betajames

Throughout gaming's history, there have been attempts to make death seem appropriately final. Some games limit the number of deaths you are allowed, making death truly consequential but nonetheless more trivial than actual human death. Other games are even more lenient, giving the player unlimited death but imposing penalties for the failure, such as losing money or having a certain amount of in-game progress lost.

Nonetheless, these penalties don't come close to addressing a problem that becomes more prominent as games become more realistic and serious. Perhaps no genre draws more attention to this dilemma as the military shooter. In games like Call of Duty and Battlefield, death is a non-issue for the player. It comes suddenly, but is usually the result of a lack of strategic and skillful maneuvering. In other words, it makes perfect sense. The player gets a maximum of five seconds to consider an alternate way around the problem, and tries again.

While research about both design-based and code-based instruction suggests that students can gain and develop numerous academic skills (critical thinking, logical organizing) and social skills that impact academic work (collaboration, working across numerous differences), few studies have yet taken up the issue of “gaming across the curriculum” in higher education or have attempted to inquire about what happens when different disciplines, with different methodological frameworks, assumptions, and questions, approach computer gaming as an object of study. What does a multi-disciplinary approach to gaming offer students, both in terms of their ability to think critically about games as games, but also in terms of their ability to reflect critically about complex contemporary communication practices and how different disciplines might use awareness of those literacy practices to build and communicate knowledge production?

When you edit for the Web, you always feel like you’re playing a frantic game of catch-up. Editors may schedule posts to publish at a certain time, and your goal is to give them a read-through before they go live. You don’t leave your desk much. Once, however, we had a company-wide meeting, and I had to let things go unfinished. A co-worker could tell I was antsy about being away and taunted me that there might be typos on the Internet. This immediately struck us as funny because of course there were typos on the Internet—I just didn’t want them on my Internet. It’s also how I got the name of my future band, Typos on the Internet, for which he bought me a T-shirt (complete with a keyboard design) as a farewell present.

We’ve known for years that the Web allows for unprecedented voyeurism, exhibitionism and inadvertent indiscretion, but we are only beginning to understand the costs of an age in which so much of what we say, and of what others say about us, goes into our permanent — and public — digital files. The fact that the Internet never seems to forget is threatening, at an almost existential level, our ability to control our identities; to preserve the option of reinventing ourselves and starting anew; to overcome our checkered pasts.

What works about Twitter? It’s not anonymous. I’ve found it to be a marvelous medium to engage critics in a low-key, non-defensive way, to say, hey, I’m listening, I’m a real person here, can you let me know a little more about what you’re thinking? I’ve turned critics into supporters and I think softened the tone of some debates over the book.  (I recently had a critic who had trashed a speech of mine on Twitter DM me “You have far too many fans for me to criticize you in public!”  After a little back and forth about his concerns, he went on to write a glowing review of the book.)

We naturally lead manicured lives, so that our favorite blogs and writers and friends all look and think and sound a lot like us. (While waiting in line for my cappuccino this weekend, I was ready to punch myself in the face, as I realized that everyone in line was wearing the exact same uniform: artfully frayed jeans, quirky printed t-shirts, flannel shirts, messy hair, etc. And we were all staring at the same gadget, and probably reading the same damn website. In other words, our pose of idiosyncratic uniqueness was a big charade. Self-loathing alert!) While this strategy might make life a bit more comfortable - strangers can say such strange things - it also means that our cliches of free-association get reinforced. We start thinking in ever more constricted ways.

And this is why following someone unexpected on Twitter can be a small step towards a more open mind. Because not everybody reacts to the same thing in the same way.

Yesterday found me engaged in a bit of periodic culling of those I follow on Twitter. The excuse I use most often is "cutting down on the noise." However, curiosity got the better of me as I compared my follower/following numbers. 'Who are these people following me in spite of me not following them?" I wondered. Rather than pare down my following number to the regular 300, I instead decided to expand to 374. Let's see what happens...

Much of what we consume happens to be Formless. The bulk of printed matter — novels and non-fiction — is Formless.

In the last two years, devices excelling at displaying Formless Content have multiplied — the Amazon Kindle being most obvious. Less obvious are devices like the iPhone, whose extremely high resolution screen, despite being small, makes longer texts much more comfortable to read than traditional digital displays.

In other words, it’s now easier and more comfortable than ever to consume Formless Content in a digital format.

Is it as comfortable as reading a printed book?

Maybe not. But we’re getting closer.

When people lament the loss of the printed book, this — comfort — is usually what they’re talking about. My eyes tire more easily, they say. The batteries run out, the screen is tough to read in sunlight. It doesn’t like bath tubs.

Important to note is that these aren’t complaints about the text losing meaning. Books don’t become harder to understand, or confusing just because they’re digital. It’s mainly issues concerning quality.

The same technology allows readers to reach out to authors, provide instant reaction and even become creative collaborators, influencing plot developments and the writer's use of dramatic devices.

Digital tools are also making it possible for independent authors to publish and promote their books, causing an outpouring of written work on every topic imaginable.

If the upheaval in the music industry over the last decade is any guide, the closing of more bookstores and a decreasing demand for physical books will force authors and their publishers to find new ways to profit from their work.