A new book in software studies
My next book is even stranger than my last. It’s an entire book, 65,000+ words worth, about a single-line Commodore 64 BASIC program that is inscribed in the book’s title, 10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10. And if that isn’t strange enough, I wrote the book with nine other collaborators (Nick Montfort, Patsy Baudoin, John Bell, Jeremy Douglass, Mark C.… read more
In the New Scientist "Big Ideas" column
Are everyday objects, such as apple pies or microchips, aliens? It depends how you think about what it’s like to be a thing. This essay appeared in the
A quick response to Joshua McVeigh-Schulz
There’s an interesting discussion over at Culture Digitally between Gina Neff, Tim Jordan, and Joshua McVeigh-Schulz on the subject of technical agency, or “how we should (re)theorize the politics of technological systems.” Gina Neff’s opening comments include a welcome statement about the limits of SCOT perspectives on technical systems: Within the social studies of technology, technological determinism is dead. By… read more
A response to Stanley Fish, Kathleen Fitzpatrick, and others
For the first time in five years, I attended the Modern Language Association (MLA) conference. This is the main conference for scholars of language and literature, with about 8,000 attendees at this year’s event in Seattle. Among the big things going down this year: the ongoing clash of cultures between the “traditional humanities”—the scholars who read books and write books… read more
Responses to Parikka
Jussi Parikka, author of Insect Media among numerous other books, recently posed a series of questions about object-oriented ontology. Levi Bryant has already responded, as has Paul Caplan, and I like both of their responses. I thought I’d offer my own here, so here goes. (The block quotes are Jussi’s questions.) Is not the talk of “object” something that summons… read more
Thoughts on the material conditions of programming practice
I was corresponding yesterday with Jock Murphy, a Portland-based photographer, software engineer, and mobile game developer. Jock had read Racing the Beam, and we were talking about the relative differences between the 6502 and the Z80 microprocessors. This subject led us to different programming practices, a topic Nick and I discuss in RtB in relation to the Atari, but for… read more
David Foster Wallace on "Academic English"
In comments to my response to Geoff Dyer’s critique of academic writing, Bill Coberly suggested that “a lot of the tolerance for lousy writing in academia does come from that (probably unconscious) desire to keep academia sacred and mysterious.” There’s probably something to this. On a related note, the faslanyc blog responded to both articles by excerpting a portion of… read more
An easier way to make Atari games on your Mac
Download the TextMate Atari VCS Support Installer (Mac OS X 10.5+, 60k) Several years ago I was really getting heavily into Atari VCS programming—for teaching, for art, and for research on Racing the Beam. VCS programming is notoriously hard at first, but like anything once you get the hang of it, it feels natural. What never felt natural, however, was… read more
It’s interview season, apparently. I’ve done a number of interviews recently, and I figured it would be easier to link them all at once for my devoted readers enjoyment (that’s you). First, Laureano Ralon published oan interview with me on Figure/Ground Communications. The interview covers the state of scholarship and the academy, McLuhan, and game studies. Laureano has been conducted… 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