Who else but a fellow teenager would stand for this constant abuse long enough to get any good at the game?
the most interesting questions for art and games arise not from identifying their dissimilarities but by appreciating how long and intertwined their histories have been.
I think we live in a more conspiracist period. There’s no question there are more of them, and they’re more global, and they take off more quickly. They’re also more complex and relate to virtual communities rather than real ones. I think it’s because of global interdependence. We live a global period, and there’s a huge temptation among people to believe there is a master plan, because otherwise the suggestion is we’re interdependent and the world is chaotic — and that’s a mindfuck.
Our most popular new online tools—Google, Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, Digg—were designed to help us tame the web’s wildness, to tag its outer limits and set up user-friendly taxonomies. ChatRoulette is, in this sense, a blast from the Internet past. It’s the anti-Facebook, pure social-media shuffle. It arrived quietly last November, with no fanfare. (Given the nakedness of the ChatRoulette-user experience, it’s interesting that the site’s founder is unknown; web searches lead back to a Netherlands-based anonymity service.) Once you dive in, there’s no way to manage the experience—to filter users, search for friends, or backtrack and reconnect with someone you chatted with an hour ago. There’s only the perpetual forward motion of “next.” It’s the Wild West: a stupid, profound, thrilling, disgusting, totally lawless boom.
For more than 30 years, sports videogames have been focused on simulating real-life athletics more and more perfectly. But over the past decade, games have moved beyond just imitating the action on the field. Now they’re changing it.
None of this is to say that global warming isn't real, or that human activity doesn't play a role, or that the IPCC is entirely wrong, or that measures to curb greenhouse-gas emissions aren't valid. But the strategy pursued by activists (including scientists who have crossed the line into advocacy) has turned out to be fatally flawed.
By exaggerating the certainties, papering over the gaps, demonizing the skeptics and peddling tales of imminent catastrophe, they've discredited the entire climate-change movement
The difference between Google and destination social networks like MySpace, Friendster, and Facebook is that Google doesn’t have a specific URL. Instead, it is creating elements that envelope the web, by enabling every online (and mobile) activity to possibly be social one –then running it all on their own centralized platform. Google isn’t going after a frontal, brute force assault on Facebook and the other social networks — it simply can’t win at that game on a global basis. Instead Google is pursuing a softer approach, a zen-like attach much like water flowing around a rock. It is using its strengths — ubiquity and open platforms — to put “social” into every corner of the Web.
This is the stealth threat — that today’s social networks won’t really be losing share to the “Google network”, but rather, that they will become slowly less relevant as EVERYTHING gets social thanks to advances by Google. Their end goal? Google’s social network is designed to exist everywhere –not be centralized in any one location.
This reads as rather prophetic given the news today about Gmail becoming a communications hub.
With a majority of politicians no longer performing their patriotic duty in telling us that America's gone to hell, that our collective future's bleak, perhaps popular culture's picking up the slack?
Before I made Posterous my new home, an intermittent feature of my Blogger blog was "Delicious Every Other Day" (DEOD). Information flows are quite fast these days and this feature was an attempt to organize and summarize articles and links shared via Twitter and added to Delicious in the last 48 hours. By providing a choice quote and/or summary statement, DEOD was a way to not only revisit important ideas but also maintain an additional public record of research interests. This was quite similar to "Clipped," what old friend and colleague Tim Lepczyk offers on occasion at Digital Dunes.
I thought DEOD would streamline quite well with sharing features in Posterous. Instead, I still struggle to strike a balance between sharing links via bit.ly and providing choice quotes via Posterous. The former are much more likely to get a "retweet," while the latter are more likely to get page views. There is minimal effort involved, so I'd like to keep up with both. I miss the opportunities presented by DEOD, though. I also feel like I'm doing a disservice to those friends and colleagues (if any) who followed my link-sharing after I deactivated my Facebook account.
So, as the title of this post suggests, I want to introduce a new feature, "What You Might Have Missed" (WYMHM). At least every other evening, I'll be reposting links and/or quotes shared via Twitter over the last 48 hours. I look forward to providing the very first of these tomorrow night.
"To jump, or not to jump--that is the question: whether 'tis nobler in the game to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous boss monsters, or to take power-ups against a sea of troubles, and by opposing, end them" (215).
--Raph Koster, A Theory of Fun for Game Design