Humanities: November 2007 Archive Page

NY Times:

On one hand, as children we're taught that everyone makes mistakes and that the great thinkers and inventors embraced them. Thomas Edison's famous quote is often inscribed in schools and children's museums: "I have not failed. I have just found ten thousand ways that won't work."

On the other hand, good grades are usually a reward for doing things right, not making errors. Compliments are given for having the correct answer and, in fact, the wrong one may elicit scorn from classmates.

We grow up with a mixed message: making mistakes is a necessary learning tool, but we should avoid them.

Here is the beginning of a poem that recent SHU graduate Moira Richardson read at her father's funeral this morning.

I am the twinkle in your eyes,
Eternal laughter sparkling,
Strong and silent,
My father.

Jeremy Douglass has published a Creative Commons dissertation on interactive fiction. I recently brought a printout into my "Writing about Literature" class in order to help my undergrads (English majors, some of whom want to be professional writers or literature professors) see their homework assignments as points on a scale that includes books and beyond.

I ran the PDF through a text-to-speech program, and have been listening to it during my commute. I'm currently at 7 hrs 49 minutes of a 10-hr document. (I didn't include the index and the bibliography when I converted the file to sound.) 

Douglass does an excellent job acknowledging the debt that IF scholarship owes to the pioneering work of Janet Murray and Espen Aarseth (each of whom have treated IF as part of a larger study on digital narrative), and he also offers a good analysis of the full-length studies of IF by Buckles, Sloane, Montfort, and Maher.  He politely but unflinchingly points out how the limited number of IF works chosen for close readings has led to oversimplifications and assumptions in later scholarship.  Because IF is a rather obscure topic, scholars have to present a lot of formal exposition and generic exposition in order to clear a path to their more advanced insights, but Douglass moves beyond the basics very quickly, so there is much of value to ponder. (I will give it a traditional read-through when I'm finished listening to it...  depending on the audio version for the first read is an experiment that I'm rather enjoying.)

For me, the greatest pleasure in reading this work is the insightful close readings of moments, scenes, puzzles, and specific interactions that illustrate the greater theoretical point. I also felt challenged (in a good way) by his re-thinking of the categories into which the history of IF tends to be placed.  I will very likely assign at least

The Interactive Fiction (IF) genre describes text-based narrative experiences in which a person interacts with a computer simulation by typing text phrases (usually commands in the imperative mood) and reading software-generated text responses (usually statements in the second person present tense). Re-examining historical and contemporary IF illuminates the larger fields of electronic literature and game studies. Intertwined aesthetic and technical developments in IF from 1977 to the present are analyzed in terms of language (person, tense, and mood), narrative theory (Iser's gaps, the fabula / sjuzet distinction), game studies / ludology (player apprehension of rules, evaluation of strategic advancement), and filmic representation (subjective POV, time-loops). Two general methodological concepts for digital humanities analyses are developed in relation to IF: implied code, which facilitates studying the interactor's mental model of an interactive work; and frustration aesthetics, which facilitates analysis of the constraints that structure interactive experiences. IF works interpreted in extended "close interactions" include Plotkin's Shade (1999), Barlow's Aisle (2000), Pontious's Rematch (2000), Foster and Ravipinto's Slouching Towards Bedlam (2003), and others. Experiences of these works are mediated by implications, frustrations, and the limiting figures of their protagonists.

Guardian (UK):

Police forces should issue comical caricatures of the criminals they are hunting instead of standard photofits, according to a team of scientists who found that cartoon-like faces are better at jolting people's memories.

The article has a great illustration -- a defenestrated couch on the ground outside the psych building. Patricia Cohen, NYT.

For decades now, critics engaged in the Freud Wars have pummeled the good doctor's theories for being sexist, fraudulent, unscientific, or just plain wrong. In their eyes, psychoanalysis belongs with discarded practices like leeching.

But to beleaguered psychoanalysts who have lost ground to other forms of therapy that promise quicker results through cheaper and easier methods, the report underscores pressing questions about the relevance of their field and whether it will survive as a practice.

Given how psychoanalytic ideas have shaped the culture, the issue reverberates far beyond the tiny cluster of psychoanalysts. They worry that the gradual disappearance of psychoanalytic theory from psychology curriculums means that those ideas are bound to be applied incorrectly as new advances are neglected.

Via Newsweek:

It is a more reliable storage device than a hard disk drive, and it sports a killer user interface. (No instruction manual or "For Dummies" guide needed.) And, it is instant-on and requires no batteries. Many people think it is so perfect an invention that it can't be improved upon, and react with indignation at any implication to the contrary.

