Part 2: The Digital Humanities
If we accept the premise that the humanities should orient toward the world and not toward a private, scholarly sanctuary, then what trends are already facilitating that process? One candidate is the “digital humanities,” a topic about which I have remained silent for too long, despite the fact that I direct a digital media graduate program and teach in a… read more
Part 1: The Humanities in Public
Recently, Stanford comparative literature professor David Palumbo-Liu made a case for why the humanities are indispensible. It’s one in a long history of such justifications, a task that seems as necessary as ever. Yet, as with so many such justifications, Palumbo-Liu’s speaks declaratively. Consider his closing charge—one I saw excerpted frequently and with enthusiasm in the days after he wrote… read more
Now Shipping!
My latest book, How To Do Things With Videogames is now shipping from Amazon.com in the US. For those of you in Europe, it’ll be a little while longer. And before you ask, a Kindle edition has been created and should show up Amazon any day now. The book is a little different from my others. It offers a tiny… read more
A tiny rant
The following message appears on Amazon.com listings for which a Kindle edition appears not to be available. Some of the time, this means that a Kindle edition is not available. But most of the time it is a lie. Why? Because the process of publishing a Kindle edition involves submitting it to Amazon.com, which does the conversion and release process… read more
Some notes on process philosophy contra object-oriented ontology
Prompted by Ben Woodard, there’s been a recent flurry of posts in the philosophy blogosphere about the differences between process philosophy and object-oriented ontology. Specifically, Ben argues that thinkers of process are stuck “in the twilight of becoming” and content to allow “becoming to be utilized as an escape hatch in argumentation.” There have been several replies to Ben’s charge,… read more
Cowstum Skullworks
My friend Matt Maloney makes custom skull rings. Once I saw the bespoke designs he’d done, and given the knowledge of the coming cowpocalypse, I knew I had to have an artifact to document my year-long bovine madness. Matt and I met yesterday and I took delivery of the ring. Behold it, in all its taurine glory below. You can… read more
On embracing videogame diversity and combatting exploitationware
In many of the reactions to Gamification is Bullshit, both in the comments on this site and in responses elsewhere, a common objection is raised. It goes something like, “you’re just afraid of unfamiliar uses of games.” Here’s a particularly odious version of that argument, by Libe Goad on ZDNet today: I often wonder if Bogost’s and other game makers’… read more
On CompuServe
Yes, I know it’s probably just a reference to checking stock prices (a bull market), but I choose to interpret the cow as a reference to the promised “adventure games” or perhaps even “fantastic space games.” If you can read the text, you’ll also note that “videotex service” CompuServe offered a multichannel CB simulator. (thanks to Mark Sample for this… read more
My position statement at the Wharton Gamification Symposium
In his short treatise On Bullshit, the moral philosopher Harry Frankfurt gives us a useful theory of bullshit. We normally think of bullshit as a synonym—albeit a somewhat vulgar one—for lies or deceit. But Frankfurt argues that bullshit has nothing to do with truth. Rather, bullshit is used to conceal, to impress or to coerce. Unlike liars, bullshitters have no… read more