The past and future novelty of digital publishing
It’s easy to forget these things, so here’s the description for the electronic “hypertext edition” of rhetorician Richard Lanham’s collection of essays, The Electronic Word: Democracy, Technology, and the Arts. As Publishers Weekly wrote, “And, yes, the book is available in electronic form; as the first in the Chicago Expanded Book series, there will be a hypertext edition, shipped on… read more
The inevitability of corporate content controls on MOOCs
Last week, the Council of University of California Faculty Associations (CUCFA) president Robert Meister sent an open letter entitled “Can Venture Capital Deliver on the Promise of the Public University?” to MOOC provider Coursera’s CEO, Daphne Koller. The CUCFA has published the letter, which is sly, scathing, and deeply entertaining whether no matter where you locate your opinions on the… read more
Man sees beyond the normal human visual spectrum after cataract surgery
Alek Komar had cataract surgery and now he can see the ultraviolet spectrum. Read about it here. One of the more interesting aspects of the article to me details why this ability might offer an alien phenomenology of certain animals: Komar’s case is interesting for multiple reasons. It’s a demonstration of how modern medicine can change what we think of… read more
A teaser for a new project
I’ve been working for months on a new writing and publishing project that continues and extends my interest in thinking and writing about things. Here’s a teaser: objectsobjectsobjects.com. Want more info? Wait for the official announcement and full website, or just ask!
I need undergrads interested in electronics looking for summer work
Under the aegis of the Georgia Tech branch of the Intel Science and Technology Center for Social Computing, my PhD student Tom Jenkins and I have spent the year thinking about and making what we call “tinkering platforms”—those simple hardware prototyping systems like Arduino, Raspberry Pi, and so forth. Our gripe about these systems is that they are too expensive,… read more
On Darius Kazemi's "Fuck Videogames"
Darius Kazemi has published a fiery talk he delivered at Boston Indies entitled Fuck Videogames. Click over and give it a read (it’s quick) and then come back to read the rest. I see three main points in Darius’s argument: It’s not necessarily more “noble” or whatever to express something in videogame form, particularly if it’s not working for you.… read more
From a longer article forthcoming in The Gameful World
My short essay Gamification is Bullshit was a very widely read provocation, but it was never meant to be a complex argument. I’ve finally written a longer, more detailed version of that argument in an article titled “Why Gamification Is Bullshit.” It will appear in Steffen P. Walz and Sebastian Deterding’s forthcoming collection The Gameful World: Approaches, Issues, Applications, to… read more
David Graeber on thinking about ideas
Lately, it’s common to see critique—even smart, detailed critique—answered with a crass dismissal: “Well, what’s your solution then?” As if the very idea of raising a concern is invalid on its own. Among boosters, no critique is deemed valid without a complete alternative program. This David Graeber article is about much more than just critique, but I enjoyed it for… read more
By Sandy Alexandre and Cameron Kunzelman
For those of you interested in such things, here are two interesting and (to me) very gratifying reviews of Alien Phenomenology. First, a review in Invisible Culture by Sandy Alexandre, which considers (among other things), how literary practice relates to carpentry. I’ll let you read to her conclusion on that front, but spoil the surprise by saying that I agree… read more
A preview of an answer that might be forthcoming
Shortly after Alien Phenomenology was publsihed, Darius Kazemi asked: what’s the difference between carpentry and art? Carpentry, for the record, is my name for the philosophical practice of making things, of which articles and books are but one example. I borrowed and expanded the term from the ordinary sense of woodcraft and adapted from Graham Harman and Alphonso Lingis, who… read more