This three-week working group aims to develop readings and methodologies of Critical Code Studies, which examines the extra-functional significance of computer source code. This forum-based online working group is the follow-up to the highly successful CCSWG (2010), which brought together a community of researchers in ways leading to later scholarly presentations, papers, and book projects.…
Lego, I understand that girls have been telling you they want more stuff for girls. I have been looking for more good stuff for girls myself. But I have not been looking for yet another arena where boys and girls are shown that their interests and activities can never mix. The beauty of Lego was…
Video Game Culture and Theory In the last decade, scholars have noticed the growing importance of video games among some areas of the population, as a form of storytelling, as a form of teaching, as a form of social commentary, and as a unique cultural practice. Their observations lead to the development of “Game Studies,”…
It’s not a frequent topic of discussion, but doctors die, too. And they don’t die like the rest of us. What’s unusual about them is not how much treatment they get compared to most Americans, but how little. For all the time they spend fending off the deaths of others, they tend to be fairly…
As Christmas Break wanes and my spare time dwindles, I’m going to have to say goodbye to my nightly Blender 3D design sessions. But I’m hoping to keep my creative juices flowing, by reserving at least 20 minutes a day for an interactive fiction work-in-progress. I’m at a point in my development where I’ve implemented…
Blogging with an eye towards finding background info for my “Media and Culture” class next term. Once a writer’s archive consisted of letters, badly-typed first drafts and corrected manuscripts. But now they write on computers and communicate by email, what clues to their creative process remain? Archaeologist Christine Finn sets out to explore how the…
Pay no attention to the neatly formatted and deceptively typo-free surfaces of the average Microsoft Word file, Mr. Kirschenbaum declared at a recent lunchtime lecture at the New York Public Library titled “Stephen Kings Wang,” a cheeky reference to that best-selling novelists first computer, bought in the early 1980s.”The story of writing in the digital…
You don’t have to get into the curvature of space-time, but you can tell your kids that Santa uses deep scientific knowledge to see a different map of the universe, one that contains roads most people don’t know about. The Jolly Old Elf may have found a way to jump or drop from one house…
Since 9/11, Islamic terrorists have killed just 17 people on American soil, all but four of them victims of an army major turned fanatic who shot fellow soldiers in a rampage at Fort Hood. (The other four were killed by lone-wolf assassins.) During that same period, 200 times as many Americans drowned in their bathtubs.…
Seton Hill’s successful implementation of iPads made the eCampus News top 10 popular stories: Campus survives the ‘iPad jitters’ Putting Apple iPads in the hands of every student and professor on a PC-based campus required some convincing, but a year later, Seton Hill University officials said the tablet program has changed the way classes are…
Required Books Recommended: buy Amazon’s Kindle versions, available via the iPad Kindle App. (You are, however, free to purchase a paper version instead, and if you want an ebook but prefer a different ebook reader, you are welcome to seek out other editions.) The AISN is for Amazon’s Kindle edition; the ISBN will help you…
What started out as random green cubes turned into some kind of shrubbery. I spent too much time fiddling with the bushes. They’re good enough. I’ve cleaned up the Griffin’s eyes, and added some camera motion so we zoom in on his face. His wings waggled back and forth too much last time, so I…
According to a color-picking test at synesthete.org, these are the colors my daughter perceives when she sees or thinks about letters and numbers. As you can see, each time the test flashed a random letter or number, she didn’t always adjust the sliders to find the exact same colors. For one item (I forget which)…
She tells her students to begin by writing a one-sheet description of the project. This description will not be perfect or final, but it will set the filmmaking process into motion. Briefly sketch your themes, story, characters, and the filmmaking style you would like to use. (A good way to start choosing a style is…
This was my 9yo today. She doesn’t get into fights with other kids, just with us — about going to bed, or getting up, or drinking out of a cup with a creepy pirate on it, or doing any lesson other than theater or art. Beyond throwing an eraser or stuffed animal in huffy anger,…
The content is great, but I’m really blogging this because I’m tickled by the writing. Kickstarter is off-the-showroom polished in this regard – the web pages are clean without being sparse, sharp without being oblique, informative without being overwhelming. It feels like french-kissing a Nicholas Felton chart while Edward Tufte snaps photos for his personal…
For educators who are interested in both computers and writing, interactive fiction games (aka text adventures) offer exciting possibilities. This workshop introduces the interactive fiction programming language Inform, which uses a syntax that resembles ordinary English. Here is a sample of Inform 7 code: The Hotel Lobby is a room. A buffet table is in…
In our homeschool household, we do lessons year round. Knowing that she would have to finish her lessons before I took her to a party today, my daughter got up before the rest of the house. When I came into the kitchen to get myself breakfast, I found her like this, on the last chapter…
The particular nature of drone warfare is also a contributor to the higher stress levels. While the number is very small, officials who conducted the study said they did encounter a handful of pilots who suffered symptoms of PTSD — post-traumatic stress disorder — directly linked to their experience running combat operations. Unlike traditional pilots…