Cyberculture: August 2006 Archive Page

--books.google.com

Google's latest offering is the ability to download full-text versions of out-of-copyright books, and to sample the contents of many other books.

The computer was how I wrote! My attachment was dangerous as it now threatened to derail my progress on numerous projects, not the least of which was a manuscript I hoped to finish editing by the end of August. Losing time seemed impossible. I had to push through and figure out a way to adapt, to change the way I was working. I had to challenge my fixed thinking about my writing.

As my initial panic subsided, I saw what I could do alone, independent of my favorite technology. --Amy Wink --Going Solo (Inside Higher Ed)

I actually enjoy developing a syllabus in fits and starts, as ideas and inspirations strike me, and I jot them down in my Palm computer accordingly, when I'm in line in the grocery store, or when the kids are playing together nicely and I can spare a few moments.

Everything feels very different when I'm hunkered down in front of my keyboard in my office.

There are certain brainstorming and editing activities I prefer to do with pen and paper. I'm not so sure I'm interested in writing a hymn to the quill pen, but this article might be useful in my "Writing for the Internet" course, since my general assumption in that class is that most of the students have a long history of composing with computers, and little or no history of doing serious writing with pen and paper.

A euphemism like "decision-based simulation" maybe, but rarely a "game." To many, video and computer games represent an adolescent diversion, a parental annoyance that thwarts homework, chores, and all things productive. So when FAS and others stump for games as an educational or training tool, they begin by stating the problem: "You oversee a very complex system," or "You want to reach a new audience." The notion of a game providing the solution comes later. Such is the way when establishing a new medium. --Josh Schollmeyer --Games get serious (Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists)

I am a very visual and active learner. I draw circles around words or phrases, highlight pertinent passages, make marginal marks and notes, or draw small doodles so I can visualize a concept. I make arrows that connect similiar ideas, draw stars next to passages that I hope I'll be able to find again, or stick post-it notes on pages I want to visit again. This method of absorbing information does not work with online texts. --Moira Richardson --Bound for Glory - the future of print (Literary Tease)

Once upon time, in a galaxy exactly like this one, hard-core gamers spent hours staring at screens of tiny text and laboriously typing commands to move characters to the next level.

That era -- approximately 1979 to 1985 -- marked the golden age of interactive fiction, when games commonly consisted of text adventures tailored to run on personal computers capable of storing only about as much data as contained in a single digital photo. --Joanna Glasner --Text Games Get Film Treatment (Wired)

I'm glad to see that Jason Scott's Get Lamp feature is getting some publicity. The IF Comp is mentioned, too.

A zoo in the Netherlands plans to set up a webcam to help its orangutans form long-distance relationships with potential mates in Indonesia. --Dutch plan orangutang web dating (BBC)

Thanks for the link, Rosemary.

Amazon used to be a large river in South America - but that was before the world wide web. This month the web is 15 years old and in that short time it has revolutionised the way we live, from shopping to booking flights, writing blogs to listening to music. Here, the Observer's Net specialist charts the web's remarkable early life and we tell the story of the 15 most influential websites to date. --Websites that changed the world  (Guardian Observer)

The the author's introduction is a bit puffy, but the actual list of web pages is pretty interesting.

The house that Gates built will be launching XNA Game Studio Express, a set of (dumbed-down) development tools that will allow hobbyists and their ilk to develop games for both the Xbox 360 and the PC. Initially, these homebrew (is it still considered "homebrew" if you're using official tools?) games will only be playable to other coders part of a so-called "Creator's Club," a nice way to say that Microsoft will charge you $99 for a one-year subscription to play such games. --Microsoft to Let Regular Joes Develop Xbox Games (Gizmodo)

I'm not surprised Microsoft wants a piece of this pie.

Bloggers have been making fun of the examples Google's lawyers deem acceptable. They included: "Appropriate: I ran a Google search to check out that guy from the party. Inappropriate: I googled that hottie."

