Media: March 2005 Archive Page

Whether solving mysteries in text-based adventure games or slaying dragons by phone in multi-user role-playing games, many players still name the written word as their weapon of choice. --Jacob Ogles --Keyboard Is Mightier Than Sword (Wired)

Rather than wallow in text-only nostalgia, this piece places text games in the context of modern 3D gaming, so it's a refreshing take on a familiar subject.

In terms of their reputation within respectable society, comics hit their nadir in the early 1950s. Slowly, however, the pendulum started to swing the other way.

The careers of two Catholic intellectuals, Marshall McLuhan and Father Walter Ong, illustrate how comics re-won respect in the post-war era. In the 1940s, long before his fame as a media guru, McLuhan was exciting the imagination of bright, young students by confidently linking together disparate phenomena, from modernist art to medieval theology, into a single worldview. He gathered around him a circle of fledging scholars, including a young priest named Walter Ong, who were eager to join in his quest to make sense of the modern techno-communication landscape — what we now call, thanks in part to McLuhan, the media. -- --Intellectual Marijuana: comics and their critics (JeetHeer.com)

Originally published in The Toronto Star.

In 1982, testifying in front of Congress before the Supreme Court had ruled, MPAA President Jack Valenti said, "I say to you that the VCR is to the American film producer and the American public as the Boston strangler is to the woman home alone." --John Borland --FAQ: Betamax--tech's favorite ruling (ZD Net)

A good primer on how the US Supreme Court's 1984 ruling in favor of VCRs factors into this week's P2P hearings.

Writing liberated the life of the text from the moment of performance. It allowed the poet to reflect on and manipulate traditional forms and subject matter. Recording the chronicles of oral culture led to the development of prose, a purely written use of language. By the fifth century, the transition of Greek society from oral to scribal habits was well underway. Athens began to provide public gymnasia and palaestras so that teachers could set up their own schools for the sons of wealthy citizens. Short texts were written on scrolls or wax tablets as an aid to memorization and oral recitation. Reading was done out loud, and writing used capital letters with no spaces between words. As literacy became increasingly widespread, and more and more of the cultural heritage was documented in writing, the need to preserve and re-create over and over the traditions and memory of the society became less urgent. --Twyla Gibson --Greek Education and the Transition From Oral to Written Culture (The McLUhan Program in Culture and Technology)

A collection of excellent resources, from a set of essays designed to highlight the University of Toronto's contribution to media studies. A good summary of Havelock's observation that Greek culture underwent a slow transition from orality to literacy, and of verse as a memory aid that facilitated the oral transmission of great quantities of cultural information.

This Yahoo! Search service finds content across the Web that has a Creative Commons license. While most stuff you find on the web has a full copyright, this search helps you find content published by authors that want you to share or reuse it, under certain conditions. --Yahoo! Creative Commons Search (Yahoo!)

Slashdot is aflutter with suggestions that Yahoo! is giving Google a run for its money. The CC search is great news for those who wish to share their intellectual property.

I simply can't explain the concept of the creative commons to my wife... when I mentioned that Lawrence Lessig seemed vaguely interested in a particular idea that I mentioned to him after he gave a speech at the 4Cs, my wife urged me to write it down quickly so that he doesn't steal credit for it.

Appearing as part of a sextet of high-profile directors promoting 3-D and digital cinema at film industry convention ShoWest on Thursday, Lucas said he hadn't yet committed to a precise schedule but hoped to have the first film ready for the 30th anniversary of the original "Star Wars" movie in 2007 and that he would then rerelease one "Star Wars" film per year in 3-D. --Lucas plans 3-D Star Wars (Reuters UK (will expire))

An international study of about 100,000 15-year-olds in 32 different developed and developing countries suggests that the drive to equip an increasing number of schoolchildren in the UK with computers may be misplaced.

In a report to be given at the conference of the Royal Economic Society in Nottingham this week, Thomas Fuchs and Ludger Woessmann of Munich University say the research shows diminished performance in students with computers. --Robert Booth --Pupils 'do worse with computers'  (Guardian)

Since computers and the internet are part of the subject matter I teach, not just the tools I use to teach, I can't imagine teaching without computers. Occasionally I ask students in my lit classes to read from their blog entries, and occasionally I click through web pages devoted to complex upcoming assignments. But my freshman comp class meets in a room that doesn't have a teacher's station. Most of my contact time with students is spent doing traditional discussion and workshops -- though I like to prime the pump, so to speak, by having students blog their initial responses to readings, and read their peer's responses.

