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This short article begins the discussion of what role the Digital Humanities will play when Google comes out with glasses that have cameras built in that will enable "real-time geolocation, facial recognition software, the journaling and storing in the cache and third-party's servers of everywhere you go and see whilst wearing the glasses." He questions how we can use these gadgets to our benefit while still protecting human rights and freedom of speech.

I really like the black-and-white photo in this article that shows the group of people wearing 3D glasses--that's exactly the visual I had in my head while reading this article. It's kind of unsettling to think that that image could become an everyday reality in the not-so-distant future.

Here is a link to the short story "The Babysitter" by Robert Coover, mentioned by Hayle, which in her words, "pushes toward hypertext by juxtaposing contradictory and nonsequential events, suggesting many simultaneously existing time lines and narrative unfoldings" (74). You could skim it sometime :)

This interface allows users to explore place in ancient literature. Under "Reading View," you can click on a place name within the text and see it on the map, along with the number of times that particular place is referenced in the work.

Interesting in terms of McLuhan and discussions last class.

This is a podcast-interview of Crumlish and Malone, whom we will be reading in a few weeks. It's a bit long, but if you get the time you can listen to a few parts of it.

McLuhan and Bogart would probably enjoy this article because it involves procedural rhetoric. It examines how "gamification strategies"--using games to change behavior in real life--can promote energy efficiency. Companies like SimpleEnergy are creating apps that let users track their energy usage, find ways to improve, and compete with friends and neighbors for spots on a leaderboard. Gamification succeeds because apparently social pressure can motivate people even more than monetary incentives, and these initiatives combine both types of incentives: An energy usage competition at the University of Hawaii led to some dorms cutting energy usage by up to 20 percent. This specific method also allows users to save money and conserve energy without "radical infrastructure changes" or the corruption and waste that often results from government subsidies to politically-connected "green" companies like Solyndra and possibly Sapphire Energy. In addition, the apps provide large-scale energy usage data that researchers can use to measure both change over time and the impact of energy usage on other variables.

Google is offering a Chromebook and cash prizes totaling $1 million for anyone who can hack its Chrome browser at the CanSecWest security conference next week: $40,000 for "partial Chrome exploit" and $60,000 for "full Chrome exploit." This event illustrates a concept from this week's readings: community collaboration can increase a service's effectiveness and bolster a company's success. The Google Chrome Security Team even stated that the contest provides "a big learning opportunity" and ultimately enables them to better protect users by revealing bugs and providing information about hacking techniques.

It is like at the start of Sneakers when they are paid to break into banks and show the various security issues. Also, it would be pretty sweet to log $40,000-$60,000 in that short a period of time. I suspect there would also be a job offer that came along with it.

This article addresses whether or not learning new programming languages is worth the time and energy. According to the article, learning new languages (1) expands your ability to use several different approaches to solve problems, (2) might teach you techniques that carry over to old languages, (3) exposes you to new communities, (4) provides additional marketable skills, and (5) stimulates your mind. At the end, one user stipulates that he only learns a language when it "has enough maturity, has a good developer base, and offers significantly different outcomes from the others I know."

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