On the "adjunct problem"
Brian Croxall writes in response to Anthony Grafton’s New Republic review of Louis Menand’s book The Marketplace of Ideas. In brief, one of Menand’s suggestions is to admit fewer graduate students and shorten the time to the PhD to combat the lack of job opportunities; Grafton responds that grad school should be hard because it’s supposed to “test people who… read more
Journalism at Play
This book is available in digital or physical format. Buy from Amazon Newsgames offers a broad and comprehensive look at the past, present, and future uses of videogames in journalism. Co-authored with Simon Ferrari and Bobby Schweizer. Journalism has embraced digital media in its struggle to survive. But most online journalism just translates existing practices to the Web: stories are… read more
Cover, blurb, price, etc.
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
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
What the state of women in Hollywood's tells us about women in games
Today I listened to NPR On Point on the ride home. The topic was “A big year for Hollywood women?”, with film critics Manohla Dargis and Nicole LaPorte discussing (and deflating) recent buzz about the “Year of the Woman” in movies. If you listen to the show online, you’ll be struck by how much the conversation about women in film… read more
From the BBC and the British Museum
Yet another high-profile slate of objects to report. The BBC and the British Museum are collaborating on a set of radio programs detailing a history of the world in 100 objects. The objects are drawn from the collection of the British Museum, and the radio program begins tomorrow (18 January). The BBC has also produced a multimedia explorer that allows… 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: â??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
Learning from the jazz pop instrumental
I seem to wind up in the car for at least part of the early afternoon every Saturday. As a result, I’ve developed a habit of listening to the reruns of America’s Top 40 with Casey Kasem that play on satellite radio channel 70s on 7. This week’s chart was from thirty years ago exactly, October 29, 1979. The number… read more
My DiGRA 2009 Keynote, on Videogames and Ontology
What follows is the text of my keynote at the 2009 Digital Games Research Association (DiGRA) conference, held in Uxbridge, UK September 1-4, 2009. The text corresponds fairly accurately to the address I gave at the conference. In a few cases, I’ve added some clarifications in square brackets, where additional context or commentary was relevant. Videogames are a mess So… read more
The Things in The Waters of March
Earlier I mentioned my interest in creative artifacts that do speculative realist work, as well as my tempered fondness for the lurid lists of objects that litter Graham Harman’s work. The other day another example fell into my lap as I was listening to the Seriously Sinatra channel on satellite radio in my car (seriously, there’s a channel for it).… read more