Web veterans have also been taken aback by Google's suddenly humourless approach. The eight-year-old company has previously cultivated an image of youthful non-conformity, from the jeans and T-shirts often worn by its billionaire founders, Sergey Brin and Larry Page, to the scooter lanes and volleyball courts at its Palo Alto headquarters. --To google or not to google? It's a legal question (The Independent)

The word google has recently joined words such as photoshop and xerox, as a generic term for an activity once tied to a specific product. Google's copyright lawyers have to demonstrate that they have acted to defend the copyright, or else the word can fall so far into the common domain that the company wouldn't be able to defend its name against competitors who try to use it. But I'm filing this as another example of why lawyers don't live on the same planet as the rest of us.

You could cure a toothache or make snowshoes using the original Britannica, of 1768-71. (You could also imbibe a lot of prejudice and superstition. The entry on Woman was just six words: "The female of man. See HOMO.") If you look up "coffee preparation" on Wikipedia, you will find your way, via the entry on Espresso, to a piece on types of espresso machines, which you will want to consult before buying. There is also a page on the site dedicated to "Errors in the Encyclopædia Britannica that have been corrected in Wikipedia" (Stalin's birth date, the true inventor of the safety razor).

[...]

Wikipedia is an online community devoted not to last night's party or to next season's iPod but to a higher good. It is also no more immune to human nature than any other utopian project. Pettiness, idiocy, and vulgarity are regular features of the site. Nothing about high-minded collaboration guarantees accuracy, and open editing invites abuse. Senators and congressmen have been caught tampering with their entries; the entire House of Representatives has been banned from Wikipedia several times. --Stacy Shiff --Know It All: Can Wikipedia conquer expertise? (The New Yorker)

Computers & Composition: An International Journal invites contributions for a special issue, Reading Games: Composition, Literacy, and Video Gaming

While video gaming has been a strong cultural force since the advent of the popular coin-operated arcades of the 1970s, it is only within the last few years that video/computer gaming has been an academic focus: there is a lot of catch-up work to do. The average age of gamers has been steadily increasing, as has the number of dedicated players. Inevitably, this dedication to gaming will have -- if it does not already -- a profound impact on learning and literacy. Video/computer games are historically- and culturally-situated texts that operate in particular social contexts significant to composition theory and praxis. --CFP: Computers & Composition -- ''Reading Games: Composition, Literacy, and Video Gaming''

Matthew S. S. Johnson sent me this via e-mail and asked me to help publicize it. I posted the full text on KairosNews.

The following list is made up of a few things I've noticed in a lot of the interactive fiction games I've tested or tried out. I've tried these games for reasons I can't entirely fathom; admittedly, it's easier and leaves fewer disfiguring scars than self-flagellation. It is not necessarily any less painful though. --Michael J. Coyne --First-Timer Foibles

From a string of good narrative-related links on Grand Text Auto.

Until recently entertainment reporting was in the hands of respectful, publicist-friendly titles such as Vanity Fair and The Los Angeles Times. Indeed, the latter recently opened one of its celebrity articles with this gem of a sentence: "One doesn't so much interview Angela Bassett and Laurence Fishburne as sit back and watch as their friendship, wordplay and enthusiasm for their craft plays itself out."

The internet has changed all that. Today the real stories are more likely to appear on the websites of The Smoking Gun, the Drudge Report or the TMZ (which got the Gibson scoop). These websites deal in tips, not interviews. They owe no favours to publicists. And they have more in common with (and more respect for) the British red-top press than The New York Times. --Chris Ayres --Be shocked! Be amazed! See Hollywood on a website near you (The Times Online)

The blog hurt the administration in two key ways: First, administrators were unable to focus on correcting the problems that led to the creation of the blog, and second, the administration's clumsy and futile efforts to combat the blog simply compounded the anger and contempt on campus. --Daniel W. Barwick --The Blog That Ate a Presidency (Inside Higher Ed)

Good analysis of an administrative train wreck that started because a college board responded poorly to a controversy started on a blog.

To be fair, anonymous complaints are hard to deal with, but ignoring a forum -- even an unfair forum -- is a sign that those who wish to abuse it will have free reign rein.

Barwick has a good solution: "Clearly what Alfred State needed (and other colleges probably need as well) is a blog that is confidential, accessible, not regulated for content, and yet not completely public."

Of course, if anything in the "confidential" blog becomes contentious, it's a simple matter for warring factions to copy and paste material to other forums, so it's probably better to think of such a community as gated, rather than the content as confidential.