My daughter on Goldieblox
The toy start-up Goldieblox has been in the news this week thanks to an ugly public fight over fair use and right of publicity with the Beastie Boys (they’ve since relented). But the company first gained public attention over a year ago when they first launched the Kickstarter for “an engineering toy for girls.” Back when the crowdfunding campaign launched,… read more
How McDonald's strange, seasonal sandwich explains the rest of its menu
Each year, the McRib makes a brief visit to Earth. Its arrival elicits reactions ranging from horror to awe. And for good reason: this would-be rib sandwich is really a restructured pork patty pressed into the rough shape of a slab of ribs, its slathering of barbecue sauce acting as camouflage as much as coating. “Pork” is a generous term,… read more
Speculations on the company's contribution to moral philosophy
Last week, another distasteful use of your personal information by Google came to light: The company plans to attach your name and likeness to advertisements delivered across its products without your permission. As happens every time the search giant does something unseemly, Google's plan to turn its users into unwitting endorsers has inspired a new round of jabs at Google's… read more
Gone Home: a videogame about releasing secrets
Originally published at the Los Angeles Review of Books Gone Home is a videogame about releasing secrets, the kind of secrets that you should have known all along. It is set in Oregon circa 1995, and it tells the story of an ordinary family. As the game starts, you find yourself on the porch of an old house. You are… read more
These days, Apple is more properly thought of as a fashion label, not an electronics company.
When Apple launched the iPhone 4 in 2010, the company’s website featured large images of the device with the text “This changes everything. Again.” Change has been a constant refrain in Apple’s marketing over the years. The famous 1984 Macintosh ads framed the computer as an agent of revolution. And the “Think Different” ads of the 1990s implied that purchasing… read more
Animal Crossing's Strange, Unresolved Conflict. Excerpted from Persuasive Games.
While some are learning about the peculiar pleasure of Animal Crossing thanks to the series’ latest release on Nintendo 3DS, the game has long charmed and puzzled players and critics. In recognition of this fact, in September 2013 Gamasutra re-published the excerpt below, from my 2007 book Persuasive Games. In the section presented here, I discuss Animal Crossing‘s first edition… read more
Everything wrong with today's computing culture in two bullet points (maybe)
A premise: all the problems of computational solutionism can be expressed in terms of two fundamental misunderstandings of Turing: Simulation is not equivalence. A machine that acts like another changes that other and itself; it doesn’t reproduce them. Machines aren’t intelligent; rather they are persuasive. Thus, accepting or rejecting any individual one entails more than just reason and cannot be… read more
"Flipped" classrooms don't invert traditional learning so much as abstract it
Some promote MOOCS as the future of lower-cost higher eduction, while others lament them a solutionist privatization of educational practice. Despite the polarization, both MOOCs and flipped classrooms enjoyed positive mentions last week from President Obama, who announced a White House plan to make college more affordable: A rising tide of innovation has the potential to shake up the higher… read more
Resignation beyond sorrow on the Facebook Platform and beyond
In recent weeks, Facebook has been sending emails imploring me to complete a survey about how they might improve their development platform. I’d been deleting the messages, but after the third request or so, I decided to click through. For those lucky enough to have avoided it, the Facebook Platform is a set of tools and services that allows developers… read more
Sympathy without sympathy
originally published at Medium “YMMV” (Your Mileage May Vary) is among the most mistakenly noble gestures of modern online life. It seems generous on first blush. In online forum talk in particular, YMMV is used to flag one’s opinion, and purportedly to recognize that others might have a different one. I found this diet really helpful, but YMMV. A kind… read more