Through the development of crosscutting and other continuity editing techniques, many filmmakers (perhaps unwittingly) found “that the development of systematic narration and continuous action could also deliver a sense of shock, of percussive action that is broken and picked up again continually.” (Gunning, 311, 2006) The once disjointed forces, attraction and narrative, came together to…
When it comes to gameplay, A Mind Forever Voyaging also seems modern and innovative. Yes, it’s a text adventure, which some may wrongly view as self-evidently antiquated. But it’s also a largely puzzle-less, combat-less story that could almost be compared to games like Gone Home or Dear Esther, but with a larger and more open…
Game collectors have their story, too. For them, the dig provided the extraordinary opportunity to get to the bottom of the “infamous Atari landfill.” Nostalgia had its role, playing upon the remembrances of 40-somethings hoping to reclaim a restorative piece of a childhood that Atari helped define. Searching for them reversed the expectations of a…
The Most Disastrous Typos In Western History. Similar:'A Klingon Christmas Carol' Translates Dickens' Scrooge Fable to 'Star Trek' Universe for …Be still, my nerdy heart. (The other hea…AmusingAfter decades lost, Star Trek’s original Enterprise model may have been foundLong before sci-fi shows created their v…DesignHe Googles for some random memes to connect with weak prose,…
One hundred years ago today, Britain declared war on Germany, and the world found itself sucked into a vortex of conflict which centred for many on the battlefields of the Western Front. Every unit which slogged its way through the awful years which followed kept a war diary describing their experiences. Official accounts of movements,…
“The great paradox about these digital communities is that they’re easily kept around forever, and they are even more easily deleted utterly,” said Jason Scott, an Internet advocate and archivist who launched a digital preservation team that year…. I recently tried to revisit my own first homepage, a wonder of center-aligned blinking text, purple tiled…
I wish I had time for cool stuff like this… only a month left of summer break for me, and my wife is going out of town Monday-Friday, so I’m both father and mother to the kids this week. Not much chance for playing with retro design elements, but I can at least save the…
On 28 June 1914, Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria, heir presumptive to the Austro-Hungarian throne, and his wife, Sophie, Duchess of Hohenberg, were shot dead in Sarajevo by Gavrilo Princip, one of a group of six assassins (five Serbs and oneBosnian Muslim) coordinated by Danilo Ilić. The political objective of the assassination was to break off Austria-Hungary’s south-Slavprovinces so they could be combined into a Yugoslavia. The assassins’ motives…
20 years ago, I chose for my dissertation texts written from 1920 through 1950, expecting them to come out of copyright one after the other during my career as a professor, but the Copyright Term Extension Act of 1998 added 20 years. Disney has made dozens of movies based on characters that are in the…
I usually start my American Lit I course with an analysis of “The Defence of Fort McHenry.” “Two hundred years ago, Francis Scott Key, inspired by the sight of the flag’s ‘broad stripes and bright stars,’ wrote a song that gave new significance to a national symbol and started a tradition through which Americans have…
Great piece of history, from 1909. Dorothy Levitt Similar:Mr. President, stop attacking the pressReagan recognized that as leader of the …CultureThe Psychology of Getting More Done In Less TimeSummary of not-so-new scholarship, but p…CultureRip Van WinkleCertain it is, that he was a great favor…AcademiaThe internet’s memory is fading in front of us. Preserve…
From a culture where silent reading was unusual and a bit antisocial, it’s not surprising how much the “banderole” (the scrolls medieval artists used to represent speech in illustrations and other media) can teach us about the relationship between written and spoken language.
But now that he was at college in America, someone had mentioned Tiananmen, a friend. And he went online, to YouTube and Google, and pulled up videos and photographs from 25 years earlier, images not easily accessible behind China’s Great Firewall, as its Internet-censoring regime is called. He kept looking at one, he said, “the…
Generally, it is the chemical breakdown of compounds within paper that leads to the production of ‘old book smell’. Paper contains, amongst other chemicals, cellulose, and smaller amounts of lignin. Both of these originate from the trees the paper is made from; finer papers will contain less lignin than, for example, newsprint. In trees, lignin…
Live in the DC area? June 19 I’ll be speaking about the play Rossum’s Universal Robots for a panel on “robots and theater,” sponsored by Cultural Programs of National Academy of Sciences. (The event will also be webcast.) D.C. Art Science Evening Rendezvous (DASER) is a monthly discussion forum on art science projects providing a snapshot…
Most handwringing about the state of journalism is done by journalists. They are worried about losing their jobs, so it’s not surprising that they tend to be fretful. But turn the issue upside down for a second, and think about the state of journalism from journalism’s audience. The real purpose of journalism, after all, is…
Vintage TV news coverage of Pac-Man. Similar:Feature: History Lesson: the treasured past of LucasArts point and clicksI played more of the Sierra point-and-c…CultureFinland is Winning the War on Fake NewsThis is story is from May, but it’s very…CultureEntire staff of Russian TV channel resigned during a live stream with last words: “no war”…The Entire staff…
In the Star Wars films, the empire is evil to the core. But TIE Fighter let you see the empire from a new perspective. The game didn’t make you feel like a bad person doing bad things, but like a pilot who might reasonably have believed that what he was doing was in the galaxy’s…
I realized that each one of these technologies set out to help people do something but consequently grew and changed over time. Each ultimately provided a way for large groups of people to talk about and think about very difficult problems: Microsoft Office: How do we communicate about work? Photoshop: How do we create and…
I got a text message a couple days ago.. would I be available Saturday night to play a judge in a one-act play based (very loosely) on local history? Sure, why not? Similar:Rossum's Universal Robots (Act 1) Artistic ProsperityThe first act of Artistic Prosperity’s v…CultureSupport the arts in your community! I’m here for the daughter…