Ctheory is a long running journal of theory, interviews with artists and critical essays on technology and culture. At least two decades of material here! We read the Paul Virlio article "Speed and Information" from this site. There are many great and illuminating articles and essays to be found here. You might try running some keywords from your research and see where it takes you. Ctheory ed. Arthur and Marilouise Kroker. Accessed April 25, 2014. http://ctheory.net/home.aspx

One of many tutorials to be found online. The use of this software for your Lightning Talk preparation requires you to compile image and text on 20 slides. These sort of basics are covered in first 3 pages of this tutorial. You will also need to change the "start transition" to automatic, and "delay" to 20.0 s within the Slide Inspector. I'll review this part in class, it's essential to automating the playback of slides. Education Technology Services "Keynote Tutorial" Accessed April 25, 2014. https://blogs.ksbe.edu/ksedtech/

An echo of early net.art initiatives, the contemporary INC was established in Amsterdam in 2004, in effort to extend research "to design, activism, art, philosophy, political theory and urban studies and [it] is not confined to the Internet alone...the INC maintains that the Internet can only be understood at the conjuncture of these various fields and lines of inquiry." This site is an amazing resource for research and reflection on new and emergent network cultures. The politics of search engines, Wikipedia, social networks, bitcoin, Internet of Things, Gaming and more! The ongoing conferences are backed with anthologies of related essays, most made available for free download on their site. Institute of Network Cultures "Publications" n.d. accessed April 25, 2014. http://networkcultures.org/wpmu/portal/publications/

This very, very recently available app by PNCA prof Stephen Slappe is another example of the continued cultural continuum of the spatial fourth dimension in art and culture Using an actual Google street view camera to facilitate production of an extensive non-linear narrative project, EIGHT transforms the app into a portal to several inter-related 'dimensions'

Here's the website of artist Gabriel Shalom. He was the artist giving presentation in lightning talk mode on hypercubism. Here he has an elaboration on hypercubism, speaking both to the early 20th and 21st century in terms of influences, intersections and techno-cultural tropes. Gabriel Shalom "An Introduction to Hypercubism" n.d. http://www.gabrielshalom.com/theory/

Here's a collection of the NSA slides, revealed by Edward Snowden by way of the Guardian news. The slides detail the various pervasive and invasive methods of surveillance, tapping into phone and social media networks, as orchestrated by the National Security Agency. This is the internet-of-things-that-go-bump-in-the-night. Also, as discussed in class, the layout and design of these slides is often horrendous, complicating or obstructing clear communication of information. "NSA Prism program slides" The Guardian News. Published Friday 1 November 2013 http://www.theguardian.com/world/interactive/2013/nov/01/prism-slides-nsa-document. Accessed April 6, 2014

One of several excellent online collections of Data Visualization endeavors. Browse the many different categories, keywords, authors and approaches to comprehending 'big data'. Along with aesthetic variation along the metaphorical to modernist continuum, there are many new media trends covered. Those of you exploring social media in your final research paper may well find this useful reference, too! Visual Complexity. Last updated February 19, 2014. www.visualcomplexity.com/vc. Accessed April 6, 2014

This audio-visual overview of the Internet of Things was published by IBM's Social Media cohorts in 2010. Combining voice-over and well crafted, legible motion graphics, it provides a summary of the underlying concepts of the Internet of Things. In 2004, when Bruce Sterling was first writing about spimes, he mentions the Internet of Things, a then emergent infrastructure linked to build out of RFID enabled gizmos, and eventually, perhaps, spimes. "The Internet of Things" posted by IBMSocialMedia on March 15, 2010. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sfEbMV295Kk Accessed March 21, 2014

In Shaping Things, Bruce Sterling identifies RFID or "arphids" as key technological development that enables his imagined objects, "spimes," to function. This video, "Zapped!," by Preemptive Media, provides an easy to understand history of RFID tags, how they're used, for better and worse. The video concludes with the group's own tactical interventions using RFID equipped insects. My main impetus to post it here is to help illuminate the technology and, in doing so, make Sterling's Spimes concept more tangible. "Zapped! by Preemptive Media. Posted April 30, 2008 by Heidi Kumao. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vIDClPlKHzE Accessed March 19, 2014

Titanpad is one of several free online collaborative text editors. Great for real-time or asynchronous writing but particularly useful for editing a block of text within a group setting. This may be a useful tool for collaboratively editing design fictions. You can't save in a typical word-processing fashion, but there's a 'time slider', and you can export to various document types. These type of web-based applications are a bit unstable, so export often! Titanpad. http://titanpad.com/ Accessed March 14, 2014

Bruce Sterling providing a summary of Design Fiction. What it's about, some key figures who have developed the practice and examples of works that fall into this mode of design. Spends time discussing the background theories of 'diegetic prototypes' and drawing parallels with corporate 'vaporware' and military R+D promos. A short introduction to Design Fiction, a starting point. I'd recommend coupling this one with more in-depth articles and examples to build a thorough understanding. Bruce Sterling. "Patently untrue: fleshy defibrillators and synchronised baseball are changing the future" Wired UK: Culture. Posted October 11, 2013. Accessed March 8, 2014. http://www.wired.co.uk/magazine/archive/2013/10/play/patently-untrue

