Media: January 2007 Archive Page

YouTube wanted to build a large enough community before beginning to pay users for their content, he said. "We didn't want to build a system that was motivated by monetary reward. When you start giving money to people from day one-- the people you do attract will just switch to the next provider that's paying more," he said. "We feel we're at the scale now that we'll be able to do that and still have a true community around video."

The system might work such that a video creator who sets a video against music could share revenue with the record label that owns the copyright on the music. --YouTube may share revenue with users (Macworld)

I'm always cautious about citing a source that includes "may" or "might" in the headline. Thanks for the link, Karissa.

Whatever happened to Al Gore's TV station that was supposed to solicit contributions from the audience?

It is not in his personal emotions, the emotions provoked by particular events in his life, that the poet is in any way remarkable or interesting. His particular emotions may be simple, or crude, or flat. The emotion in his poetry will be a very complex thing, but not with the complexity of the emotions of people who have very complex or unusual emotions in life. One error, in fact, of eccentricity in poetry is to seek for new human emotions to express; and in this search for novelty in the wrong place it discovers the perverse. The business of the poet is not to find new emotions, but to use the ordinary ones and, in working them up into poetry, to express feelings which are not in actual emotions at all.--T.S. Eliot --Tradition and the Individual Talent (Bartleby.com)

A student in one of my classes said that she had always been taught that poetry is an expression of emotion, and she's having trouble assimilating some of T.S. Eliot's claims.

One of my favorite TV shows is Babylon 5. While the creator openly calls himself an agnostic, one of the reasons I like the show is that most of the characters (humans and aliens) have religious motives. One show featured a young monk who dies under horrible circumstances, but who likens his own suffering to the suffering of Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane. Later, the monk's abbot forgives the murderer. The TV show's lead character is shocked that the abbot would be so forgiving, and sort of ashamed that he can't be that forgiving himself.

Fans of the show chatted on the internet... did this show mean that the show's creator, an agnostic, had some sort of religious conversion? Was he starting to believe in the faith he had rejected?

The creator of the show, who also wrote the episode, answered the fans... as an experienced writer, he can create characters who have faith, and he can tell a good story that hinges on that faith, without necessarily believing in that faith. He had told equally powerful stories about aliens sacrificing themselves for their own religious beliefs, but he didn't believe in the planets where those characters were supposed to come from.

Certainly, authors write from their own experience, and perhaps this guy had at one time known faith, or he was just a keen enough observer of people around him and stories that he has read that he was able to touch that segment of the audience that appreciated a moving religious story.

But I think it's a popular myth that great authors have to express their inner emotions in order to create great art, or that the greater the emotion, the greater the art.

People with terrible voices can sing "Happy Birthday" to their children, and it will be a meaningful expression of love, even if it is full of technical errors (off-key, off-tempo, the lyrics are wrong, etc.) that would drive from the room anyone else who isn't part of the family.

The same applies to poetry, or any other medium. For example, here's a singing performance, that's an expression of emotion yet is most certainly NOT good music.

Does her (decided lack) of singing ability have anything to do with her patriotism or her political competency? No. Would she ever make it as a lounge singer if she wasn't already a political celebrity? No.

It's hard to imagine what freshmen think when they wander into Professor Banzai's lecture hall. Weller reports that he loses a lot of students after the first class. "They thought they were going to get the easy A from old RoboCop," he says with a laugh. The 450-page course reader tells them otherwise. Those who stay get a view into Weller's two worlds. For example, his class at Syracuse on Hollywood and the Roman Empire requires watching toga-and-sandal epics (Ben Hur and The Last Temptation of Christ among them) and reading primary-source Roman authors in an attempt to reconcile big-screen Rome with the real thing. "The Romans were an unbelievably complex people, and we are an unbelievably complex people," Weller says. "We can learn so much about why things are the way they are by looking at what they did." He goes on to explain how the absence of the concept of zero in Greek antiquity laid the foundation for Western philosophical thought. --Mike Daisey --RoboCop, Ph.D (Wired)

Peter Weller, the actor who played RoboCop and Buckaroo Banzai is working towards a Ph.D. in classical history. Cool!