"The book," says Jeff Bezos, 43, the CEO of Internet commerce giant Amazon.com, "just turns out to be an incredible device." Then he uncorks one of his trademark laughs.

Books have been very good to Jeff Bezos. When he sought to make his mark in the nascent days of the Web, he chose to open an online store for books, a decision that led to billionaire status for him, dotcom glory for his company and countless hours wasted by authors checking their Amazon sales ratings. But as much as Bezos loves books professionally and personally--he's a big reader, and his wife is a novelist--he also understands that the surge of technology will engulf all media. "Books are the last bastion of analog," he says, in a conference room overlooking the Seattle skyline. We're in the former VA hospital that is the physical headquarters for the world's largest virtual store. "Music and video have been digital for a long time, and short-form reading has been digitized, beginning with the early Web. But long-form reading really hasn't." Yet. This week Bezos is releasing the Amazon Kindle, an electronic device that he hopes will leapfrog over previous attempts at e-readers and become the turning point in a transformation toward Book 2.0.

Politico.com:

Only 20 percent said they'd exchange their vote for an iPod touch. But 66 percent said they'd forfeit their vote for a free ride to NYU. And half said they'd give up the right to vote forever for $1 million.

Clive Thompson, from Wired:

I know I'm the underdog; I know I'm probably going to get killed anyway. I am never going to advance up the Halo 3 rankings, because in the political economy of Halo, I'm poor.

Specifically, I'm poor in time. The best players have dozens of free hours a week to hone their talents, and I don't have that luxury. This changes the relative meaning of death for the two of us. For me, dying will not penalize me in the way it penalizes them, because I have almost no chance of improving my state. I might as well take people down with me.

Or to put it another way: The structure of Xbox Live creates a world composed of two classes -- haves and have-nots. And, just as in the real world, some of the disgruntled have-nots are all too willing to toss their lives away -- just for the satisfaction of momentarily halting the progress of the haves. Since the game instantly resurrects me, I have no real dread of death in Halo 3.

I do not mean, of course, to trivialize the ghastly, horrific impact of real-life suicide bombing. Nor do I mean to gloss over the incredible complexity of the real-life personal, geopolitical and spiritual reasons why suicide bombers are willing to kill themselves. These are all impossibly more nuanced and perverse than what's happening inside a trifling, low-stakes videogame.

But the fact remains that something quite interesting happened to me because of Halo. Even though I've read scores of articles, white papers and books on the psychology of terrorists in recent years, and even though I have (I think) a strong intellectual grasp of the roots of suicide terrorism, something about playing the game gave me an "aha" moment that I'd never had before: an ability to feel, in whatever tiny fashion, the strategic logic and emotional calculus behind the act.

Scott McLemee writes about an intellectual brownout that came to him during a party, when he was asked to comment on a book he knew well.

People who consume two or three books a month, for example, might be less susceptible to moments of total overload than those who read two or three a week. Some situations require learning to handle texts like a meat packer carving up pigs on an assembly line. Certain skills are involved, and they are good skills to have. You can learn to wield the blade with some precision without losing a finger. But efficiency counts, because there's always another pig coming at you.

Patti Dobranski, Tribune-Review

"The secret state police were at the door. They came to arrest my father. On Nov. 9, at 8:30 p.m., I lost my German citizenship. I said 'Let's get out of this hellish country.' I just wanted to go somewhere else."

But Nov. 9, 1938, was more than Blaustein's personal hell. It would become known as "Kristallnacht" or "The Night of Broken Glass," full of screams of despair as the Nazis began their attack on the Jews by burning synagogues and looting homes and businesses. This night would mark the beginning of the end of 6 million Jews across Europe at the hands of the Hitler's Nazis.

The 81-year-old Mt. Lebanon, Allegheny County, resident told his story Tuesday night to a crowd that gathered inside St. Joseph Chapel at Seton Hill University for the 19th annual Kristallnacht Remembrance service sponsored by the National Catholic Center for Holocaust Education.

I was in the back of the room, where the acoustics were not very good, so I was glad to find this account of Blaustein's speech.

In the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Jonathan D. Silver waxes poetic:

Where do all the pumpkins go, post Halloween's big costume show?
Are they left to rot and molder, as the weather trends ever colder?
Or is there some more organized scheme, to dispose of leftovers that aren't the crop's cream?
Wherefore do they, might they go? Inquiring minds want to know!

Silver is a clever writer, though his meter could be tighter.
It could use another edit, but I'm smiling 'cause I read it.