Design Fiction by Portland based designer Laura Allcorn. Here, as part of an exhibit called Human+, she explains her Human Pollination Project, a miniature tool set constructed to facilitate pollination tasks in anticipation of colony collapse of honey bees. The combination of meticulous craft, background research and an implied preposterous scale of the task in question position this work in the realm of critical design, opening up new questions alongside possible answers. Laura Allcorn. Human Pollination Project. Human+, Science Gallery Published April 2011. Accessed March 8, 2014 https://dublin.sciencegallery.com/humanplus/human-pollination-project/

Wired article debunking Amazon's Prime Air marketing ploy. Behind the seamless and seductively realistic design fiction video, numerous questions from fuel costs to air traffic congestion, unidentifed flying accidents, airspace regulation and so on hover on the periphery of this otherwise alluring prospect. Include a link to the actual video from Amazon. Watch it again after contemplating the externalities, or hidden costs, of such a seemingly seamless operation. It's little wonder what such high definition, cinematic realism affords Amazon. An intensification of scrutiny is needed from the viewer, a critical media viewing, to short-circuit blind faith in the realities promised in such depictions of the future Marcus Wohlsen. "Even if the Feds Let Them Fly, Amazon's Delivery Drones Are Still Nonsense" Wired: Business. Posted December 2, 2013. Accessed March 8, 2014. http://www.wired.com/business/2013/12/amazon-drone/

Here is the amazingly rich, detailed and resource heavy presentation by designer Tobias Revell. A graduate of the Design Interactions program at RCA, Revell charts a survey of pre-cursors and significant features of Critical Design as well as myriad components of Design Fiction from corporate to speculative futures thinking, including:Diegetic Prototypes, Future Mundane, Agents of Fear, Materials, Synthetics -- each section filled with insight and contextual links! Highly recommended primer! Tobias Revell. Critical Design/Design Fiction Lecture Finally Written Up. (Looooong) Published December 2013. Accessed March 8, 2014. http://blog.tobiasrevell.com/2013/12/critical-design-design-fiction-lecture.html

Nick Foster (aka Fosta) explains his interest in exploring the banal everyday of future worlds, rather than the gee-whiz spaceship /laser gun tropes of sci-fi cinema. He elaborates on three characteristics: Background Talent (what do the paperclips, gardenhoses and tape dispensers look like in the future?), Accretive Space (technologies persist, new are mixed with old) and Partly Broken ( for every new gadget there is a constellation of spotty service, short battery life, and other 'broken realities'.) Foster also points to several science-fiction movies that make efforts to depict the mundane. Fosta. "The Future Mundane" Core77. Published October 7, 2013. Accessed March 7, 2014. http://www.core77.com/blog/columns/the_future_mundane_25678.asp

A micro-manifesto from Dunne&Raby, addressing historical predecessors to Critical Design, similar lines of inquiry, uses and abuses of this way of approaching design, too. Much of this FAQ text seems to have been elaborated on in their recent book, Speculative Everything. This is a fairly quick read that provides a fairly concise summary of the use of "speculative design proposals to challenge narrow assumptions, preconceptions and givens about the role products play in everyday life." (Dunne&Raby) Anthony Dunne and Fiona Raby. Critical Design FAQs. Published 2011. Accessed March 7, 2014. www.dunneandraby.co.uk/content/bydandr/13/0

Here's a great essay by Carrie Lambert-Beatty on Parafiction. She discusses the "Nikeplatz" work we saw in class along with several other works by various artists. Parafictional endeavors negotiate context collapse as strategic asset for opening up dialogue and debate. As noted in class, this particular genre of contemporary art has many similar goals and intentions as Critical Design. Carrie Lambert-Beatty "Make-Believe: Parafiction and Plausibility" October 2009 129, 51-84

Here's a tour of a MUD in action. Every time I read the Dibbell article I wonder about what this sort of 'gameplay' looks like. I decided to search one out on Youtube. This video provides a voice-annotated tour that illustrates the Multi-User Dungeon in its starkly abstract textual form. The impersonal nature of text as letter-forms distributed across a network, aligning with the affordances of anonymity, but there's also the thrall of live communication. Words are powerful and the seductive qualities of connection transcend the medium at hand. "Let's Show! MUD: Part 3: Grand Finale" Posted by FrogurtX. June 29, 2009. Accessed February 27, 2014. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oQJ2xG0LdVo&list=PLgVWAwe9s2rJhafD0gv2mo-W9d0bvh6sl

Working between speculative fiction and documentary forms, duo Soda_Jerk explores Afrofuturism in a series of interrelated video installations. Excerpts from "Race for Space," "Destination Planet Rock," "Armageddon in Effect," and "We Are the Robots" are here on their site. The series seems a good supplement to the documentary by Akomfrah. Soda_Jerk digs further into histories of figures like Sun Ra and groups like Public Enemy, working as media archeologists or archivo-cyborgs, patching together new mythos using digital compositing and sound design. Soda_Jerk "Astroblack: Race for Space" 2010. Accessed February 21, 2014 http://www.sodajerk.com.au/video_work.php?v=20120921063755

Here's an introduction to notion of the mundane reality that "we're all cyborgs now" insight on the extensions of mental and physical abilities from locally based cyborg anthropologist Amber Case. We'll talk more about her ideas in subsequent classes. Amber Case: We're All Cyborgs Now. Filmed December 2010, Posted January 2011, TEDWomen 2010. Accessed February 21, 2014.