Technology: September 2007 Archive Page

Rumors of Google's plans to create a virtual world that rivals that of Second Life have popped up once again over the weekend. The company could now be collaborating with Arizona State University to test the 3D social network, which may be tied into Google's current applications of Google Earth and Google Maps.

Your comment has been saved and will be visible after blog owner approval.

The air smelled like toast. Toast is quite nice, but when you realize it's steel, and it's probably particles, it's not very good. Crossing the footbridge at night, you'd be walking above the steel mill, crossing through the smoke, dirt, and crap, looking down into the fire.

From ISS, orbiting 220 miles above the surface of the Earth, the qibla (an Arabic word meaning the direction a Muslim should pray toward Mecca) changes from second to second. During some parts of the space station's orbit, the qibla can move nearly 180 degrees during the course of a single prayer. What's a devout Muslim to do?

The structure of social networking sites also encourages the bureaucratization of friendship. Each site has its own terminology, but among the words that users employ most often is "managing." The Pew survey mentioned earlier found that "teens say social networking sites help them manage their friendships." There is something Orwellian about the management-speak on social networking sites: "Change My Top Friends," "View All of My Friends" and, for those times when our inner Stalins sense the need for a virtual purge, "Edit Friends." With a few mouse clicks one can elevate or downgrade (or entirely eliminate) a relationship.

To be sure, we all rank our friends, albeit in unspoken and intuitive ways. One friend might be a good companion for outings to movies or concerts; another might be someone with whom you socialize in professional settings; another might be the kind of person for whom you would drop everything if he needed help. But social networking sites allow us to rank our friends publicly. And not only can we publicize our own preferences in people, but we can also peruse the favorites among our other acquaintances. We can learn all about the friends of our friends--often without having ever met them in person.

Before seeing the Google Books page image, I had thought that Bierce's suggested punctuation looked like this: \___/. That's how it appears in a footnote to Andrew Graham's online essay, "Forked Tongue: The Language of Serpent in the Enlarged Devil's Dictionary of Ambrose Bierce," as well as the Wikipedia entry on emoticons. It's interesting to discover that the parenthesis-as-smile representation actually goes back 120 years. (In Ambrose Bierce's Civilians and Soldiers in Context: A Critical Study, Donald T. Blume dates this essay to September 25, 1887, but the version published in the 1912 collection may have been subsequently revised.)

When he was a boy, Dr. Pausch said, he had a concrete set of dreams: He wanted to experience the weightlessness of zero gravity; he wanted to play football in the NFL; he wanted to write an article for the World Book Encyclopedia ("You can tell the nerds early on," he joked); he wanted to be Captain Kirk from "Star Trek"; and he wanted to work for the Disney Co.

So technology's utility in the classroom comes down to how it is used. The question, then, is: How can educators adapt their teaching methods to emerging technologies? And should they? Skeptics might point out that even students themselves are ambivalent when it comes to using the Internet and other digital tools for class, as the survey highlights. But the study's introduction, written by Chris Dede of the Harvard Graduate School of Education, suggests what professors can expect from digital natives' evolving modes of learning, what he calls "neomillennial learning styles." As new methods of interacting with information become more ubiquitous, he suggests, citing Second Life-type virtual immersion environments as an example, students will grow up with different expectations and preferences for acquiring knowledge and skills. The implication is less of an emphasis on the "sage on the stage" and a linear acquisition process focusing on a "single best source," focusing instead on "active learning" that comes from synthesizing information from multiple types of media. Noting that traditional ways of thinking and learning are undergoing a "sea change," Dede encourages a fusion of new and old. But what form that will take, exactly, is not addressed directly in the report.

We at DHQ hope that we will eventually reach a wider audience (and trust our readers will help us do so), introducing the type and range of activities the digital humanities community is interested in, and featuring energetic, novel, and interesting articles on a variety of research, making use of all the Internet technologies at our disposal.

