5.14.2004
Videogames with a political message
Videogames with a political message are being used to win hearts and minds. Jim McClellan meets the creators and asks: do they work?
Jim McClellan, Thursday May 13 2004, The Guardian
The bleeping sound tells you you're about to play a variation on one of the classics - Space Invaders. But when the graphics appear, it isn't green aliens advancing at you, but white blocks with dollar signs on them. And you shoot at them with... well, the disembodied head of a smiling George W. Bush. Pump enough bullets out of W's cranium and you clear the screen to leave the message: "You've saved the country from John Kerry's tax plans."
John Kerry: Tax Invaders isn't the only anti-Kerry videogame you will find on gop.com, the web presence of the Republican National Committee (RNC). There's also Kerry vs Kerry, a boxing game with commentary from Don King. It shows the Democrat challenger fighting himself, to illustrate the way he has contradicted himself on various issues.
These games aren't much fun to play, even if you are a Bush supporter. Nevertheless, it's significant that a major political party now sees games as a useful campaigning tool. Presumably, the RNC thinks Tax Invaders will get Bush's economic policy across to "the kids". But it's hard to say for certain because, so far, the RNC has not talked about the games to the press and they didn't respond to a request for an interview.
However, others are talking about this new campaign strategy - in particular, Ian Bogost and Gonzalo Frasca, two game designers/ researchers who contribute to Water Cooler Games, a blog set up in October to track the development of "video games with an agenda". "I believe in this medium as a more efficient means of communicating social and political messages," says Bogost. "So I'm encouraged when anybody tries it, whatever their political persuasion."
Unfortunately, the games aren't that good, says Frasca. "They look like they were programmed by Bush himself." In particular, Tax Invaders, with its South Park image of bullets flying out of George Bush's head, seems ill conceived. "Knowing his trigger-happy approach to international politics," says Frasca, "this is something that may well backfire."
Last year, Gonzalo and Frasca created a web-based game for Howard Dean's nomination campaign. Players were cast as Dean campaigners, trying to get the vote out in Iowa, the first big primary. The idea was to communicate a conceptual idea about growing a grassroots movement from the bottom up, says Bogost. In the end, 100,000 people played. Feedback was good. "People said they understood the idea more and that they were motivated to participate."
Bogost has a background in advertising and interactive media. Frasca ran his own games studio and has researched the idea that games could help people think about the everyday politics of their lives. His essay on the subject, Videogames of the Oppressed, is included in First Person, a new anthology of theoretical writing about games just published by MIT Press.
Bogost argues in favour of games that deliver specific political commentary. "When you're playing a game, you are the actor," says Bogost. "Reading an editorial about why it's not a good idea to send missiles into Iraq as a solution for terrorism will be more difficult to get into rhetorically, than giving you the missile and saying, you fire it."
That's exactly what September 12th does. A controversial "news game" created by Frasca and a team of Uruguayan programmers, it shows a crowded town, where Arab terrorists mingle with ordinary people. Your job is to get terrorists without killing civilians. But no matter how carefully you aim, you end up with some collateral damage. When that happens, lots more terrorists appear. Think of it as SimChomsky.
Frasca says the idea was to play around with gaming conventions. The sniper rifle is meant to suggest the idea of a surgical strike, but when you fire, in Frasca's words "you create a big mess". And, in contrast to most games, you can't shoot constantly - you are forced to wait and see the results of each missile fired. So players are denied their thumb candy and forced to think instead.
Critics complain that the game simplifies a complex situation, that it is no fun to play and not really a computer game at all, more a kind of interactive political cartoon. "With news gaming," says Frasca, "we are trying to explore a genre somewhere between the game and the political cartoon. These games make a point rather than entertain. If the game is too good, the message might become invisible."
There are hundreds of web-based games inspired by 9/11 and the war on terror. Many are simple Flash-based affairs and can be found on New Grounds. "For political video games, September 11 was the trigger," says Frasca. "If it had happened in the sixties, people would have grabbed their guitar and written a song about it. Now they're making games."
