What Gripes about Apple tell us about Computational Literacy
I’ve been watching reactions to Apple’s controversial decision to prohibit the publication of iPhone applications created in environments other than Apple’s own. Applications must be originally written in Objective-C, C, C++, or JavaScript as executed by the iPhone OS WebKit engine, and only code written in C, C++, and Objective-C may compile and directly link against the Documented APIs (e.g.,… read more
Learning about Learning Programming from the Apple ][
Among the many, many things we talk about when we discuss curriculum for the Computational Media degree is how to make learning programming facile and appealing all throughout a student’s career. Many sub-problems arise, for example, how can one help students learn new languages and environments after they’ve become familiar with one or two? Just after having some of these… read more
Fetid and Fragrant Futures for the Humanities
In a reflection on all the recent hubbub about the sordid state of the humanities and the recently proposed possibility of a cure in the form of the “digital humanities,” Cathy Davidson offers the following lament: When I think of what the humanties offer…it is astonishing to me (and tragic) that we are not central. We are very, very good… read more
Abstract for my SLSA plenary
The Society for Science Literature and the Arts annual conference is about to start up here in Atlanta. The program is online, and the SLSA folks have updated it with the abstract for my Friday evening plenary. I thought I’d reproduce it here for those of you who are interested in such things. In recent years, a small cadre of… read more
On the British Government's neglect of Alan Turing's role in the history of computation
In the winter of 1952, Alan Turing called on the Manchester police to investigate a break-in at his house. He suspected an estranged lover was responsible and, being the earnest man that he was, reported his suspicion to the police. The problem was, Turing’s lover was Arnold Murray. Homosexuality was illegal in the UK, and Turing was convicted of gross… read more
My DiGRA 2009 Keynote, on Videogames and Ontology
What follows is the text of my keynote at the 2009 Digital Games Research Association (DiGRA) conference, held in Uxbridge, UK September 1-4, 2009. The text corresponds fairly accurately to the address I gave at the conference. In a few cases, I’ve added some clarifications in square brackets, where additional context or commentary was relevant. Videogames are a mess So… read more
My Position Paper on Game Criticism, DiGRA 2009
At the 2009 Digital Games Research Association conference, I participated in a panel organized by David Thomas, “You Played That? Game Studies Meets Game Criticism.” The other panelists were William Huber, Margaret Robertson, and José Zagal. The panel posed the following question: What is game criticism? How should the academy claim its place alongside game journalism as a productive voice… read more
And why it's bad for digital media and game studies
Two key conferences in digital media and game studies, Digital Arts and Culture (DAC) and the Digital Games Reserch Association (DiGRA) use an unexpected format for their papers: ACM, the format devised by the Association for Computing Machinery for publications in computer science. I have nothing against computer science, but the use of ACM format is bad and dumb for… read more
A response to Levi Bryant
In a lengthy comment on my pragmatic speculative realism post, philosopher Levi Bryant asks what issues in technology and media studies prompted my interest in object-oriented ontology. I’d like to try to answer the question for the benefit of readers finding their way here from sources in philosophy rather than game studies. In some ways, I think I was doing… read more
Henry Jenkins interviews us
Henry Jenkins recently interviewed Nick Montfort and me about Racing the Beam and the Platform Studies series. The two part interview is online now at Henry’s site: A New “Platform” for Games Research?: An Interview with Ian Bogost and Nick Montfort (Part One) A New “Platform” for Games Research?: An Interview with Ian Bogost and Nick Montfort (Part Two) I… read more