A roundtable at the LA Review of Books
On June 14-15, 2013, the LA Review of Books hosted a two-part roundtable on Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCS). Participants included me, Cathy N. Davidson, Al Filreis, and Ray Schroeder. Below is my contribution to part one, which included initial statements by each of the participa. Part two will include responses to these statements. Please visit the LARB website to… read more
An essay and book series on the hidden lives of things
Earlier this week we launched Object Lessons, an essay and book series on the hidden lives of ordinary objects, published by The Atlantic and Bloomsbury and edited by me and Chris Schaberg. We’ve been working on getting this going for months, and I’m excited to finally be able to unleash it on you. Here’s how it works: Object Lessons invites… read more
Why do we take course ratings seriously in light of the horror of anonymous ratings and comments online?
I woke up this morning to a flurry of Facebook links to Do the Best Professors Get the Worst Ratings? on Psychology Today. Everyone also seemed to be excerpting the same summary, and I now follow suit here: To summarize the findings: because they didn’t teach to the test, the professors who instilled the deepest learning in their students came… read more
The best metaphor for Google Glass? Not jerks or junkies, but the living dead.
Since the unveiling of Google Glass, the tech giant’s new wearable computing device, a common nickname for its wearers has arisen among skeptics and critics: Glassholes. It’s a charming portmanteau that satisfies an immediate desire to shun this weird new contraption. And the term fits, to some extent. As a strangely popular trend in books on assholes has helped us… read more
The past and future novelty of digital publishing
It’s easy to forget these things, so here’s the description for the electronic “hypertext edition” of rhetorician Richard Lanham’s collection of essays, The Electronic Word: Democracy, Technology, and the Arts. As Publishers Weekly wrote, “And, yes, the book is available in electronic form; as the first in the Chicago Expanded Book series, there will be a hypertext edition, shipped on… read more
The inevitability of corporate content controls on MOOCs
Last week, the Council of University of California Faculty Associations (CUCFA) president Robert Meister sent an open letter entitled “Can Venture Capital Deliver on the Promise of the Public University?” to MOOC provider Coursera’s CEO, Daphne Koller. The CUCFA has published the letter, which is sly, scathing, and deeply entertaining whether no matter where you locate your opinions on the… read more
I need undergrads interested in electronics looking for summer work
Under the aegis of the Georgia Tech branch of the Intel Science and Technology Center for Social Computing, my PhD student Tom Jenkins and I have spent the year thinking about and making what we call “tinkering platforms”—those simple hardware prototyping systems like Arduino, Raspberry Pi, and so forth. Our gripe about these systems is that they are too expensive,… read more
1989 Any particle physicist can have a website! 1993 Any researcher can have a website! 1995 Anybody at a university can have a website! 1996 Any company can have a website! 1997 Anybody can have a crappy website! 2001 Anybody can have a decent website if it’s a blog! 2003 Tech companies can help anybody have a blog! 2005 Big… read more
Today, the most novel feature of new technology is ordinariness.
The logo for the Dutch videogame studio Guerrilla Games is an object lesson in mixed metaphor: an orange “G” contorted into the chevron shape of a military rank insignia. Guerrilla insurgencies are often organized and sometimes even state-based, but they are hardly represented by the formal emblem of command and control military structure. Guerrilla warfare is irregular, asymmetrical, and lithe.… read more
Three reviews as three lenses through which to approach and appreciate an unusual videogame.
Originally published at Gamasutra One: Nil Person Videogames are narcissistic. They are about you, even when they put you in someone else’s shoes. You are a space marine among hell spawn. You are a mafioso just released from prison. You are a bear with a bird in your backpack. You are a Tebowing Tim Tebow. We may think we play… read more