Technology writer Clive Thompson has argued that simple Flash games are like online graffiti, quick and dirty personal messages delivered in the language of the web. Certainly, most of the 9/11 games on New Grounds feel like so much adolescent scrawl - crude revenge fantasies centring on beating up Osama bin Laden.
That said, some seem to share some of the aims of September 12th, such as New York Defender, created by French outfit Uzinagaz and played by more than 1.5m people since October 2001. The game shows the Twin Towers intact. Planes approach them and you have to shoot them down before impact. Easy at first - but so many planes come, you can't get them all, so you always lose.
Uzinagaz's Jonathan Pitcher says they didn't set out to make a political point. "We only meant to fight our feeling of impotence. We reacted to September 11 like kindergarten children, by drawing planes crashing into buildings. It's just some kind of release. But looking back, we find there is a political statement to it. Since there is no way to win this game, you could say that violence cannot stop violence. Or that you cannot win against terror by using force." That said, Pitcher does not buy the news game idea. "Books, not games, are a good way to deliver a political message."
Molleindustria, a team of Italian "cognitive workers" takes the opposite view. Its site features games such as TuboFlex, which is about surviving in the dynamic labour market (more fun than it sounds) and Orgasm Simulator, in which you play a woman trying to keep her boyfriend happy by faking an orgasm.
Like Frasca, the team suggests that playing with expectations makes gamers think. "In the real world, there's no opportunity for flexible workers to move up the job ladder. In TuboFlex, we show this by creating a frustratingly random level structure, in which there is no progression." Though you can't win, Molleindustria's games are fun because of the amusing graphics. Humour balances the limited gameplay in political games, suggests a spokesperson. "But we do believe it's time to get rid of the obligatory connection between videogames and fun - what we call 'dictatorship of entertainment'."
Molleindustria says that activist games first appeared as alternative media flourished online after the anti-corporate protests in Seattle in 1999. For some time, campaigning groups have used Flash movies to spread their ideas virally online. Moving into games was the next logical step. Hence sites such as Global Arcade, which uses variations on classic games such as Pong to satirise globalisation. Similarly, the long-running British site Urban 75 features anti-corporate cover versions of old gaming classics. As Urban 75's Mike Slocombe says, his Brick a Brand is basically a variation on Breakout. After indicating their "brick-throwing ability" - student, protester or anarchist players get to bounce bricks at familiar-looking brand logos.
The natural home here for political gaming (the site hosts the satirical beat-'em-up, Downing Street Fighter), Urban75 could perhaps lay claim to have pioneered the genre of interactive political cartoons, with its Punch/Slap games. Online since 1996, these simple Java animations let players virtually punch politicians and celebs by clicking on their faces. A click comically distorts the (over) familiar face.
"They're horrendously simple but phenomenally popular," says Slocombe, who sees the games on his site as a bit of cheeky irreverence. The hope is that they might draw people into the Urban 75 community where they could find out more about the issues.
In contrast, Frasca and Bogost think political games might be a way for games in general to develop into more complex expressive forms. Two days after the Madrid bombs, Frasca created Madrid, a game where you try to help candles - held by crowds commemorating the dead - burn a little brighter by clicking on them. "At first, people were critical about the idea of making a game about this, but then they realised the game was about solidarity and hope. I got many emails from people saying it was the first time they were moved by a game," says Frasca.
Jim McClellan, Thursday May 13 2004, The Guardian
The bleeping sound tells you you're about to play a variation on one of the classics - Space Invaders. But when the graphics appear, it isn't green aliens advancing at you, but white blocks with dollar signs on them. And you shoot at them with... well, the disembodied head of a smiling George W. Bush. Pump enough bullets out of W's cranium and you clear the screen to leave the message: "You've saved the country from John Kerry's tax plans."
John Kerry: Tax Invaders isn't the only anti-Kerry videogame you will find on gop.com, the web presence of the Republican National Committee (RNC). There's also Kerry vs Kerry, a boxing game with commentary from Don King. It shows the Democrat challenger fighting himself, to illustrate the way he has contradicted himself on various issues.
