Even though I had to use many strategies to sell semiconductors in Silicon Valley, it was nothing compared to the brain power I’ve had to use to teach a subject to college students well. A decade ago, I found advertising challenging. Dreaming up new ways to sell a product or service to corporate executives was…
“If you walk into a roomful of middle school girls and say ‘Do you want to learn how to program a computer?’, only a few hands will go up,” says Carnegie Mellon University computer science professor Randy Pausch. “But if you walk in and say ‘Do you want to learn how to tell a story…
—MySpace: The Movie (YouTube) I just watched MySpace: The Movie. (Above link goes to the version on YouTube, which is more accessible, but the filmmaker’s site is davidlehre.com.) The cross-dressing gag is just juvenile, and the editing in that skit needed to be tighter. Overall, though, this little collection of skits is a good window into…
The city’s 23-year-old mayor took down his profile on MySpace.com after his occupation ended up reading: “malebigalow.” Ryan Bingham said he didn’t post that information — an apparent reference to the 1999 movie “Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo” — and he doesn’t know who did. —Mayor pulls MySpace.com page after job shows up as ‘malebigalow’ (Boston.com |…
With the seconds ticking down to a studio discussion about a court case involving Apple Computer and The Beatles’ record label, a floor manager had run to reception and grabbed the man, thinking he was Guy Kewney, editor of Newswireless.net, a specialist internet publication. Actually, he was a minicab driver who had been waiting to…
You’re sick, so you stay with your germs in bed. I’ll get you some trail mix so you don’t go poking around the hearse. — my wifeFreudian Slip (Jerz’s Literacy Weblog) Yes, she really said “hearse.” I’m not that sick, but it’s true that I can only concentrate on one thing at a time. I have…
In a sense, the world of online collaboration is discovering what artists have always known: Rigid conventions are often crucial to producing art. Novels, poems, and oil paintings are really just structural devices that take an artist’s zillion competing ideas?an internal, self-contradicting mob?and focus them into a coherent work. Mind you, online collaborators are finding…
The blackbird whirled in the autumn winds. Why would I go and do that? What are you, stupid? That is so stupid. —Delicious Pundit —Chris Berman Slash Poetry (Deadspin) Student Matt Hampton sent me this link. Thanks for the laugh, Matt! Similar:Rebound Rumble, FIRST Robotics 2012 GameIn the FIRST Robotics competition, indiv…CybercultureJournalist Nellie Bly Began her…
“A lot of students in their early education do not get a very good grounding from their instructors about when it’s acceptable to use somebody else’s material,” says Jane Kirtley, who teaches Media Ethics and Law at the University of Minnesota. “There’s also a sense among students today that if it’s something they can find…
In some respects, the students are right: Professors are to blame. We cultivate students’ unmerited pride with high praise for mediocre work. And we tolerate all of the other sins by abdicating responsibility for the culture of our classrooms. Again and again, I have heard students say their classes are so easy that almost no…
In any field, it’s important to keep track of the underdogs — the new developments and theories, the older hypotheses once thought exhausted of information. Doesn’t matter if you’re in writing, physics, psychology, or athletics, keeping a broad horizon pays off. That’s what I’m doing here — showing you the underdogs of gaming. You might…
This allows us to see the underlying problem of digital game studies: ‘narratologists’ and ‘ludologists’ alike would rather be fragged to bits than make a negative value judgement. The reason for this is to be found in the history of game studies: once upon a time, videogames were only taken seriously by psychologists. They would…
The archetype of the mad scientist was Rotwang in Fritz Lang’s Metropolis (1926). Played by Rudolf Klein-Rogge, Rotwang had unruly hair, a disabled hand, and obsessive research interests. He worked alone, and although he lived in a modern city that his inventions made function, he was like a 16th-century alchemist. —The Scientist on Camera (Slate) Hmm……
Millman, whose essay is called “Game Theory,” sees “Lost’s” structure attracting fans via familiarity: She thinks it works like an interactive video game. “The story line and the action develop on multiple levels. There are hidden clues that function like the Easter eggs in gaming,” says Millman. “‘Lost” is a big game, and the act…
— Reinhold Grether —Virtual Performance Bibliography (netzwissenschaft) Designed for courses “Theater and the Internet” & “The Digital Arena.” Similar:Ship in a Bottle (#StarTrek #TNG Rewatch, Season 6, Episode 12) Barclay's holodeck hack br…Rewatching ST:TNG Data and LaForge ar…CybercultureRefreshing my memory of working with reel-to-reel tape as a radio news intern (c. 1989).HistoryNew book: basic skills for…
Eventually Everett came up with a surprising explanation for the peculiarities of the Pirahã idiom. “The language is created by the culture,” says the linguist. He explains the core of Pirahã culture with a simple formula: “Live here and now.” The only thing of importance that is worth communicating to others is what is being…
—Windows Noises by Colin Staples (Albino Blacksheep) Cool Flash movie. Similar:"The Nightmare of Prince Prezelsky"Leigh, Peter, Carolyn and I had fun reco…AmusingMoonBot is back. This time he fights a new adversary. #Blender3D physics practice.I submitted midterm grades at about 11 l…Aesthetics'Star Trek': The Story of the Most Daring Cliffhanger in 'Next Generation' HistoryAround 1990, when I…
My dissertation, Heretical Reading: Freedom as Question and Process in Postmodern American Novel and Technological Pedagogy, describes a method of reading with literary, disciplinary, and pedagogical implications. In literary terms, heretical reading refers to the way that the postmodern novelists Thomas Pynchon, Vladimir Nabokov, and Philip K. Dick read and appropriate Gnosticism in order to…
I envisioned possibly doing some documentary about arcades some time back. I even did some small bit of checkaround research on them. I was much more entranced by text adventures, of course, since that’s a pretty big challenge and there was a lot to consider in making a video documentary. So I’ve been working on…
Timbuktu and SHU (Jerz’s Literacy Weblog) Seton Hill University’s summer reading book is Timbuktu, a shaggy dog story. (Only the dog’s not so shaggy.) I stated reading while proctoring a final exam yesterday, and I finished it that evening during my son’s piano lesson. Reading the whole book (less than 200 pages) couldn’t have taken more…