A bit of hope: "students with more than 500 books in their homes performed better in maths and science than those with none."

Of course, I doubt the researchers went to these students' houses and counted the number of books. In addition: the study gathered data in 2000.

I have many questions... was it having a computer that caused the drop in achievement, or having broadband/unsupervised access to the internet? I've known several students who've come close to dropping out, or who have in fact dropped out, because they spent too much time playing computer games and couldn't get their act together when it comes to studying.

The article says the paper has not yet been presented at a conference, and doesn't offer a link to the full version.

About 36 million Americans—or 27% of internet users—say they download either music or video files and about half of them have found ways outside of traditional peer-to-peer networks or paid online services to swap their files, according to the most recent survey of the Pew Internet & American Life Project.

[...]

Current file downloaders are now more likely to say they use online music services like iTunes than they are to report using p2p services. The percentage of music downloaders who have tried paid services has grown from 24% in 2004 to 43% in our most recent survey. However, respondents may now be less likely to report peer-to-peer usage due to the stigma associated with the networks. --Music and Video Downloading Moves Beyond P2P (Pew Interent & American Life Project)

Readers are using aggregation services like Google News to save time and find news they're interested in from one location. But the digital melting pot of news has raised questions about the need for standards that go beyond technology. --Stefanie Olsen --Tough week prompts closer look at how Google gathers its news  (SFGate.com)

[University of Florida] students will not be able to forward their university mail to another account, such as America Online or Hotmail, beginning in the Fall after a technology committee decided in private that too many students weren't receiving important university messages. --Stephanie Garry --[University Forbids Email Forwarding] (Independent Florida Alligator)

Calling All Bloggers -- Friday Special Interest Group (Jerz's CCCC 05 Notes)

Friday evening's "Calling all Bloggers" special interest group, organized by Charles Lowe, was an energetic and productive hour.

I facilitated a breakout session on institutional blogging, where we discussed ways that blogs might be useful for building an instructional archive to be used by the dozens of writing instructors at Weber State U, or for a service-learning project at Western Kentucky U. We commiserated a bit about over our observation that, while some students take to blogging immediately, some students aren't sufficiently motivated to do any kind of work, regardless of format.

The time one spends trying to motivate the disinterested detracts from the time one can spend challenging the motivated, and since teachers are human and we don't like to feel our efforts are unappreciated or wasted, our natural tendency is to want to spend time with the motivated students.

I was pleased to find former National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) chair and accomplished blogger John Lovas was in attendance. In response to a subgroup's concerns about the role blogging could and should play in hiring, promotions, and tenure, Lovas suggested that we lobby the NCTE leadership to produce a statement that guides hiring and promotion committees in the assessment of blogs, wikis, and other developing modes of scholarly dissemination. This November, the NCTE meets in Pittsburgh, within commuting distance from Seton Hill.

Thinking on a very different scale, I suggested that educational bloggers start developing the habit of occasionally dropping by and posting comments on blogs written by the students of our colleagues. Students often report feeling very proud when they get their first comment, or their first comment from a stranger.

While I was fairly proud of my clever suggestion, Lowe's was even more brilliant. Yes, if we band together and help each other's students realize that they are being read, we can try a similar tactic to convince our non-blogging colleagues that blogs can be an important part of scholarly discourse. But he suggested that we start a habit of reviewing each other's blogs in journal articles. Tech-friendly journals such as Kairos and CCC Online are the natural places to start, but if more traditional journals start getting submissions in which scholars review blogs, at the very least we'll be putting the subject before the gatekeepers of our academic discourse.

Writing Teachers Writing New Media (Jerz's CCCC 05 Notes)

"What did you guys do to earn walls?" -overheard during the (long) setup for this presentation.

Hoping to find an opportunity to continue the discussion of the intellectual property issues Lawrence Lessig raised on Thursday, I attended "Writing Teachers Writing New Media," where three young presenters from The Ohio State University (Scott Lloyd DeWitt, Jason Palmeri, and another presenter filling in for Rita Rich -- sorry, I didn't catch his name) discussed the physical spaces in which their students created digital work, describing the ways they changed a writing lab in order to facilitate digital collaboration, and describing the resistance they encountered, as well as their successes.