These games aren't much fun to play, even if you are a Bush supporter. Nevertheless, it's significant that a major political party now sees games as a useful campaigning tool. Presumably, the RNC thinks Tax Invaders will get Bush's economic policy across to "the kids". But it's hard to say for certain because, so far, the RNC has not talked about the games to the press and they didn't respond to a request for an interview.
However, others are talking about this new campaign strategy - in particular, Ian Bogost and Gonzalo Frasca, two game designers/ researchers who contribute to Water Cooler Games, a blog set up in October to track the development of "video games with an agenda". "I believe in this medium as a more efficient means of communicating social and political messages," says Bogost. "So I'm encouraged when anybody tries it, whatever their political persuasion."
Unfortunately, the games aren't that good, says Frasca. "They look like they were programmed by Bush himself." In particular, Tax Invaders, with its South Park image of bullets flying out of George Bush's head, seems ill conceived. "Knowing his trigger-happy approach to international politics," says Frasca, "this is something that may well backfire."
Last year, Gonzalo and Frasca created a web-based game for Howard Dean's nomination campaign. Players were cast as Dean campaigners, trying to get the vote out in Iowa, the first big primary. The idea was to communicate a conceptual idea about growing a grassroots movement from the bottom up, says Bogost. In the end, 100,000 people played. Feedback was good. "People said they understood the idea more and that they were motivated to participate."
Bogost has a background in advertising and interactive media. Frasca ran his own games studio and has researched the idea that games could help people think about the everyday politics of their lives. His essay on the subject, Videogames of the Oppressed, is included in First Person, a new anthology of theoretical writing about games just published by MIT Press.
Bogost argues in favour of games that deliver specific political commentary. "When you're playing a game, you are the actor," says Bogost. "Reading an editorial about why it's not a good idea to send missiles into Iraq as a solution for terrorism will be more difficult to get into rhetorically, than giving you the missile and saying, you fire it."
That's exactly what September 12th does. A controversial "news game" created by Frasca and a team of Uruguayan programmers, it shows a crowded town, where Arab terrorists mingle with ordinary people. Your job is to get terrorists without killing civilians. But no matter how carefully you aim, you end up with some collateral damage. When that happens, lots more terrorists appear. Think of it as SimChomsky.
Frasca says the idea was to play around with gaming conventions. The sniper rifle is meant to suggest the idea of a surgical strike, but when you fire, in Frasca's words "you create a big mess". And, in contrast to most games, you can't shoot constantly - you are forced to wait and see the results of each missile fired. So players are denied their thumb candy and forced to think instead.
Critics complain that the game simplifies a complex situation, that it is no fun to play and not really a computer game at all, more a kind of interactive political cartoon. "With news gaming," says Frasca, "we are trying to explore a genre somewhere between the game and the political cartoon. These games make a point rather than entertain. If the game is too good, the message might become invisible."
There are hundreds of web-based games inspired by 9/11 and the war on terror. Many are simple Flash-based affairs and can be found on New Grounds. "For political video games, September 11 was the trigger," says Frasca. "If it had happened in the sixties, people would have grabbed their guitar and written a song about it. Now they're making games."
Technology writer Clive Thompson has argued that simple Flash games are like online graffiti, quick and dirty personal messages delivered in the language of the web. Certainly, most of the 9/11 games on New Grounds feel like so much adolescent scrawl - crude revenge fantasies centring on beating up Osama bin Laden.
That said, some seem to share some of the aims of September 12th, such as New York Defender, created by French outfit Uzinagaz and played by more than 1.5m people since October 2001. The game shows the Twin Towers intact. Planes approach them and you have to shoot them down before impact. Easy at first - but so many planes come, you can't get them all, so you always lose.