The search for better spies led the NCS to set up shop on Facebook, which is used primarily by college students. Every Facebook user has her or his own page, and users can choose to join Facebook "groups," which can be created by individuals or sponsored by companies as paid promotions. The NCS-sponsored Facebook group was launched on Dec. 19, 2006 and will stay active for two months. The group currently has over 2,100 members, up from around 200 one week after its debut. --Chaddus Bruce --CIA Gets in Your Face(book) (Wired)

Thanks for the link, Karissa.

--[Hand-made Star Wars] (YouTube)

Very dorky, but in a totally awesome, very cool way.

Han and Luke get medals but Chewie doesn't. Actually, Leia offers him one but Chewie turns it down. He got one of those things from Yoda about 20 years ago, but there's no way he can tell her that. --A New Sith, or Revenge of the Hope (Mornignstar)

A great little detail that really helps this fan re-interpretation of the first Star Wars trilogy, in what we learned about the backstory during the second trilogy.

A good dose of Occam's Razor would wipe out much of this essay, but it was still fun to read.

The ubiquity of the cell phone camera means that every moment in our lives is photographable. One consequence of this is an altered perception of the gravity of our day-to-day routines. We are now more aware of ourselves as observers of "history." When a van catches fire in front of our house, we and our neighbors are now out on the lawn recording. We e-mail this to our friends, who testify to the enormity of the event, and then we all await the next sensation. This impulse can be positive, but it also fuels the increasingly destructive American habit of oversharing. The snapshot speaks with a small voice: I'm alive and I saw this. The cell phone camera picture or video is a shout from the rooftop: Check out this crazy thing that happened to me. --Michael Agger --The Camera Phone: The Gadget that Perverts, Vigilantes, and Celebrity Stalkers Can All Agree On (Slate)

If you checked out the Newsweek article that I mentioned last time, you were subjected to the above image, with multiple Oscar-winning actor Tom Hanks all dolled up in hi-tech mo-cap gear. Here is where Warner Bros' marketing was really banking on the prestige of Hanks getting all dirty, showing that he's willing to go the extra mile to give us, the audience, something worth watching. But, unfortunately, we are given the actual image from the movie from where this performance was captured. A "before and after" scenario, I guess. It's all too telling, if you ask me. Do you see what's happened from Point A to Point B? Somehow they spent millions of dollars to literally take the soul out of an Oscar-winning actor's performance. That's quite a feat!

I sat there just staring at this image, trying to figure out what happened. What exactly is going on here? Why does the image on the top look so engaging, so vibrant, so full of life, but the image on the bottom - which is supposed to be the exact same performance of the actor "captured" by the computer - look so dead and puppet-like? --Ward Jenkins --The Polar Express: A Virtual Train Wreck (conclusion) (Ward O Matic)

An animator re-touches images from The Polar Express, to show how to bring life back into the 3D characters who looked like automatons in the finished film.

Diamond Age, based on Neal Stephenson's best-selling novel The Diamond Age: Or a Young Lady's Illustrated Primer, is a six-hour miniseries from Clooney and fellow executive producer Grant Heslov of Smokehouse Productions.

When a prominent member of society concludes that the futuristic civilization in which he lives is stifling creativity, he commissions an interactive book for his daughter that serves as a guide through a surreal alternate world. Stephenson will adapt his novel for the miniseries, the first time the Hugo and Nebula award winner has written for TV. --Clooney, Others Develop SCI FI Shows (SciFi.com)

Hot diggity damn!

I just hope it doesn't suck.

E-mail is , of course, cheaper and encourages quicker thought, and it introduces a peculiar blend of the personal and professional. The AIP historians have also detected a decline in the use of lab notebooks, finding that data are often stored directly into computer files. Finally, they have noted the influence of PowerPoint, which can stultify scientific discussion and make it less free-wheeling; information also tends to be dumbed down when scientists submit PowerPoint presentations in place of formal reports.

