Responding to reader input, we are changing Web site to website. — Associated Press Stylebook Similar:Sobering data; stunning visualization.This NYT story on the effects of race on…CultureLiteracy Debate: Online, R U Really Reading?A good feature from the New York Times: …BooksThe Scapegoat by Richard Maples (1957 Sci-Fi Short Story)I had a great time narrating and…
Roger Ebert recently tweeted this video, calling it a “Brief, well-made video mounting an optimistic defense of videogames.” Similar:Another 10 sq cm of #steampunk control panel. #blender3d #blender3dart #relaxing #aestheti…AestheticsTraditional Reporters and Data-driven Analysts Both Underestimated Trump's ChancesA data-driven news outlet that gave Trum…CultureJustine Sacco Is Good at Her Job, and How I Came…
Roger Ebert expounds upon — but does not reconsider — his rejection of the aesthetic possibilities of the video game. Ebert is prompted to return to the topic because of a talk by Kellee Santiago, who used cave paintings and stills from early black and white movies to argue that just as painting and movies…
“I shouldn’t be saying this, but I think I’ll love you always, baby, always,” Adam cried into the email. –Shexmus Amed The winner from Adam Cadre’s “Lyttle Lytton” contest (an awful-first-line contest, named after the author who famously penned “It was a dark and stormy night”) My favorite was actually: There was only one man…
Even for those who love books enough to persevere with reading without e-ink will soon face another problem with the awesomeness of the iPad. The device does so many different things so well that there’s a constant urge when you’re using one to do something else. Two or three pages into a book, you’re already…
I just posted a new handout, introducing students in my “History and Future of the Book” course to Vannevar Bush and his memex. I’ll probably tweak that handout a bit more, but it’s quitting time today. In 1946, Vannevar Bush published “As We May Think” (I assigned it in EL236, but I’m not assigning the…
“As We May Think” has been constantly cited ever since, a development that has been analyzed by Smith (1981), who noted that the article has been used as a symbol for a number of different concepts. However, references to it often have little substance. The paper has become a fashionable icon of modern information science,…
Similar:11001001 (TNG Rewatch: Season 1, Episode 14) When Will's holo-date's hacked, and the ship …With the Enterprise in drydock for a com…AmusingIn January, 2002 I was blogging about… A 20-something former CEO takes a fa…BooksProgress on a customizable "[E] to Activate" system (Visual Scripting, Unity3D)https://youtube.com/shorts/-X8eBT5QoPY …CybercultureI Made a Cheerful Maze Game in Scratch Well, it’s…
The world’s first copyright law was passed by the English Parliament on 10 April 1710 as ‘An Act for the Encouragement of Learning’. The Queen Anne Statute, as it is known, marked the beginning of modern copyright law. Professor Gillian Davies, author of ‘Copyright and the Public Interest’, describes it as ‘the foundation upon which…
PIXELS by Patrick Jean from ONE MORE PRODUCTION on Vimeo. Similar:Cost of Living (#StarTrek #TNG Rewatch, Season 5, Episode 20) Alexander's Jolly Holodeck H…Rewatching ST:TNG Who’d love to see ano…EmpathyNo I didn’t exactly *plan* to spend my Sunday evening tweaking the pedestrian access to th…AestheticsKids, Pants, Booze, Music: Trouble In River City And AlwaysHe’s not…
Responding to Apple’s most recent legal agreement governing the way apps are developed for the iPhone. Some popular apps have been written in Adobe Flash and converted to work on the iPhone; this is cumbersome, but at least it lets designers use the Flash skills they already have. I have no love of no love…
I was a sophomore in college when Star Trek: The Next Generation aired. Most of the guys in my suite watched the premiere episode, and then sampled a few after that. Then, the guy who owned the TV wanted to watch basketball instead, and after a few attempts to find a place to watch Trek,…
Today the most consistently pleasurable pursuit in my life is playing video games. Unfortunately, the least useful and financially solvent pursuit in my life is also playing video games. For instance, I woke up this morning at 8am fully intending to write this article. Instead, I played Left 4 Dead until 5pm. The rest of…
The graders working for EduMetry, based in a Virginia suburb of Washington, are concentrated in India, Singapore, and Malaysia, along with some in the United States and elsewhere. They do their work online and communicate with professors via e-mail. The company advertises that its graders hold advanced degrees and can quickly turn around assignments with…
Neal Stephenson’s Diamond Age (1995) features a fantastic interactive book that educates a neglected guttersnipe, turning her into a capable, intelligent independent heroine. The iPad doesn’t quite match the vision of that book, but this video is still amazing. Similar:CEO’s brutalist office, for a Zoom-based production of R.U.R. (Rossum’s Universal Robots)….AestheticsHave you been "workslopped" by…
At a faculty senate meeting, the provost announced that all faculty on an annual contract will receive iPads before summer break. She asked us all to come up with a meaningful way to incorporate iPads in at least one course in the fall and one course in the spring. The iPads are not just for…
“Those big, heavy textbooks that kids go around with in their backpacks are going to be a thing of the past,” said Mary Ann Gawelek, vice president of academic affairs at Seton Hill, which is giving iPads to its 2,100 students and 300 faculty members beginning this fall. —Wired But we don’t have 300 faculty…
Jason Kottke uses standard Latin typesetting dummy text to express his opinion of the technology media’s coverage of the iPad. Hilarious! Lorem iPad dolor sit amet, consectetur Apple adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua Shenzhen. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud no multi-tasking ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip…
It’s great to see the more current interactive fiction works getting critical attention. The “text adventure” genre has come a long way from mazes and inventory puzzles; these works emphasize the literary effects that can only be generated by manipulating the player’s sense of agency. This study examines how themes, conventions and concepts in Gothic…
A pre-release critique of the tablet culture. Compared to other kinds of information that computers process today, text has an exceptionally small footprint. With the arrival of the tablet, we have crossed a critical threshold: Where text is concerned, we effectively have infinite computational resources, connectivity, and portability. For decades, futurists have dreamed of the…