Uzinagaz's Jonathan Pitcher says they didn't set out to make a political point. "We only meant to fight our feeling of impotence. We reacted to September 11 like kindergarten children, by drawing planes crashing into buildings. It's just some kind of release. But looking back, we find there is a political statement to it. Since there is no way to win this game, you could say that violence cannot stop violence. Or that you cannot win against terror by using force." That said, Pitcher does not buy the news game idea. "Books, not games, are a good way to deliver a political message."
Molleindustria, a team of Italian "cognitive workers" takes the opposite view. Its site features games such as TuboFlex, which is about surviving in the dynamic labour market (more fun than it sounds) and Orgasm Simulator, in which you play a woman trying to keep her boyfriend happy by faking an orgasm.
Like Frasca, the team suggests that playing with expectations makes gamers think. "In the real world, there's no opportunity for flexible workers to move up the job ladder. In TuboFlex, we show this by creating a frustratingly random level structure, in which there is no progression." Though you can't win, Molleindustria's games are fun because of the amusing graphics. Humour balances the limited gameplay in political games, suggests a spokesperson. "But we do believe it's time to get rid of the obligatory connection between videogames and fun - what we call 'dictatorship of entertainment'."
Molleindustria says that activist games first appeared as alternative media flourished online after the anti-corporate protests in Seattle in 1999. For some time, campaigning groups have used Flash movies to spread their ideas virally online. Moving into games was the next logical step. Hence sites such as Global Arcade, which uses variations on classic games such as Pong to satirise globalisation. Similarly, the long-running British site Urban 75 features anti-corporate cover versions of old gaming classics. As Urban 75's Mike Slocombe says, his Brick a Brand is basically a variation on Breakout. After indicating their "brick-throwing ability" - student, protester or anarchist players get to bounce bricks at familiar-looking brand logos.
The natural home here for political gaming (the site hosts the satirical beat-'em-up, Downing Street Fighter), Urban75 could perhaps lay claim to have pioneered the genre of interactive political cartoons, with its Punch/Slap games. Online since 1996, these simple Java animations let players virtually punch politicians and celebs by clicking on their faces. A click comically distorts the (over) familiar face.
"They're horrendously simple but phenomenally popular," says Slocombe, who sees the games on his site as a bit of cheeky irreverence. The hope is that they might draw people into the Urban 75 community where they could find out more about the issues.
In contrast, Frasca and Bogost think political games might be a way for games in general to develop into more complex expressive forms. Two days after the Madrid bombs, Frasca created Madrid, a game where you try to help candles - held by crowds commemorating the dead - burn a little brighter by clicking on them. "At first, people were critical about the idea of making a game about this, but then they realised the game was about solidarity and hope. I got many emails from people saying it was the first time they were moved by a game," says Frasca.
5.12.2004
File-sharing to Become a Felony in Italy
http://www.istitutocolli.org/wiki/AndreaRossato
The Italian Government adopted, on March 22nd, an urgent act to award
the Italian movie industry the usual financial aids. The act also
included a disposition for the copyright enforcement with regard to
on-line file-sharing of movies. The disposition increased the
administrative pecuniary sanction, for illegal downloading and uploading
of files containing protected material, from 154 euro to 1500 euro.
An urgent act of the Government must be converted, within 60 days, into
a Parliamentary act, otherwise the original act will become null and
void. The process of conversion, as it's called, requires both the lower
House and the Senate to adopt the same text. The act of the Government
can be amended during the process.
On April 22nd the lower House (Camera dei Deputati) adopted the act with
small, but far-reaching, modifications. Particularly, changing the
wording of a provision of the Italian Copyright Act (L. 633/1941), the
Parliament decided illegal file-sharing to be a felony that can be
sentenced up to 4 years of prison.
Previously, for an illegal reproduction of copyright material to be a
felony, the commercial purpose of the wrong doer was required. The
amended provision requires the wrong doer to gain profit from her act.
According to Italian case law, profit has a very broad meaning,
including the savings for not buying a product.
The legislative history of the bill of conversion shows that the
modification was adopted because, after removing the administrative
sanctions originally intended to protect the movie industry only, a
compensation to both the recording industry, previously not included,
and the motion picture industry was deemed necessary by the Members of
Parliament.
