...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 Jason Mittell on Mad Men
Television scholar Jason Mittell doesn’t like the television show Mad Men, and he’s written an article about why. It wasn’t news to me; indeed, I’m one of the interlocutors he mentions having argued with about the show on Twitter and elsewhere. I knew Jason was writing this piece and I’ve been eager to read it. Now that I have done,… read more
Why I Am Interested in Both
Like every sane person who does anything in public, I egosearch to see how people are reacting to things I’m doing. I use a few tools, but mostly Icerocket, which offers a condensed view of blog, Twitter, news, and Facebook reactions to search terms. The latter results are new, thanks to Facebook’s recent privacy “upgrades” that allow wall posts to… read more
Object-Oriented Misunderstandings
A while back Jim Brown mentioned to me that there would be an object-oriented rhetoric panel at this year’s Rhetoric Society of America conference. Jim attended RSA but wasn’t able to make the panel; still, he’s managed to dig up the papers and he wrote up a summary over on the RSA’s Blogora. I’m not yet sure what object-oriented rhetoric… read more
Graham has a short post up mentioning Heidegger’s distaste for the crossword puzzle. Given that we have a whole chapter about crosswords and related puzzles in Newsgames, I’m particularly keen to read this if anyone digs it up. Heidegger’s reaction was actually quite common. Some may not realize that the crossword puzzle incited a moral panic when it rose to… read more
Time Will Tell, But Epistemology Won't: In Memory of Richard Rorty
In 1999, the Silicon Alley entrepreneur Josh Harris rented an underground warehouse in lower Manhattan and subjugated a hundred friends to a home-made police state he named “QUIET.” Its residents slept in open bunk pods stacked atop one another, each with a bus depot television with a closed-circuit feed from every other pod. Quieters partook of bacchanal feasts and abusive… read more
You can now preorder Newsgames from Amazon.com. As I post this, the price is $16.47, which is pretty good for a hardcover. It’s possible the price will change, but it’s only likely to get cheaper if it does. Oh, and the October 2010 date is a books in print date. It should hit the streets by late summer, but I… read more
Design Beyond the Object
In addition to our new book Newsgames, the Fall 2010 MIT Press catalog (PDF) includes a wonderful new title called NONOBJECT, by designer Branko LukiÄ? (frog design, IDEO) and writer Barry M. Katz (California College of Design). I paste the press’s blurb below in its entirety, it’s so lurid and wonderful. The “objective” world is one of facts, data, and… read more
Cover, blurb, price, etc.
MIT Press has put up the informational webpage for Newsgames, and the book should be appearing in the catalog and in books in print (and therefore at Amazon et al) soon enough. You can read the description on the MIT Press site, and I’ve also pasted it below. The list price is $24.95, which I’d guess will translate into a… read more
Also, win a copy of a book I haven't yet written
Sometimes serious ideas emerge from the strangest places. Last week Harman tossed an offhand question onto his blog: Who is the most overrated philosopher?. It sparked quite serious discussion all over. So serious that before long, Harman found himself wondering if an anthology of opinions on “overrated philosophers” could indeed become a serious work of philosophy. I now find myself… read more