Generally, though, these new communications techniques are good for scientists, encouraging rapid communication and stripping out hierarchies. But for historians, they are a mixed blessing. It is not just that searching through a hard disk or database is less romantic than poring over a dusty box of old letters in an archive. Nor is it that the information in e-mails differs in kind from that in letters. Far more worrying is the question of whether e-mail and other electronic data will be preserved at all. --Robert P. Crease --The lost art of the letter (Physics Web)

When I write major projects, I typically save multiple drafts under different file names. But for routine work, like many people out there, I just save the new work over top of the old. I can see that denies future historians access to rough drafts.

While I doubt future historians will ever comb through my materials, the point is that historical methods will have to change to account for the fact that much of our writing is ephemeral and interactive, which means future historians will likely have to spend more time reading e-mail exchanges and tracking down obscure references to data that is no longer available, rather than reading stand-alone essays.

I recall reading that as people started doing more of their daily work via telephone, historians faced difficulty piecing together events that in a previous century would have left a paper trail. E-mail is at least more friendly to archivists than telephone conversations.

What's it actually like? Does it exploit the tragedy for cheap thrills? Or does it actually have artistic merit -- offering a new way to think about Columbine?

Right off the bat, Ledonne tries to put his critics off guard by delivering precisely the opposite of what you'd expect. Nobody will be able to use Super Columbine to live out explicit fantasies of gore or train themselves to shoot up a high school.

That's because it's anything but a graphically sophisticated, blood-soaked shoot-em-up. On the contrary, Super Columbine was designed to look like a clunky Nintendo game from the mid '90s, with low-rez, pixilated characters the size of sugar cubes, and cheesy MIDI music. When you kill someone, the avatar looks like a mashed red blot.

What strikes you, instead, is Ledonne's attention to narrative detail. He painstakingly researched the killers' life stories using publicly released police investigations of the pair, and the game thus includes all manner of detail I never knew. When I started off in Harris' house, I found a box of Luvox, an antidepressant he was on that prevented him getting into the Marines. When I met up with Klebold in a basement, we sat down in front of the VCR to watch the "I've seen the horror" speech from Apocalypse Now, a movie they apparently loved. --Clive Thompson --I, Columbine Killer (Wired)

I've been sick or caring for sick family members for most of the break, so I haven't had the chance to write my thoughts about "Super Columbine Massacre RPG!" -- the game, that is, rather than simply the Slamdance controversy.

Thompson is one of the few voices out there who actually played the game, and can thus argue that "It uses the language of games as a way to think about the massacre. Ledonne, like all creators of 'serious games,' uses gameplay as a rhetorical technique."

The primary focus of this conference is to explore the growing cultural importance of interactive media. All scholarship on digital interactive media, such as computer games, mixed realities and interactive fiction, as well as users, including adults and children, will be considered in one of four broad conference streams: --Interacting with Immersive Worlds (Brock University)

The CFP deadline is Feb 16, in Ontario. I won't be able to go, but it still looks interesting.

I have seen it, touched it, and played with it. The final industrial design prototype for the XO, the device that the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) Initiative is going to start shipping to countries across the world this summer. AMD hosted a luncheon on Monday to give the press an update on the project, and to unveil the completed design. --James Turner --Notes From a Senior Editor: A Close Look at the OLPC (Linux Today)

This story isn't getting nearly as much attention as the iPhone, but I think OLPC will make a bigger difference to more people.

Whatever one thinks of the game's content, the game went through an extensive judging process and was deemed a finalist by a jury of game experts. To have the game pulled based on either pressure from backers or a fear of liability is to say that independent games do not deserve the same respect and conscientious protection by artistic venues as independent films. Would a difficult, perhaps controversial, film be pulled from the festival under the same circumstances? Of course not -- and it had never happened in the history of the festival. That is the point of having a festival such as Slamdance, to confront those moments when media and sensibility and culture are in conflict. To offer a place where the independent independents can be seen, appreciated, lauded or condemned -- but not hidden or refused.