The day after the adoption of the amendment everyone declared that the
original intent was to lessen the sanctions, and changing the commercial
requirement with the broader notion of profit was actually a mistake.
The administrative sanctions are thus gone, replaced by strong criminal
penalties. File-sharers, even if not directly or indirectly involved in
the commercialization of copyrighted materials, will receive the very
same treatment previously reserved to persons engaged in illegal
reproduction of protected materials at a commercial level.
The next step of the process of conversion requires the Senate to adopt
the bill discussed and amended by the lower House. Since the urgent act
will become null and void if not converted before May 22nd, the Senate
cannot correct the "mistake", otherwise the lower House should have to
discuss and adopt the bill once again.
A commission of the Senate thus approved a motion that asks the
Government to adopt a new urgent act to modify the previous amended one.
In the meantime the entertainment industry is quite happy with the new
wording of the Italian Copyright Act and not that eager to change it.
AndreaRossato
Copyright (C) 2004 AndreaRossato
Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire article are permitted
worldwide without royalty in any medium provided this notice is preserved.
the Italian movie industry the usual financial aids. The act also
included a disposition for the copyright enforcement with regard to
on-line file-sharing of movies. The disposition increased the
administrative pecuniary sanction, for illegal downloading and uploading
of files containing protected material, from 154 euro to 1500 euro.
An urgent act of the Government must be converted, within 60 days, into
a Parliamentary act, otherwise the original act will become null and
void. The process of conversion, as it's called, requires both the lower
House and the Senate to adopt the same text. The act of the Government
can be amended during the process.
On April 22nd the lower House (Camera dei Deputati) adopted the act with
small, but far-reaching, modifications. Particularly, changing the
wording of a provision of the Italian Copyright Act (L. 633/1941), the
Parliament decided illegal file-sharing to be a felony that can be
sentenced up to 4 years of prison.
Previously, for an illegal reproduction of copyright material to be a
felony, the commercial purpose of the wrong doer was required. The
amended provision requires the wrong doer to gain profit from her act.
According to Italian case law, profit has a very broad meaning,
including the savings for not buying a product.
The legislative history of the bill of conversion shows that the
modification was adopted because, after removing the administrative
sanctions originally intended to protect the movie industry only, a
compensation to both the recording industry, previously not included,
and the motion picture industry was deemed necessary by the Members of
Parliament.
The day after the adoption of the amendment everyone declared that the
original intent was to lessen the sanctions, and changing the commercial
requirement with the broader notion of profit was actually a mistake.
The administrative sanctions are thus gone, replaced by strong criminal
penalties. File-sharers, even if not directly or indirectly involved in
the commercialization of copyrighted materials, will receive the very
same treatment previously reserved to persons engaged in illegal
reproduction of protected materials at a commercial level.
The next step of the process of conversion requires the Senate to adopt
the bill discussed and amended by the lower House. Since the urgent act
will become null and void if not converted before May 22nd, the Senate
cannot correct the "mistake", otherwise the lower House should have to
discuss and adopt the bill once again.
A commission of the Senate thus approved a motion that asks the
Government to adopt a new urgent act to modify the previous amended one.
In the meantime the entertainment industry is quite happy with the new
wording of the Italian Copyright Act and not that eager to change it.
AndreaRossato
Copyright (C) 2004 AndreaRossato
Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire article are permitted
worldwide without royalty in any medium provided this notice is preserved.
5.11.2004
Mara Oikonomou, Technika
http://www.tc.umn.edu/~oiko0002/technika.html
Mara Oikonomou says she has been living the life of a programmer and is desperate for some vegetables, but look at the result: a rigorous experiment with interface and database forms, and it's poetry as well!
5.10.2004
it's a blog!
http://vanwagner.blogspot.com/
Adam van Wagner started a graduation blog. go take a gander!
