Dr. Ian Bogost is an author and an award-winning game designer. He is Barbara and David Thomas Distinguished Professor in Arts & Sciences, Director of Film & Media Studies, and Professor of Computer Science and Engineering at Washington University in St. Louis. Bogost is also Founding Partner at Persuasive Games LLC, an independent game studio, and a Contributing Editor at… read more
Communication online is mostly meta-communication, but the loudest meta-communication is profit.
Are you here? That’s all I want to know. Are you here, reading me? Clicking our links? Viewing our ads, or at least, allowing your browser to load them? Liking or faving or retweeting me? It’s what you want to know when you text your significant other or your child. Are you there? Is everything okay? Yes, yes, I’m here.… read more
Dr. Ian Bogost is an author and an award-winning game designer. He is Ivan Allen College Distinguished Chair in Media Studies and Professor of Interactive Computing at the Georgia Institute of Technology, where he also holds appointments in the School of Architecture and the Scheller College of Business. Bogost is also Founding Partner at Persuasive Games LLC, an independent game… read more
A Mexican Food Index to Alien Phenomenology
Here’s a complete list of all mentions of Mexican food in my book Alien Phenomenology, or What it’s Like To Be A Thing: They cover plates of enchiladas as shrubs cover the hundreds of square miles of their high desert home. (3) Tumbling in vented steel cylinders, chiles crackle over the open flame of roasting. (3) Reality is reaffirmed, and… 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
"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
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 two, which included responses to the statements in part one (which you can find here; this response won’t make much sense unless you read… 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
The ouroboros only eats ouroboroi
Kevin Werbach, who has been teaching a free Coursera MOOC on Gamification, spoke about teaching a free Coursera MOOC on Gamification at the $1k-2k/head GSummit, the gamification conference run by gamification consultant Gabe Zichermann. Now you can pay $15 to watch a video of Werbach talking about teaching a free Coursera MOOC on Gamification at the $1-2k/head Gsummit, the gamification… read more