Response to "Aliens, but definitely not as we know them"
I received a great email response to my recent New Scientist column on alien phenomenology. I thought I’d share a part of it anonymously just because it felt so shareworthy. Rocks are rocks. They are rocks in relation to humans, and they are rocks in relation to birds and they are rocks in relation to anything else that turns up… read more
Gamification and Operational Closure
Two seemingly unrelated things happened to me yesterday, which further reflection revealed to have surprising connections. First, I spoke on a panel at the Online News Association conference about games and news. Julia Schmalz (now of Bloomberg, formerly of USA Today) and Rajat Paharia (of gamification vendor Bunchball) were the other panelists. I presented my approach to newsgames and offered… read more
A strange review of Alphonso Lingis's 1998 book
Jean Georges is one of four Michelin Three Star restaurants in New York city. It’s very French, so French that you’re just as likely to hear the language spoken as English. That and the environment in the main dining room—a single, enormous, plush chamber on the ground floor of the Trump International Hotel—make the place feel monarchal and exotic. The… read more
Box and book preview
I’m spending this week and the start of next putting the final touches on the limited editions of A Slow Year. This involves a lot of trimming and glueing, as I’m attaching images and plaques to their final homes on books and boxes. It’s hard to explain how good it feels to trim and glue paper instead of writing emails… read more
How Spent missed the mark
There’s a nice persuasive game making the rounds, called Spent. It was made by ad agency McKinney for the Urban Ministries of Durham. The game attempts to illustrate how easily financial hardship and low income work can devolve into homelessness. It does a pretty good job, too, taking the same basic method as did Tenure, the 1975 PLATO game about… read more
in Digital Media / Public Media
My program at Georgia Tech has yet another job opening, in the area of civic digital media. I hope you might apply for it, or share it with those who might be a good match. The School of Literature, Communication, and Culture of the Georgia Institute of Technology seeks applications from digital media theorist-practitioners with a Ph.D. (field open) to fill… read more
Let me know if you want one.
A Slow Year is about to ship, and I’ll be posting information about it in the very near future. As I’ve mentioned before, the game will be released in two editions, both packaged as unusual books of poetry: a Windows/Mac edition running in a custom emulator, and a numbered, signed Atari cartridge edition, limited to 25. The general edition is… read more
Two tenure-track lines in my school
The Georgia Tech School of Literature Communication and Culture, where I work, has just announced two tenure-track job openings. I’ve pasted the job ads below. I hope any of you who might be interested will apply, and I encourage the rest to spread the word. Job One – Digital Media The School of Literature, Communication and Culture of the Georgia… read more
In Facebook and Philosophy: What's on Your Mind?, edited by D.E. Wittkower
In Facebook and Philosophy I received two degrees from the University of California, Los Angeles, but Facebook won’t let me join the UCLA network. A Facebook network is an organizational category that allows my profile to come up when someone searches or browses in a particular group. At different stages in the life of the service, networks have been organized… read more
A new journal of speculative realism
If you follow the speculative realism blogs you know this already, but many readers here who don’t might be interested in this anyway: the first issue of the new journal Speculations has been released. The mission: “a journal of speculative realism that hopes to provide a forum for the exploration of speculative realism and post-continental philosophy.” Paul Ennis is the… read more