Writing

I’ve complained about this before in passing, on Twitter, but it’s become such a major issue for my sanity that I now feel compelled to work through it. Today it’s raining in Atlanta. When it rains in Atlanta, no matter how mild is the rain, the traffic lights go out. (And really, it happens sometimes when it’s not even raining.)… read more

Slavoj Žižek tends to make occasional offhand references to videogames. Here’s one from an interview in New Scientist from last month (read it here instead if you don’t have a subscription) And what is your take on reality? There is an old philosophical idea about God being stupid and crazy, not finishing his creation. The idea is that God (but… read more

Apparently Manuel DeLanda has a new book on philosophy and computer simulations. It’s titled Philosophy & Simulation: The Emergence of Synthetic Reason, and is scheduled for release in spring 2011. Here’s the blurb: In his new book, the internationally renowned Manuel DeLanda provides a remarkably clear philosophical overview of the rapidly growing field of computer simulations. In this groundbreaking new… read more

Playboy runs a “top professors” feature in their annual college issue, and I am fortunate to be one of the twenty profs baring my intellectual gifts in the October issue, even if in brief (not in briefs though). The rest, I’m afraid, will have to be left to your imagination.

Harman offers the following provocation over two posts this week: Building a philosophy is more like trying to build the world’s best subway system than like trying to be an ascetic monk –or revolutionary, for that matter– standing in a lofty tower and bemoaning the filth and disease of the world. We should want more coverage for the subway network… read more

Via my doctoral student (and Newsgames co-author) Simon Ferrari, this snippet from Lev Vygotsky’s classic text Mind in Society: A special feature of human perception—which arises at a very young age—is the perception of real objects. This is something for which there is no analogy in animal perception. By this term I mean that I do not see the world… read more

Our book Newsgames: Journalism at Play should be hitting the streets in a couple weeks. If you’re eager to get your hands on some of the material in advance, you’ll be happy to learn that The Atlantic just published an excerpt from the first chapter, which you can read here.

In October, 2001, Giovanna Borradori conducted an interview with Jacques Derrida about the 9/11 attacks. The result was paired with a similar conversation with Jurgen Habermas, and published as Philosophy in a Time of Terror. You can read exerpts of both interviews online. I happened to read the interview only recently, right around the same time that the supposed “Derrida… read more

I thought I’d share few recent mentions of me in the media. I try not to do this with every little mention, but all of these are really good articles that you should read anyway. First, Chris Suellentrop’s New York Times Magazine story Video Games that Bring Afghanistan Home. It’s a wide-ranging feature, and even though I only have one… read more

A few years ago dynamic difficulty adjustment for videogames became a hot topic, first in the research world and then in game design too, thanks to titles like Left 4 Dead. Design novelty and technical innovation, right? As usual, not really. Here’s the abstract of a patent filed 31 years ago by legendary toy maker Marvin Glass & Associates, for… read more