My Twitter microrant sideline during the AAUP 2013 plenary
The annual American Association of University Publishers meeting is going on this week. This morning, a plenary was held on “Three Big Ideas in Publishing.” I wasn’t in attendance, but the conference has a thriving Twitter backchannel on #aaup13. I have very strong feelings about university presses, partly because I’ve been so fortunate at their hands, and partly because there’s… read more
Bruno Latour on the missing materials in materialism
Steven Shaviro pulled a delightful quote from Bruno Latour’s recent book Enquête sur les modes d’existence. Une anthropologie des Modernes, which will be published in English next month as An Inquiry into Modes of Existence: An Anthropology of the Moderns. I haven’t yet read the book in either language, but I’m reposting this quote in a QFT sort of vein.… 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
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 one, which included initial statements by each of the participa. Part two will include responses to these statements. Please visit the LARB website to… 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 photography of Todd McLellan
In Alien Phenomenology, I discuss exploded views as one example of ontography, the cataloguing of being. Most exploded views are technical diagrams rather than, but some are aesthetic compositions that can be quite striking. Now there’s a whole book full of the latter kind. The Canadian photographer Todd McLellan dismantles everyday objects, then carefully arranges and photographs them. He’s collected… read more
Why do we take course ratings seriously in light of the horror of anonymous ratings and comments online?
I woke up this morning to a flurry of Facebook links to Do the Best Professors Get the Worst Ratings? on Psychology Today. Everyone also seemed to be excerpting the same summary, and I now follow suit here: To summarize the findings: because they didn’t teach to the test, the professors who instilled the deepest learning in their students came… read more
The circular logic of creative success
Creative People Say No is an article has been making the rounds this week, about how creativity demands focus and time and suffers when it’s interrupted by extraneous jobs and tasks requested by others. The overall message works as a pique to get you to realize that you don’t have to say ‘yes’ to everything, and that doing so may… 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
The best metaphor for Google Glass? Not jerks or junkies, but the living dead.
Since the unveiling of Google Glass, the tech giant’s new wearable computing device, a common nickname for its wearers has arisen among skeptics and critics: Glassholes. It’s a charming portmanteau that satisfies an immediate desire to shun this weird new contraption. And the term fits, to some extent. As a strangely popular trend in books on assholes has helped us… read more