Humanities Computing

A school district in Delaware recently proposed a rule that would require teachers to unfriend students, a district in Maine is banning all social networking, chat sites, forums, and other sites from state-provided laptops, and now the New York City Department of Education will now monitor teachers' interactions with students on professional social networking services. Teachers were warned not to expect any privacy and that administrators and officials should have access to the professional accounts. This makes me wonder if now workplaces and universities will require employees to loosen their privacy settings on their accounts.

The divide between the "digital" and the "real" is false. This dualism serves a useful purpose, however: "Part of the seductiveness of the cyberspace fantasy is that, by denying the complex, mutually determining relationship between our society and the Web, it makes our lives and our everyday judgments simpler."

This article argues that social media aren't just about exhibitionism, and that we can instead view the Web as a painting. Instagram and Pinterest are picturesque, which he defines as "something that is more pleasing in a mediated representation."

The author argues that Word has too many workarounds, and especially when it comes to publishing on the web. There's another nice example of the code Word throws in there, too.

An article about Jonathan Blow, creator of Braid. His game is featured in the first chapter of Bogost's book ("Art") as an example of a proceduralist game.

On "casual" games and their addictiveness

This is Bogost's personal webpage and I thought it was interesting to look at not just to gather more info about Bogost, but also because the website itself has an interesting layout worth dissecting or borrowing for our own sites. :)

Ok-- so maybe this doesn't DIRECTLY apply to a reading on the syllabus, but this is a kind of joke site and will make you look super important and busy on the job or wherever. Kind of interesting to try to decipher what this code is doing. I certainly can't figure it out.

This blogger makes some really great points extending Joseph Reagle's ('The Argument Engine' in Wikipedia Reader) ideas of the filter than publish principle of academic publications. Haranguing the filter than publish operation, this author writes how the peer review system adulterates the author's real content writing, "In the conventional peer review system, you seek to please the reviewers who in turn try to please the editor who in turn is trying to guess what the readers want."

This group is briefly mentioned in the chapter on Pranks in this week's reading. The fired game designer for the SIms helicopter game left and joined this group-- pretty much pranksters of an online nature. While it has little to do with video games, it has everything to do with ethos in an Internet age.

Unique TED talk from Kellee Santiago who claims that Roger Ebert's claim that video games can't be art is wrong.

Interesting idea from Bogost. Although he labels it as game art, I might consider this a multimedia piece as the code itself, the process of "re-soldering" and essentially rebuilding the game cartridge, and then the finished project performed online with DIY functionality seems much more complex than the book describes. Personally I think it's a brilliant but I'm not sure I know what (if anything) it means...

Talk on the behind-the-scenes filtering that goes on of your individual internet experience.

A really great investigative piece in which a 'Wired' reporter actually takes up the commissions of a spam message to find out what's going on under the hood of its product and project.

Useful for Mac Owners

Small company starts shipping out "Raspberry Pi" a $25 computer that runs a compact version of Linux. Did I mention it's the size of a credit card?

Netflix CEO gives a brief rant about the Comcast data limit and how it applies (or not) depending on which app you use for your content.

Really odd/bizarre Easter Egg example found in Grand Theft Auto that caused a big controversy in 2005.

"The e-books include items such as the shooting script, production notes, storyboards and on-set photographs."

This article examines the use of emotional attachment and building of unique stories to create buzz through social media sites like twitter and facebook.