One of the papers in this, our second issue, has already done just that. Dennis G. Jerz's Somewhere Nearby is Colossal Cave: Examining Will Crowther's Original Adventure in Code and in Kentucky, was posted on the test site for proofreading a few weeks before launch, when one of our editors featured an advance mention of it on his blog. A few days later, it was picked up by the gaming community on a popular discussion list (rec.arts.int-fiction), garnering comments such as "HOLY MOLY!" and "It is clear on a single reading that this is the most important single paper ever written on the history of interactive fiction" before it had even been formally published. It doesn't stop there: the paper went on to be featured on Boing Boing (a "directory of wonderful things" which is read by hundreds of thousands of readers), then being mentioned on Slashdot, the popular technology-related news site. (We are pleased to report our servers survived being "slashdotted" so far, which is perhaps the best load test we could wish for). Shortly after, it featured on Metafilter, a community weblog that anyone can edit with a vast readership, where comments included "What academic research should aspire to be" and "I can feel a new LOLCATS meme coming on. (I can haz mint-cake?)." On the eve of publication, we have had a request from a local Kentucky newspaper wishing to republish the paper (which our publication terms willingly permit). This paper has legs.

In addition, publication on DHQ has made the original game available again for a new audience. When the preprint version of this article became available on the internet in August 2007, Matthew Russoto modified Crowther's source code so that it will compile for today's computers. David Kinder made a Windows executable version. The colossal cave lives again.

Google's recent big social effort is called Mocha-Mocha (or Mocka-Mocka?), and will become the infrastructure for all social stuff across all of their applications. As a part of this, a new feature called Activity Streams will be introduced or at least implemented in Reader this quarter. This will be comparable to Facebook's News Feed (Minifeed?) feature, and integrate Gmail's addressbook and contact list.

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife. However little known the feelings or views of such a man may be on his first entering a neighbourhood, this truth is so well fixed in the minds of the surrounding families, that he is considered the rightful property of some one or other of their daughters.

Universal recognized of the truth it is, like of single man in the possession of a good fortune, must be internal desires of a wife. In spite of little they know it that the sensations or the opinions that such man nay is in his first one which he incorporates a vicinity, this truth are so elbow fixed to the minds of the surrounding families, who consider it have taste of the legitimate characteristic of some or another one of the daughters of the heir

It is confirmed truth, the one individual man in the possession of a luck, disturbance within its desires of a woman. However small conserved goods, within it to the way an inside to a way to these a man, who to the surplus in the morning in such a way to the way an inside, so that from the feelings the containers dig also or, to the opinions it, which are surplus its first you, possible coming into neighbourhood, this truth in the understanding of the surrounding families as this well-being place that, it cube, which specifies certified characteristic you a way of approx.. in a formed way in a way or as others its daughter meetings also inward

It is a universally identified truth, that a simple man in possession of a good fortune, must be interior want of a wife. However little known the feelings or the sights of such a man can be on his first writing a proximity, they these truth so good is fixed in the spirits of the surrounding families, which one considers with him with him the legitimate property of hard or others their daughters.

Those which agree to the fortunate person of the wife of the single human? Furthermore finishing, the thing of the uniform of phenomenon of thing phenomenon of the thing like _ thing, do those of our our possession ones do the fact that the thing namely average it is called? Perhaps, in regard to consideration thick Seki it is justice of this truth daughter in regard to Seki, it is? The headquarters of thing of decorative style series 1 of truth gazing/hoping of those our things of universalness the fact that it is there should be convinced, it is other than neighborhood? Knowledge, how small human? Opposite side and quality or, or how or is that enormous thing start? The place of opinion, being abnormal, courtesy we should feel Seki which is healthy fixing? Therefore as for thing are phenomenon of thing and thing of possession ones liked those of thing how? What of evidence of 1st thing?

Universal recognized of the truth it is, that one a single man in possession of good fortune, must be to the inner part of desires of a moglie. However little known the sensibility or the points of the point of view of such man it can in the first place be on the relative which it records in the vicinities, this truth therefore is enslaved slowly in the minds of the surrounding families, than the legitimate property approximately or other of their daughters is considered.