[...]

[A] festival honoring a "philosophy of design" must be open to more than just beautiful independent games or independent games that make us feel good; and, that those striving to support independent game making must be ready to defend games that are difficult and provocative in terms of their content, as well as games that are challenging and innovative in their game play. We support such games and it is in that spirit that we withdraw our sponsorship. --USC Interactive Media Division Withdraws Slamdance Sponsorship (Ludicidal Tendencies)

The fallout over Slamdance's decision to pull Super Columbine Massacre RPG! continues.

You know something is seriously changing in a genre when a masked serial killer invites you to check out his "blog". Such a gesture is obviously a solicitation of interactive engagement -- a marketing scheme intended to solicit an investment of attention and to mollify a fan base, with the promise of giving a web-savvy audience member "something extra" for free online. --Michael A. Arnzen --Scary New Media (Dissections)

A little later in the article, Arnzen offers a good discussion of new media horror as an expression of anxiety over new media itself.

I don't get cable TV, and it has been so long since I have followed any TV series closely enough to consider this sort of thing. I do remember reading something about a controversy in that the cast of a particular show had agreed to air a certain number of short web-only episodes, but the studio execs refused to pay them extra for their work, so the episodes stopped.

As I understand it, YouTube has recently limited its clip lengths to 10 minutes, which is slightly longer than the average content hole in between the commercial breaks, and about the same length as the amount of film that the old movie cameras could shoot in one stretch.

This is getting off topic, but I'll push on anyway.

Just today, Steve Jobs announced that he was changing the name of Apple Computers to Apple Inc, and he unveiled a new iPhone and a TV appliance that is supposed to sync your video files across your various video appliances. Some observers are predicting that the iPod is pretty much dead, but the new iPhone also looks pretty expensive, to those who don't have executive epxense accounts to finance their toy purchases. At any rate, you can bet that we're going to see a lot of hype for hand-held video. Way back in the dark ages, families used to gather in the living room to watch the same shows. Once you had cable TV, more channels meant it was likely that different family members would watch different things.

Occasionally when our DVD player has been out, I have offered to watch a movie with my wife on my laptop computer, but she rejected the idea. To her, a computer is something you use when you are working. I don't really watch many DVDs on my computer, but I do from time to time. And I'm fortunate enough that I have a job where I can tell myself that watching Blade Runner or playing an IF game is research, which it is.

I'm still more likely to want to build a Half-Life 2 level or program an IF game for relaxation if I can find a few unbroken hours to block out for such activities. (Blogging is typically what I do when I know I'm going to be interrupted, or when I'm too sick to concentrate, which has been the case for the past week.)

In an optical or physical sense, the capabilities of modern day computers have really put "reality" immersion within reach. Yet, this aspect of immersion--the "wow it looks so real" factor--has become a crutch and the only pillar of the immersion experience for which most games aim. Maybe it's easier to sell or produce en masse. It seems like a distraction or an eventually empty substitute for what was once the key tenet of the "immersion" experience--the ability to "do anything" in a game.

When it comes down to it, there are only a few things you can do in a modern game--shoot, jump, manoeuvre, open doors, push switches, select weapons, and pick up ammo. Even other games, like strategy and simulation, limit you to a small set of actions. While some games allow you to carry conversations, it is only within a narrow script in which your only real choice is in what order you read what the character has to say. Though a lot of time is spent giving the impression of vast worlds and endless corridors, you really can't just do anything. --Leopold McGinnis --Keyboard power (Adventure Classic Gaming)

I really like this site.

Humans communicate with each other through voice inflection, timing, and gesture. "Those capabilities are hard-wired into humans," Pausch explains. "You wouldn't put up with a person who makes you learn how to type commands to him; why should you have to talk to computers that way? Ultimately, we'd like to be able to read facial expressions."

