Spritz doesn't strive to fix speed reading's flaws, but to transcend reading entirely.
If you’re a person who reads, you may have read about Spritz, a startup that hopes to “reimagine” reading. Like most tech startups, reimagining entails making more efficient. Spritz promises to speed up reading by flashing individual words in a fixed position on a digital display. Readers can alter the speed of presentation, ratcheting it up to 600 words per… read more
Dr. Ian Bogost is an author and an award-winning game designer. He is Ivan Allen College Distinguished Chair in Media Studies and Professor of Interactive Computing at the Georgia Institute of Technology, where he also holds appointments in the School of Architecture and the Scheller College of Business. Bogost is also Founding Partner at Persuasive Games LLC, an independent game… read more
or the Exhausting Work of the Technology User
In 1930, the economist John Maynard Keynes famously argued that by the time a century had passed, developed societies would be able to replace work with leisure thanks to widespread wealth and surplus. “We shall do more things for ourselves than is usual with the rich to-day,” he wrote, “only too glad to have small duties and tasks and routines.” Eighty years… read more
Speculations on the company's contribution to moral philosophy
Last week, another distasteful use of your personal information by Google came to light: The company plans to attach your name and likeness to advertisements delivered across its products without your permission. As happens every time the search giant does something unseemly, Google's plan to turn its users into unwitting endorsers has inspired a new round of jabs at Google's… read more
Resignation beyond sorrow on the Facebook Platform and beyond
In recent weeks, Facebook has been sending emails imploring me to complete a survey about how they might improve their development platform. I’d been deleting the messages, but after the third request or so, I decided to click through. For those lucky enough to have avoided it, the Facebook Platform is a set of tools and services that allows developers… read more
Why the physical form of smartphones and the unreliable operation of cellular networks has made hanging up the telephone impossible.
“Can I use my telephone to call Grandma?” my daughter asks. She means the Western Electric model 500 we bought at an antiques store at her insistence — a curiosity that is now more household sculpture than communication appliance. The model 500 is the most common telephone set ever made, issued by Bell Systems from the 1950s through their divestiture… read more
My department at Georgia Tech has an open tenure-track position. Please distribute, apply, etc.! Georgia TechDigital Media Tenure-Track Position Georgia Tech’s School of Literature, Media, and Communication (LMC), which provides diverse humanistic perspectives on a technological world, is seeking to fill one Digital Media tenure track position at the rank of Assistant Professor, beginning in the fall of 2013. We… read more
The question is, can they be more?
Earlier this week, Georgia Tech and eleven other higher education institutions announced their participation in Coursera, a company that hosts online courses. Reactions have been predictably dramatic, as exemplified by Jordan Weissman’s panegyric in the Atlantic, titled The Single Most Important Experiment in Higher Education. I’ll spare observations on the obvious problems with Weissman’s article, like the witless claim that… read more
Is this ethical?
Yesterday I received the following email from Academia.edu, a social network for academics to share research papers. Hi Ian, We noticed that you are following the Computer Science research interest on Academia.edu. We wanted to mention that we are hiring software engineers at Academia.edu, and if you know any current or former students who might be interested, we offer a… read more
Notes on the Rise and Fall of Blackberry
In January 1995, a year and a half before Hotmail launched the world’s first web-based email service, a landmark California law banning smoking in most public places went into effect. Back then smoking was already on the decline, especially in California, but it was probably still more common than having an email account. The change was most immediately noticeable in… read more