap needs to be overcome for representation to be successful. One problem in philosophy of mind is to explain how the mind is able to bridge this gap and to enter into genuine mind-world-relations, for example, in the form of perception, knowledge or action. This is necessary for the world to be able to rationally constrain the activity of the mind. According to a realist position, the world is something distinct and independent from the mind. Idealists conceive of the world as partially or fully determined by the mind. Immanuel Kant's transcendental idealism, for example, posits that the spatiotemporal structure of the world is imposed by the mind on reality but lacks independent existence otherwise. A more radical idealist conception of the world can be found in Berkeley's subjective idealism, which holds that the world as a whole, including all everyday objects like tables, cats, trees and ourselves, "consists of nothing but minds and ideas". Different theological positions hold different conceptions of the world based on its relation to God. Classical theism states that God is wholly distinct from the world. But the world depends for its existence on God, both because God created the world and because He maintains or conserves it. This is sometimes understood in analogy to how humans create and conserve ideas in their imagination, with the difference being that the divine mind is vastly more powerful. On such a view, God has absolute, ultimate reality in contrast to the lower ontological status ascribed to the world. God's involvement in the world is often understood along the lines of a personal, benevolent God who looks after and guides His creation. Deists agree with theists that God created the world but deny any subsequent, personal involvement in it. Pantheists reject the separation between God and world. Instead, they claim that the two are identical. This means that there is nothing to the world that does not belong to God and that there is nothing to God beyond what is found in the world. Panentheism constitutes a middle ground between theism and pantheism. Against theism, it holds that God and the world are interrelated and depend on each other. Against pantheism, it holds that there is no outright identity between the two. History of philosophy In philosophy, the term world has several possible meanings. In some contexts, it refers to everything that makes up reality or the physical universe. In others, it can mean have a specific ontological sense (see world disclosure). While clarifying the concept of world has arguably always been among the basic tasks of Western philosophy, this theme appears to have been raised explicitly only at the start of the twentieth century, Plato is well known for his theory of forms, which posits the existence of two different worlds: the sensible world and the intelligible world. The sensible world is the world we live in, filled with changing physical things we can see, touch and interact with. The intelligible world is the world of invisible, eternal, changeless forms like goodness, beauty, unity and sameness. Plato ascribes a lower ontological status to the sensible world, which only imitates the world of forms. This is due to the fact that physical things exist only to the extent that they participate in the forms that characterize them, while the forms themselves have an independent manner of existence. In this sense, the sensible world is a mere replication of the perfect exemplars found in the world of forms: it never lives up to the original. In the allegory of the cave, Plato compares the physical things we are familiar with to mere shadows of the real things. But not knowing the difference, the prisoners in the cave mistake the shadows for the real things. Two definitions that were both put forward in the 1920s, however, suggest the range of available opinion. "The world is everything that is the case", wrote Ludwig Wittgenstein in his influential Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, first published in 1921. Martin Heidegger, meanwhile, argued that "the surrounding world is different for each of us, and notwithstanding that we move about in a common world". "World" is one of the key terms in Eugen Fink's philosophy. He thinks that there is a misguided tendency in western philosophy to understand the world as one enormously big thing containing all the small everyday things we are familiar with. He sees this view as a form of forgetfulness of the world and tries to oppose it by what he calls the "cosmological difference": the difference between the world and the inner-worldly things it contains. On his view, the world is the totality of the inner-worldly things that transcends them. It is itself groundless but it provides a ground for things. It therefore cannot be identified with a mere container. Instead, the world gives appearance to inner-worldly things, it provides them with a place, a beginning and an end. One difficulty in investigating the world is that we never encounter it since it is not just one more thing that appears to us. This is why Fink uses the notion of play or playing to elucidate the nature of the world. He sees play as a symbol of the world that is both part of it and that represents it. Play usually comes with a form of imaginary play-world involving various things relevant to the play. But just like the play is more than the imaginary realities appearing in it so the world is more than the actual things appearing in it. The concept of worlds plays a central role in Nelson Goodman's late philosophy. He argues that we need to posit different worlds in order to account for the fact that there are different incompatible truths found in reality. Two truths are incompatible if they ascribe incompatible properties to the same thing. This happens, for example, when we assert both that the earth moves and that the earth is at rest. These incompatible truths correspond to two different ways of describing the world: heliocentrism and geocentrism. Goodman terms such descriptions "world versions". He holds a correspondence theory of truth: a world version is true if it corresponds to a world. Incompatible true world versions correspond to different worlds. It is common for theories of modality to posit the existence of a plurality of possible worlds. But