I arrived a few minutes late, but the session actually didn't get started for about another 10 minutes. The presenters wanted to have two screens going at once, one for a traditional electronic slideshow, and another to show student multimedia presentations. While it all worked out in the end, the beginning was very rocky.

The presenters spoke in glowing terms of the online archive of digital creativity their work produces, and were justifiably proud of their students’ contributions. I noticed that a few presentations gave credit to the original source of remixed material, but the presenters themselves did not address any copyright or intellectual property issues.

During the Q & A, I asked what steps they had taken in order to deal with intellectual property issues. The presenters admitted that they hadn't been systematic about it. After learning that none of the presenters had attended Lessig's talk, I mentioned a few of Lessig’s points, particularly his criticism of both extremes of the intellectual property debate.

A young woman sitting in front of me huffed, "Screw the motion picture industry!"

Though I presume that she had not attended Lessig's talk either, her dismissive and naive attitude precisely illustrated what educators are up against. Lessig argued that extremism begets extremism – that the draconian efforts to control digital property spark equally extreme acts of defiance, and that neither extreme is a sensible, sustainable course of action.

When I taught Writing for the Internet last term, I let my students know that I expected them to cite all the material they took from other sources, but next time I think I might require them to use material that they scanned themselves from out-of-copyright sources, material that they can prove they've requested and received permission for use, or material with an appropriate creative common license.

While the "fair use" clause supports the use of copyrighted material for critical and satirical purposes, young people are so inundated by the committee-produced, financially-driven culture that dominates their televisions that perhaps it would be a good idea to encourage them to look at the creative commons, and instead of creating a work that remixes content that has been bought and paid for by Hollywood, instead remix the creative output of other people like them.

Since blogs became the next big thing, an increasing number of companies have come to see them as the next great public relations vehicle -- a way for executives to demonstrate their casual, interactive side.

But, of course, the executives do nothing of the sort. Their attempts at hip, guerrilla-style blogging are often pained -- and painful. --Amy Joyce --More pr than no-holds-barred on bosses' corporate blogs (Detroit News)

I gave a talk on exactly this theme to a group of local university PR professionals, earlier this month.

In 1992, IF enthusiast Volker Blasius started the IF Archive, which brought together remaining text adventure files and fans from across the Internet. Paul O'Brian, who runs a newsletter for IF fans, says the archive brought text gamers together. "The fact that people can go to one predictable, reliable space ... has given the community a focus to organize around."

For the past decade, Granade has unleashed the text-gaming community's creativity by running IF Comp, an annual competition involving 40 to 50 new entries. "There started to be this recognition that there was a renaissance occurring in amateur IF," says O'Brian, the 2004 winner for his Luminous Horizon. "Because there's no longer a customer out there or a profit to be made, that has opened the form up artistically." --Adam McDowell --Actually, there weren't any pictures at all (Canada.com)

Nothing new here, but it's still great to see a decent treatment of the IF genre in mainstream media.

--Personalized Google News (Google)

A great little addition to Google's incredibly useful news aggregator. I deleted the "sports" section, and added sections containing keywords that I always find myself googling. The search I created for "weblog" isn't very useful, but I'll play with the interface later.

There doesn't seem to be a way for me to access this from a different computer -- it seems to be driven by cookies. Still, it's a nifty addition.

Update, 15 Mar: I see now that there is a permalink available at the bottom of the page. Even better than a login procedure.

The demand is such that the niche has grown from text-based games coded by hobbyists to between 30 and 50 professional audio-game developers who sell 3,000 games a year, experts estimate.

Most of these games run on ordinary PCs and are often joystick- or keyboard-controlled. The player dons a pair of headphones, and elements of the game are delivered in stereo to help players shoot aliens on the left or avoid a tank on the right. --David Cohn --The Blind Fragging the Blind  (Wired)

Blogging clearly isn't going to help that proportion of people who aren't really up to their job, or who are prone to inarticulate flaming, or both. But then, those people tend to have career problems anyhow. Put it another way: not blogging won't protect you from career-limiting moves, and if blogging provokes one, well, you were probably going to do it anyhow.

1. You have to get noticed to get promoted.

2. You have to get noticed to get hired.

3. It really impresses people when you say ?Oh, I?ve written about that, just google for XXX and I'm on the top page? or ?Oh, just google my name.?

4. No matter how great you are, your career depends on communicating. The way to get better at anything, including communication, is by practicing. Blogging is good practice.

