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
On the White House and Videogames
In a large theater at the 2010 Game Developers Conference, ten thousand game makers gathered for the Independent Games Festival and Game Developers Choice awards ceremonies, where the best indie and mainstream games of the year are celebrated by and for their creators. In between the two, an unusual video was shown. Aneesh Chopra, the United States’s first Chief Technology… 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
My Contribution to the Speculative Heresy/The Inhumanities Cross-Blog Event
This week and next, Speculative Heresy and The Inhumanities are running a series on speculative realism and ethics, responses addressing the following question: รข??While speculative realism has critiqued anthropocentrism in ontology, and critical animal studies has critiqued anthropocentrism in ethics, there has yet to be many productive connections made between the two. With each offering the other important insights, the… read more
Thoughts on Education, Research, and Progress
I recently read Paul Lockhart’s incredible essay “A Mathematician’s Lament” [PDF]. Lockhart, a mathematics teacher at Saint Ann’s School in Brooklyn, wrote the piece in 2002, but it wasn’t published until last year, on Keith Devlin’s monthly column. “A Mathematician’s Lament” begins with the nightmares of a musician and a painter, both horrified to see their art forms turned into… read more
Kafka in Spore
Georgia Tech alumna Kate Compton has been working for Maxis on Spore for the past four years or so. Back when she was a masters student, she took my course on videogame translation and adaptation. This week, Kate announced a new official scenario for Spore Galactic Adventures, which she created based on Kafka’s The Metamorphosis. Given the pliant nature of… read more
A Review of the Tom Bihn Checkpoint Flyer
For years now, it has been necessary to remove laptops from carry-on bags for inspection at airport security here in the States. The TSA imposes this requirement to insure a clear view of the internal components of some electronics. Scanning a laptop separately allows security personnel to insure that a laptop not an improvised electronic device, a process made more… read more
Things people do with videogames
Think of all the things you can do with a photograph. You can document the atrocities of war, as photojournalists sometimes do. You can record fleeting moments in time, as did documentarians like Henri Cartier-Bresson and Robert Frank. You can capture the ordinary moments of family life, as many people do at birthday parties or holidays for an album or… read more
Introduction to a symposium I organized at Georgia Tech
This past Monday the School of Literature Communication and Culture and the Wesley Center for New Media at Georgia Tech hosted a symposium I organized called Dwelling Machines. Here’s the description, too small to read in the event poster above. This symposium asks whether and how technology might alter the way we perceive dwelling. Of particular interest are the aspects… read more
In order to mature properly, videogaming not only needs a Citizen Kane moment; it needs a little humdrum too
Think of any media form – say writing, photography or film. Now think of all of the things you can imagine doing with it. I like to think of this as the “possibility space” – a spectrum running between so-called high art at one end, to tools at the other. High art doesn’t have to be hoity-toity snobbery, and it… read more