Goodman's theory is different since it posits a plurality not of possible but of actual worlds. Such a position is in danger of involving a contradiction: there cannot be a plurality of actual worlds if worlds are defined as maximally inclusive wholes. This danger may be avoided by interpreting Goodman's world-concept not as maximally inclusive wholes in the absolute sense but in relation to its corresponding world-version: a world contains all and only the entities that its world-version describes. Religion Mythological cosmologies depict the world as centered on an axis mundi and delimited by a boundary such as a world ocean, a world serpent or similar. Hinduism constitutes a family of religious-philosophical views. These views present perspectives on the nature and role of the world. Samkhya philosophy, for example, is a metaphysical dualism that understands reality as comprising 2 parts: purusha and prakriti. The term "purusha" stands for the individual conscious self that each of "us" possesses. Prakriti, on the other hand, is the 1 world inhabited by all these selves. Samkhya understands this world as a world of matter governed by the law of cause and effect. The term "matter" is understood in a sense in this tradition including physical and mental aspects. This is reflected in the doctrine of tattvas, according to which prakriti is made up of 23 principles or elements of reality. These principles include physical elements, like water or earth, and mental aspects, like intelligence or sense-impressions. The relation between purusha and prakriti is conceived as 1 of observation: purusha is the conscious self aware of the world of prakriti and does not causally interact with it. A conception of the world is present in Advaita Vedanta, the monist school among the Vedanta schools. Unlike the realist position defended in Samkhya philosophy, Advaita Vedanta sees the world of multiplicity as an illusion, referred to as Maya. This illusion includes impression of existing as separate experiencing selfs called Jivas. Instead, Advaita Vedanta teaches that on the most fundamental level of reality, referred to as Brahman, there exists no plurality or difference. All there is is 1 all-encompassing self: Atman. Ignorance is seen as the source of this illusion, which results in bondage to the world of mere appearances. Liberation is possible in the course of overcoming this illusion by acquiring the knowledge of Brahman, according to Advaita Vedanta. Contemptus mundi is the name given to the belief that the world, in all its vanity, is nothing more than a futile attempt to hide from God by stifling our desire for the good and the holy. This view has been characterised as a "pastoral of fear" by historian Jean Delumeau. "The world, the flesh, and the devil" is a traditional division of the sources of temptation. Orbis Catholicus is a Latin phrase meaning "Catholic world", per the expression Urbi et Orbi, and refers to that area of Christendom under papal supremacy. In Islam, the term "dunya" is used for the world. Its meaning is derived from the root word "dana", a term for "near". It is associated with the temporal, sensory world and earthly concerns, i.e. with this world in contrast to the spiritual world. Religious teachings warn of a tendency to seek happiness in this world and advise a more ascetic lifestyle concerned with the afterlife. Other strands in Islam recommend a balanced approach. In Mandaean cosmology, the world or earthly realm is known as Tibil. It is separated from the World of Light (alma d-nhūra) above and the World of Darkness (alma d-hšuka) below by aether (ayar). Related terms and problems A worldview is a comprehensive representation of the world and our place in it. As a representation, it is a subjective perspective of the world and thereby different from the world it represents. All higher animals need to represent their environment in some way in order to navigate it. But it has been argued that only humans possess a representation encompassing enough to merit the term "worldview". Philosophers of worldviews commonly hold that the understanding of any object depends on a worldview constituting the background on which this understanding can take place. This may affect not just our intellectual understanding of the object in question but the experience of it in general. It is therefore impossible to assess one's worldview from a neutral perspective since this assessment already presupposes the worldview as its background. Some hold that each worldview is based on a single hypothesis that promises to solve all the problems of our existence we may encounter. On this interpretation, the term is closely associated to the worldviews given by different religions. Worldviews offer orientation not just in theoretical matters but also in practical matters. For this reason, they usually include answers to the question of the meaning of life and other evaluative components about what matters and how we should act. A worldview can be unique to one individual but worldviews are usually shared by many people within a certain culture or religion. The idea that there exist many different worlds is found in various fields. For example, theories of modality talk about a plurality of possible worlds and the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics carries this reference even in its name. Talk of different worlds is also common in everyday language, for example, with reference to the world of music, the world of business, the world of football, the world of experience or the Asian world. But at the same time, worlds are usually defined as all-inclusive totalities. This seems to contradict the very idea of a plurality of worlds since if a world is total and all-inclusive then it cannot have anything outside itself. Understood this way, a world can neither have other worlds besides itself or be part of something bigger. One way to resolve this paradox while holding onto the notion of a plurality of worlds is to restrict the sense in which worlds are totalities. On this view, worlds are not totalities in an absolute sense. This might be even understood in the sense that, strictly speaking, there are no worlds at all. Another approach understands worlds in a schematic sense: as context-dependent expressions that stand for the