5. Bloggers are better-informed than non-bloggers. Knowing more is a career advantage.

6. Knowing more also means you?re more likely to hear about interesting jobs coming open.

7. Networking is good for your career. Blogging is a good way to meet people.

8. If you?re an engineer, blogging puts you in intimate contact with a worse-is-better 80/20 success story. Understanding this mode of technology adoption can only help you.

9. If you?re in marketing, you?ll need to understand how its rules are changing as a result of the current whirlwind, which nobody does, but bloggers are at least somewhat less baffled.

10. It'sa lot harder to fire someone who has a public voice, because it will be noticed.

    --Ten Reasons Why Blogging is Good For Your Career (Ongoing)

OpenOffice.org 2.0 Beta is out and it's revolutionary: New technology, better interoperability, and even easier to use. But it is still in beta. Tell us what is good and what needs fixing. --Open Office 2.0 Beta

I haven't checked this out, but I've been looking for an alternative to MS-Word's horrible HTML output -- something that I can use in my "Writing for the Internet." I already know that next time, I'll bite the bullet and teach students to create HTML with a text editor, something I've always avoided since the thought terrifies some of my students (in that class, overwhelmingly freshmen humanities students). I don't want to overwhelm them with the distracting design options of full-fledged options such as Dreamweaver or FrontPage. So I'll have to check this out and play with its conversion settings.

I'm just blogging this so I can find it again when I have time. Meanwhile, I'm still looking for appropriate software for this class.

They avoid books, libraries, and librarians. They love Google. (We love Google.) Why? Maybe it's the speed of getting thousands of potential answers in a split second (Fig. 11). Maybe it's the seeming simplicity of the list, or the delight in the reduction of a complex question to a series of puzzle pieces to be (apparently) easily assembled into something new. Maybe it's the appearance of neutrality in the list, its lack of point of view. Or maybe, hatred of reading, hatred of learning, fear of librarians, fear of looking stupid, the absence of a teacher's or a librarian's interference. Or, a recognition of the limits of print sources; hurriedness; desire for anonymity or for "interactivity." Or maybe it's the joy of accumulation, the reassurance of hoarding. In the end, probably, the glut of information itself is a reward. --Donny Smith --Search Engine Interfaces (Kairos)

"We never envisioned that we were going to be playing video game music," conductor Miguel Harth-Bedoya said, drawing appreciative laughter from audience members, many of them in their teens and 20s and decked out in everything from tuxes and gowns to jeans and T-shirts.

It was a scene many orchestras would envy at a time when classical groups continue to struggle financially, and when some are branching out to try new formats as a means for survival. --Martha Irvine --Video game concerts draw packed crowds (AP|MSNBC)

To many guardians of the knowledge cathedral - librarians, lexicographers, academics - that's precisely the problem. Who died and made this guy professor? No pedigreed scholars scrutinize his work. No research assistants check his facts. Should we trust an encyclopedia that allows anyone with a pulse and a mousepad to opine about Jackson Pollock's place in postmodernism? What's more, the software that made Wikipedia so easy to build also makes it easy to manipulate and deface. --Daniel H. Pink --The Book Stops Here  (Wired)

This article personalizes the nameless, faceless contributors to Wikipedia. As one expects from Wired, it comes down in favor of this new use of technology, but what I like about the article is its focus on the addictive quality of Wikipedia.

He read a few entries on Greek mythology and found them inadequate. The Edit link beckoned him like a street pusher. He clicked it and typed in a few changes. You can do that?! "I just got hooked," he tells me.

That's part of its success.

There's certainly nothing new about student blogs - there are millions of them floating in cyberspace. What separates these online journals from the rest of the pack is that they are university sponsored and featured prominently on a school's admissions pages. These journals are photo heavy and focus on a few events every few weeks. But one has to ask - how real are these journals? And are they simply mouthpieces for the school?

"A kid who is going to see this diary is going to approach it with a healthy skepticism," says Paul Marthers, dean of admissions at Reed College in Portland, Ore., who is still weighing the pros and cons of a school-sponsored online journal. Some of the difficulties, says Mr. Marthers, are choosing the right people to represent the school, deciding whether or not the diaries are a passing fad, and whether prospective students are going to assume freshmen were "coached" on what to write. --Lisa Leigh Connors --Diary of a college freshman: now accessible online (CS Monitor)

Thanks for the link, Mike.