It's not the same as writing books
Back when his book The Textual Life of Airports was published in December, Christopher Schaberg reported what most authors do: seeing his book for the first time. “What a weird feeling,” Chris wrote. “It resembles an object from outer space. Vaguely recognizable, yet totally alien at the same time.” This is the experience of most authors. We say we “write… read more
Work with me at Georgia Tech Digital Media
We have a job opening for a staff position in my program at Georgia Tech. The job is for an Academic Professional, who will serve as assistant to the Graduate Program in Digital Media. You get to work with me and nine other core faculty in the program, as well as with others in the School and College, to help… read more
Just a short pointer post for those who get my updates via blog or RSS. Last month Slashdot covered the Wired article about me and Cow Clicker, and invited readers to pose questions. The editors selected some, which I answered, and which Slashdot has now published. The questions were good, and I’m pretty pleased with my answers too, so I… read more
Originally published as an opinion piece at Gamasutra In Greek mythology, Bellerophon is the hero who tamed the Pegasus. He used the winged horse as a mount to defeat the Chimaera, a monster with the heads of a lion, goat, and snake that breathed fire and devoured villagers. Bellerophon’s many heroic deeds were widely praised, and his subjects adored him.… read more
New blogs, optimized, mobile version, etc.
As promised, I’ve cleaned up and updated the Speculative Realism blog aggregator. Thanks to those of you who made suggestions in the comments or by contacting me directly. A few quick notes: I’ve added a link to the aggregator in the right sidebar, under “resources.” Not sure why I never had one. There is also a mobile device-optimized version of… read more
A quick response to Joshua McVeigh-Schulz
There’s an interesting discussion over at Culture Digitally between Gina Neff, Tim Jordan, and Joshua McVeigh-Schulz on the subject of technical agency, or “how we should (re)theorize the politics of technological systems.” Gina Neff’s opening comments include a welcome statement about the limits of SCOT perspectives on technical systems: Within the social studies of technology, technological determinism is dead. By… read more
From my Persuasive Games column at Gamasutra
From Humble Bundle to Steam Sales, from Indie Royale to Indie Gala, it seems like you can’t go online anymore without seeing a new “game bundle” offering — a set of unusual, overlooked, and independent game titles offered at a substantial discount for a limited time, often with a portion of proceeds donated to charities like the Red Cross or… read more
Seeking updates for the SR blog aggregator
As many of you know, for some time I’ve been operating an aggregator for blogs related to speculative realism. You can view post previews on this site, and there’s also an RSS feed in case anybody is still using RSS readers 😉 It’s about time I revised and updated the list of included blogs. The system gets a bit bogged… read more
A response to Stanley Fish, Kathleen Fitzpatrick, and others
For the first time in five years, I attended the Modern Language Association (MLA) conference. This is the main conference for scholars of language and literature, with about 8,000 attendees at this year’s event in Seattle. Among the big things going down this year: the ongoing clash of cultures between the “traditional humanities”—the scholars who read books and write books… read more
At the O-Zone Journal
The new O-Zone journal has a section called OO Frequency, for content that takes a form other than writing. A while ago they posted my short video for OOOIII, Seeing Things, which deals with the photographer Garry Winogrand and the website Dear Photography. More recently, they’ve posted a lovely new video from Robert Jackson, who is a doctoral candidate at the… read more