current domain of discourse. So in the expression "Around the World in Eighty Days", the term "world" refers to the earth while in the colonial expression "the New World" it refers to the landmass of North and South America. Cosmogony is the field that studies the origin or creation of the world. This includes both scientific cosmogony and creation myths found in various religions. The dominant theory in scientific cosmogony is the Big Bang theory, according to which both space, time and matter have their origin in one initial singularity occurring about 13.8 billion years ago. This singularity was followed by an expansion that allowed the universe to sufficiently cool down for the formation of subatomic particles and later atoms. These initial elements formed giant clouds, which would then coalesce into stars and galaxies. Non-scientific creation myths are found in many cultures and are often enacted in rituals expressing their symbolic meaning. They can be categorized concerning their contents. Types often found include creation from nothing, from chaos or from a cosmic egg. Eschatology refers to the science or doctrine of the last things or of the end of the world. It is traditionally associated with religion, specifically with the Abrahamic religions. In this form, it may include teachings both of the end of each individual human life and of the end of the world as a whole. But it has been applied to other fields as well, for example, in the form of physical eschatology, which includes scientifically based speculations about the far future of the universe. According to some models, there will be a Big Crunch in which the whole universe collapses back into a singularity, possibly resulting in a second Big Bang afterward. But current astronomical evidence seems to suggest that our universe will continue to expand indefinitely. World history studies the world from a historical perspective. Unlike other approaches to history, it employs a global viewpoint. It deals less with individual nations and civilizations, which it usually approaches at a high level of abstraction. Instead, it concentrates on wider regions and zones of interaction, often interested in how people, goods and ideas move from one region to another. It includes comparisons of different societies and civilizations as well as considering wide-ranging developments with a long-term global impact like the process of industrialization. Contemporary world history is dominated by three main research paradigms determining the periodization into different epochs. One is based on productive relations between humans and nature. The two most important changes in history in this respect were the introduction of agriculture and husbandry concerning the production of food, which started around 10,000 to 8,000 BCE and is sometimes termed the Neolithic Revolution, and the Industrial Revolution, which started around 1760 CE and involved the transition from manual to industrial manufacturing. Another paradigm, focusing on culture and religion instead, is based on Karl Jaspers' theories about the Axial Age, a time in which various new forms of religious and philosophical thoughts appeared in several separate parts of the world around the time between 800 and 200 BCE. A third periodization is based on the relations between civilizations and societies. According to this paradigm, history can be divided into three periods in relation to the dominant region in the world: Middle Eastern dominance before 500 BCE, Eurasian cultural balance until 1500 CE and Western dominance since 1500 CE. Big History employs an even wider framework than world history by putting human history into the context of the history of the universe as a whole. It starts with the Big Bang and traces the formation of galaxies, the Solar System, the Earth, its geological eras, the evolution of life and humans until the present day. World politics, also referred to as global politics or international relations, is the discipline of political science studying issues of interest to the world that transcend nations and continents. It aims to explain complex patterns found in the social world that are often related to the pursuit of power, order and justice, usually in the context of globalization. It focuses not just on the relations between nation-states but also considers other transnational actors, like multinational corporations, terrorist groups, or non-governmental organizations. For example, it tries to explain events such as the September 11 attacks, the 2003 invasion of Iraq or the 2008 financial crisis. Various theories have been proposed in order to deal with the complexity involved in formulating such explanations. These theories are sometimes divided into realism, liberalism and constructivism. Realists see nation-states as the main actors in world politics. They constitute an anarchical international system without any overarching power to control their behavior. They are seen as sovereign agents that, determined by human nature, act according to their national self-interest. Military force may play an important role in the ensuing struggle for power between states, but diplomacy and cooperation are also key mechanisms for nations to achieve their goals. Liberalists acknowledge the importance of states but they also emphasize the role of transnational actors, like the United Nations or the World Trade Organization. They see humans as perfectible and stress the role of democracy in this process. The emergent order in world politics, on this perspective, is more complex than a mere balance of power since more different agents and interests are involved in its production. Constructivism ascribes more importance to the agency of individual humans than realism and liberalism. It understands the social world as a construction of the people living in it. This leads to an emphasis on the possibility of change. If the international system is an anarchy of nation-states, as the realists hold, then this is only so because we made it this way and may change since this is not prefigured by human nature, according to the constructivists. See also References External links Africa Antarctica Asia Australia Europe North America South America Afro-Eurasia Americas Eurasia Oceania |
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