But in the meanwhile, Pausch suggests, we have a lot to learn about the medium itself. "The first movies were made by Thomas Edison and other engineers -- and those movies were really bad. In the same way, the field of virtual reality research is in its infancy. This is the first truly three-dimensional electronic medium, and we have absolutely no idea how to use it." --Virtual Reality for Five Dollars a Day (University of Virginia Computer Science)

This is from a newsletter article I wrote as a employee of the U.Va. engineering school's fund-raising foundation, in 1992. That quote about engineers being the first movie-makers has lodged deep in my brain.

Slamdance finalist Super Columbine Massacre RPG has been officially kicked from the festival due to mounting pressure from protesters and the loss of sponsorship, the game's creator told Kotaku Thursday night.

This is the first time in the Slamdance Festival's 13-year history that a game or film has been removed from the festival due to criticism or outside pressure. --Exclusive: Columbine Game Kicked From Competition (Kotaku)

I cited this game as an example in a paper I gave at the National Catholic Center for Holocaust Education in November. My point was that the young audience that Holocaust educators want to reach has a different set of moral and aesthetic responses to games than the adults who don't have much to say beyond dropping their jaws. The Holocaust deniers and other promoters of hate and violence already have their issue-oriented games out there. While I think it's exaggerating to suggest that a Jew-bashing game is going to have much impact (those games, like the Christian-themed evangelical games typically have poor production values and won't really attract the interest of someone who doesn't already share the world view that the game is trying to promote). There is enough social commentary embedded within this particular RPG that I think it moves beyond cynical exploitation, and really attempts to use a popular medium in an effective way.

The designer, Danny Ledonne, speaks eloquently and thoughtfully about his creation (in this article and elsewhere on Kotaku).

Update, Jan 6: Ian Bogost offers a good overview of the Slandance controversy. It looks like it wasn't external pressure from advertisers after all, but one person's concern about what MIGHT happen if the game were to be part of the show.

I teach plenty of safe classics, but I also teach books that contain disturbing and threatening ideas. I find it amazingly hypocritical that Slamdance (an indie film festival, founded to protest commercialism at Sundance) would override the artistic decisions of the panel that agreed to let the Columbine game into the competition.

Hammer Dream (Jerz's Literacy Weblog)

This morning, I heard my daughter stirring in the next room, and I fell back asleep, knowing I only had a few minutes before I had to start getting her ready for preschool.

In those few minutes, I had a dream.

I was showing my daughter a hammer. It had a squarish head, like a metalworker's square hammer. It had a foam padded handle, that was decorated with a realistic-looking woodgrain pattern. I was trying to amuse my daughter by poking dents in the foam padding, pretending that I was strong enough to make the wood handle squish.

When my daughter realized the trick, I pulled off the foam sheath, revealing the real wood of the hammer under the woodgrain-printed foam covering. I did so in a dramatic fashion, expecting my daughter to laugh, which she did.

Then I noticed that the woodgrain of the hammer was actually a cheap vinyl covering, like you find on cheap office furniture (or the furniture I see all round me here in my basement study). When I peeled off some of that covering, I saw that the handle was actually made of that wood chips-and-sawdust amalgam that makes up the core of plywood.

I wondered how useful a hammer could be if its handle was made up of this stuff. But when I looked even closer, I saw that instead of wood chips, the handle was composed of intricate and detailed little decorative boxes, stacked like Russian dolls. As I watched, the boxes started unfolding, spilling out into geometric patterns like an Escher print. So much wood was involved that I couldn't imagine how it could have all fit into the space occupied by the handle.

The last thing I remember before I woke up was how I could somehow reproduce this event for the benefit of my students.

It was only an hour or so later, after I had driven my daughter to preschool (and was helping her write a page of letters) that it finally hit me... My daughter had given me a hammer for Christmas, and duh, Hammer is the name of one of the 3D design tools I've been using.

Tonight if I have a dream about geometric shapes pouring out of a blender, I'll let you know.