Search Results for press

Peter Gratton has been interviewing some of the authors of readings in his speculative realism class this term. The latest interview, with Jane Bennett just went online. Bennet is the author of this year’s

It’s a very busy week. I just got back from a quick trip to Los Angeles, and now I’m making the final preparations for the Object-Oriented Ontology Symposium this Friday at Georgia Tech. I hope to see you there. Despite some very reasonable concerns about the volcanic ash mess disrupting his travel, I see that Graham Harman’s flight has successfully… read more

MIT Press has put up the informational webpage for Newsgames, and the book should be appearing in the catalog and in books in print (and therefore at Amazon et al) soon enough. You can read the description on the MIT Press site, and I’ve also pasted it below. The list price is $24.95, which I’d guess will translate into a… read more

Thanks to Jan Holmevik, Cynthia Haynes for hosting me and Greg Ulmer at Clemson University last week. The occasion was a seminar and symposium on games and rhetoric, organized thanks to Victor Vitanza and his Pre/Text journal. I enjoyed lively conversation with students and faculty alike. Somehow it was the first time I’d met Ulmer, who gave a thought-provoking talk… read more

Peter Gratton’s letter to a a student, and Graham Harman’s response to it, reminded me of an observation I’ve wanted to share about academic discourse in general. There’s a fictional character from The Simpsons known as Comic Book Guy. Offering sarcastic quips about his “favorite” comics and television shows (often including The Simpsons itself), he epitomizes the nerd-pedant who nitpicks… read more

After an email conversation he and I had, Graham offers some thoughts on the best way to give talks. Here was my original off-the-cuff thought: One of the lessons Iâ??ve learned in the past five years is that there is no right way to give a talk. There are, however, right ways to give particular talks in particular circumstances. Unfortunately,… read more

Via Bryant, I just discovered the blog Struggles with Philosophy. I’m not sure who the author is, but as Levi points out, discussion there has recently taken up Object-Oriented Ontology. Here’s an excerpt from the latest salvo. At one level I want to differentiate between the theory (or philosophy) of OOP and the praxis of OOP, which will be designated… read more

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

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

The past few days have witnessed a flurry of comments on the use and misuse of “materialism” in philosophy, starting with Gratton and continuing with Harman (1, 2) and Bryant. Gratton hits the nail on the head when he asks, “What kind of material would we even be talking about?” Indeed, it’s become increasingly difficult to understand from what material… read more