Time Will Tell, But Epistemology Won't: In Memory of Richard Rorty
In 1999, the Silicon Alley entrepreneur Josh Harris rented an underground warehouse in lower Manhattan and subjugated a hundred friends to a home-made police state he named “QUIET.” Its residents slept in open bunk pods stacked atop one another, each with a bus depot television with a closed-circuit feed from every other pod. Quieters partook of bacchanal feasts and abusive… read more
My GDC 2010 Microtalk
What follows is my short talk from the microtalks session at last week’s Game Developers Conference. The format was a modified pecha kucha, with 20 slides advancing automatically every 16 seconds. The theme provided by organizer Rich Lemarchand was simply, “Play with Us.” I chose to explore the relationship between developers and their audiences. This is a very famous… read more
Learning about Learning Programming from the Apple ][
Among the many, many things we talk about when we discuss curriculum for the Computational Media degree is how to make learning programming facile and appealing all throughout a student’s career. Many sub-problems arise, for example, how can one help students learn new languages and environments after they’ve become familiar with one or two? Just after having some of these… read more
Generate your own Latour Litanies
In my book Alien Phenomenology, I coined the term “Latour Litany” for the lists of things in writing—whether in Bruno Latour’s or anyone else’s. The philosopher Graham Harman has also adopted this term, and in general it’s enjoyed some success as an appelation for “bestiaries of things,” as I’ve called them. Alien Phenomenology is a book about “pragmatic” speculative realism,… read more
A note from my critics
I have many critics. Critics are helpful, wonderful creatures who produce as much pleasure as ire, partly because they provide amusement as often as commentary. Normally I don’t respond to the more vocally invective ones, but I’m making an exception for “videogames bitch-site” Remedial Waste. They offer the Remedial Lexicon, a list of “unsound videogame terminology.” It’s mostly vituperation sans… read more
An image and a story on a theme, circa 1972
Feb. 21, 1972, Mao’s residence, the first meeting between Nixon and Mao, as arranged by Kissinger. Nixon: I have read the chairman’s poems and speeches, and I knew he was a professional philosopher. (The Chinese laugh.) Mao (looking at Kissinger): He is a doctor of philosophy? Nixon: He is a doctor of brains. Mao: What about asking him to be… read more
Twitter and Subtlety
In June 2007, Ian McCarthy and I started performing Wandering Rocks on Twitter each Bloomsday. My original explanation of our project began with the phrase “I do not like Twitter.” I hadn’t realized it until today, but back in June (almost exactly two years after our first effort), my name appeared on a list of 100 Educators to Follow on… read more
The miscellany of autumn
I’ve been a bit of a mess this week, as I’m finishing up the Newsgames book with my two graduate students and preparing my keynote for SLSA the week after next. Fortunately, interesting things have gone on without me. As I previously mentioned, on Monday, we hosted a colloquium on “how to think about narrative and interactivity,” featuring Espen Aarseth,… read more
A colloquium with Espen Aarseth, Fox Harrell, and Janet Murray
The School of Literature Communication and Culture at Georgia Tech is hosting what is sure to be a great colloquium next week, “How to Think About Narrative and Interactivity.” It will be held 4:30-6pm on Tuesday October 20th in the Skiles building on campus (map), room 002 on the ground floor. The colloquium will feature the following speakers and topics,… read more
New Yorker parodies the New York Times
This is already a month old, but I’m just seeing it now: the New Yorker ran a set of satirical New York Times videogame reviews, in response to the Seth Schiesel fawn over The Beatles: Rock Band (to which I responded strongly, in case you forgot). My favorites: A princess has been kidnapped. Her name is Zelda, she is beautiful,… read more