DeLanda on Computation
Apparently Manuel DeLanda has a new book on philosophy and computer simulations. It’s titled Philosophy & Simulation: The Emergence of Synthetic Reason, and is scheduled for release in spring 2011. Here’s the blurb: In his new book, the internationally renowned Manuel DeLanda provides a remarkably clear philosophical overview of the rapidly growing field of computer simulations. In this groundbreaking new… read more
Via my doctoral student (and Newsgames co-author) Simon Ferrari, this snippet from Lev Vygotsky’s classic text Mind in Society: A special feature of human perception—which arises at a very young age—is the perception of real objects. This is something for which there is no analogy in animal perception. By this term I mean that I do not see the world… read more
in The Atlantic online
Our book Newsgames: Journalism at Play should be hitting the streets in a couple weeks. If you’re eager to get your hands on some of the material in advance, you’ll be happy to learn that The Atlantic just published an excerpt from the first chapter, which you can read here.
Derrida on September 11
In October, 2001, Giovanna Borradori conducted an interview with Jacques Derrida about the 9/11 attacks. The result was paired with a similar conversation with Jurgen Habermas, and published as Philosophy in a Time of Terror. You can read exerpts of both interviews online. I happened to read the interview only recently, right around the same time that the supposed “Derrida… read more
Cheaper and Floppier!
Persuasive Games is finally available in paperback! You can see it in all its perfect-bound glory at the bottom of this post. This is great news for everyone, as the paperback copy now costs a mere $12.82 on Amazon.com. If you prefer the hardcover, it’s down to $23.40, and the Kindle edition is now $11.54. Those prices will likely fluxuate,… read more
...but a few successful books might
Via my colleague Mark Guzdial, I’ve just learned that Rice University Press is being shut down entirely. It’s unfortunate to see a university press shuttered, but it comes as no surprise that some will fall given the perfect storm of a terrible current economic climate in both universities and in the book industry. But Rice UP is unique because it… read more
On the "adjunct problem"
Brian Croxall writes in response to Anthony Grafton’s New Republic review of Louis Menand’s book The Marketplace of Ideas. In brief, one of Menand’s suggestions is to admit fewer graduate students and shorten the time to the PhD to combat the lack of job opportunities; Grafton responds that grad school should be hard because it’s supposed to “test people who… read more
Nelson on Cross on Design
Mark Nelson wrote up an interesting bit on design as the third discipline, in which he suggests that design is a kind of third-term offset against the old science/humanities split. Mark notes that Whitehead is a precursor to such thinking, albeit in his educational writings rather than his metaphysics: There are three main roads along which we can proceed with… read more
Plus, how to make one properly.
The Old Fashioned is one of a few common cocktails for me, both when I’m at home and when I’m out. However, when ordering one at a bar, the likelihood of something going mildly to terribly wrong is disturbingly high. That in mind, I present the Top 10 Ways Bartenders Screw Up My Old Fashioneds, followed by instructions for how… read more
Morton Joins the OOO Mafia
Tim Morton has just announced his “coming out” as an object-oriented ontologist. For those of you haven’t been following Morton, he’s the author of The Ecological Thought and Ecology Without Nature, and his views on an interconnected “mesh” of life forms is one you should know about. There is something both wonderful and horrifying about having to “come out” as… read more