This week, I’ll be facilitating a week-long collaborative annotation project, as part of the Critical Code Studies Working Group online conference, on the source code to Crowther’s original Colossal Cave Adventure (a classic text-only computer game from the 1970s). According to Donald Knuth, designer of the “literate programming paradigm,” Colossal Cave Adventure is the “ur-game…
“People thought what they had was an address book for an e-mail program, and Google decided to turn that into a friends list for a new social network,” said Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, an advocacy group in Washington. “E-mail is one of the few things that people understand to…
This eagerly awaited restored version of Fritz Lang’s silent classic uses what it said to be nearly an hour of footage long thought to be lost.This is one of the the most important film archival discoveries in history, as surprising as if the missing ending of “The Magnificent Ambersons” were found. —Roger Ebert According to…
Valentines for Journalists. Similar:Where Are the Women?Thanks for the suggestion, Nicole. The …CultureParallels (#StarTrek #TNG Rewatch, Season 7, Episode 11) Worf gets technobabbled into a ti… Rewatching ST:TNG After returning…AmusingParamount Erases Archives of MTV Website, Wipes Music, Culture History After 30 Plus YearsI was never really a fan of MTV, I assum…BusinessNewspaper For Sale: The…
[O]n this chilly morning, as bus No. 92 rolls down a mountain highway just before dawn, high school students are quiet, typing on laptops. Morning routines have been like this since the fall, when school officials mounted a mobile Internet router to bus No. 92’s sheet-metal frame, enabling students to surf the Web. The students…
Walter Frederick Morrison, the man credited with inventing the Frisbee, has died at the age of 90. —Guardian Similar:Letter of Recommendation: Fanny PacksWhat other accessory ensures the safety …CultureThe Chronicle of Higher Education Announces Plan to Limit, Curate CommentsBy 2016, the terrain has shifted. Public…AcademiaAn Hour of Monastic Silence in Media Studies Class (plus an…
Interesting examination of role-playing, illusion, identity, and power in Kentucky’s Mammoth Cave, one small branch of which was the inspiration for the 1976/7 computer game Colossal Cave Adventure. In the middle decades of the nineteenth century, Kentucky’s Mammoth Cave was a popular tourist destination for travelers from around the United States and beyond. The cave…
Zach Whalen is turning his dissertation into a blog-web-thing, in the hopes of developing a book-thing. In whatever form it takes, it’s an interesting approach to a textual study of video games. This study asks how the design and configuration of text in videogames contributes to their textuality. I argue that videogames are texts in…
There’s a dissertation in here. All I have the energy to do today is imply a connection. Using a police state to market technology in 1984: Using a police state to market technology in 2010: Similar:Interface changes make it a little harder to work with Google's image searchWhen I’m looking for a picture I’m going…BusinessLet's…
None of this is a surprise to me, but I’m glad to have statistics to back up my impressions. A very small handful of students whose first introduction to online social networking was the SHU blogosphere, before blogs went really mainstream around 2005, are still blogging here, after they have graduated. In 2003-2005 it was…
I didn’t watch the game, but I did catch the buzz about this ad. Yes, I did tear up. (Wired has details.) Similar:Above the Forward Ops conference platform we see the chief engineer's station and a glimps…AestheticsYesterday's Enterprise (#StarTrek #TNG Rewatch, Season Three, Episode 15) Alternate histor…Rewatching ST:TNG after a 20-year break….MediaIn September, 2001 I…
It is dangerous to use local weather events (such as a heavy or light winter) to make judgments about global climate. With that caveat, I’m blogging the following because I’ve noted a shift in the online discussion about “global warming,” or the more general “climate change”. This essay does a good job exploring the events…
Coming up… we’ll tell you whether you’ll be impaled by sharp, radioactive icicles hurled by mobs of rampaging robots in your neighborhood. But first, people panicking, filling up three shopping carts of toilet paper and canned food. Hear the techno-pop pulse of our theme music, and know that you’re being conditioned to think of us…
Here’s hoping I left gas in the snow-thrower. Similar:Hasbro removes embedded typeface from My Little Pony website after copyright infringement … Considering the scope of the alleged in…AestheticsI have for some reason reached another #duolingo milestone.Culture‘Snow White’ gets a new musical There’s a buzz of excitement this week…CultureHow are you holding up? What difficult choices have…
Fascinating software study of the Doom iPhone port.http://fabiensanglard.net/doomIphone/index.php Similar:The Myth of ‘Learning Styles’The discourse around “learning styles” (…AcademiaThe Muse #StarTrek #DS9 Rewatch (Season 4, Episode 21) Jake meets his muse; pregnant runaw…Rewatching ST:DS9 From his spot on the …Media"We Need to Be More Vigilant With What We Trust From the Internet." –Fake PresidentFrom Buzzfeed: Sitting…
Our first few readings in my freshman writing course were personal essays, with a clear narrative. We read an academic paper today, and there’s another assigned for Friday. A few students are already reporting feeling a little lost in the detail. I gather this is because they are used to reading textbooks, where all the…
I wish I’d seen this a few weeks ago, before my Video Game Culture and Theory class ended, but it’s still a welcome find. Similar:I can probably remove that link to LycosOn a web page that I posted in Nov 2000 …BusinessInterview: Bjarne P. Tveskov, Classic LEGO Space Designer – Boing Boing GadgetsBoing Boing interviews…
Pee-wee Gets An iPad! from Pee-wee Herman Similar:Despite its impressive output, generative AI doesn’t have a coherent understanding of the …[A] popular type of generative AI model&…CybercultureThe Random Pulp Science Fiction Title Generator from Cornelius Zappencackler's DERANGE-O-L…From Thrilling Tales (where the future i…AmusingShakespeare's Globe Theatre, Minecraft Stylehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?time_conti…AestheticsSaturday morning cartoons are no moreI certainly have fond…
“One of the deepest questions in this field,” Nass says, “is whether media multitasking is driven by a desire for new information or by an avoidance of existing information. Are people in these settings multitasking because the other media are alluring–that is, they’re really dying to play Freecell or read Facebook or shop on eBay–or…
I know, I know: Amazon relied on those $9.99 prices to give it a head start in the digital books market. And raising prices to the $12.99 to $14.99 being talked about could certainly slow sales if consumers don’t bite. But here’s the thing: it’s not as if Macmillan is only raising prices for Kindle.…