5.07.2004
pirate radio or micro-broadcast?
http://www.wired.com/news/digiwood/0,1412,63343,00.html
"four-day Radio Summer Camps, sponsored by Free Radio Berkeley, offer how-tos for building transmitters and antennas, along with advice on handling any FCC agents that might come knocking. camps begin in June"
satire or real?
http://kairosnews.org/node/view/3760
Date: Thu, 6 May 2004 03:58:08 +0200 (MEST)
From: text warez
Subject: Owning Knowledge: New Intersections
of Intellectual Property, Technology, and Academia
Submitted by cel4145 on May 4, 2004 - 19:54.
With a lot of fantastic input and response from Clancy Ratliff, our panel
chair, Clancy Ratliff, our panel chair, Krista Kennedy, Mike Edwards,
Chris Worth, and I submitted the following panel proposal for CCCCC 2005.
I'll let everyone guess who hopes to present on which part of the
submission
With the verdict in the Eldred v. Ashcroft case and the Sonny Bono
Copyright Term Extension Act, the last decade has seen a steady dwindling
of the intellectual and creative works in the public commons. This panel
demonstrates the significance of the current intellectual property climate
as it intersects with authorship, technology, the fiction of scarcity, and
the collaborative model of open source software. The presenters argue that
collaborative authorship and open access to information and creative works
portend thriving knowledge formation in composition pedagogy and
scholarship.
"Open Source/Open Access as Social Constructionist Epistemology"
In Eric Raymond's cathedral/bazaar dichotomy, the bazaar of open source
development is a highly collaborative method of constructing knowledge;
traditionally in our field and other scholarly disciplines, an individual
or small groups of authors construct texts that are distributed from our
ivory towers as finished, polished products, a parallel to cathedral
building. Such insights from principles of open source and open access,
when coupled with Kenneth Bruffee's social constructionist theories and
explanations of nonfoundational learning, illustrate openness as a
nonfoundational knowledge making paradigm that privileges sharing and
collaboration more than our current publishing model.
"The Author and The Commons"
Speaker #2 merges postmodern constructions of authorship in order to
provide a groundwork for examining authorship within the context of the
digital intellectual commons. Drawing upon the theories of Foucault,
Barthes, and Deleuze and Guattari, Speaker #2 develops a notion of
"rhizomatic authorship" that supports collaborative authorship as well as
the creation of derivative and shared works. Blogs and wikis may be
understood as sites of this commons, and thus serve as a proving ground
for the concepts discussed in this presentation.
"Hacking Higher Ed: Envisioning New Models of Institutional Knowledge
Production"
Transforming the classroom, department, or institution to operate more
like an Open Source software project, with its semi-autonomous teams of
knowledge developers, is a viable model for teaching and learning that
stands in contrast to the current proprietary model and engages the best
practices of collaboration and revision native to composition. Speaker #3
discusses the applicability of this model of literacy-centered,
community-driven, and cross-disciplinary processes of knowledge production
to the work of teaching and learning and explores implications for WAC and
service learning.
"How Much Should You Pay for a C+ Paper? The Production, Circulation, and
Ownership of Student Writing"
Speaker #4 uses scholarship on the use value and exchange value of student
writing as a starting point from which to examine the pedagogical problems
associated with understanding digitally reproducible text as economically
"scarce" (limited and unequally available) property. Applying neoclassical
and Marxian economic theories to the economies of wired writing classrooms
compels an understanding of such classrooms as potential sites for
students' upward class mobility, wherein digitally reproduced texts are
seen not as scarce and solely owned pieces of intellectual property, but
as circulating instances of students' communal appropriations of their own
surplus labor.
From: text warez
Subject: Owning Knowledge: New Intersections
of Intellectual Property, Technology, and Academia
Submitted by cel4145 on May 4, 2004 - 19:54.
With a lot of fantastic input and response from Clancy Ratliff, our panel
chair, Clancy Ratliff, our panel chair, Krista Kennedy, Mike Edwards,
Chris Worth, and I submitted the following panel proposal for CCCCC 2005.
I'll let everyone guess who hopes to present on which part of the
submission
With the verdict in the Eldred v. Ashcroft case and the Sonny Bono
Copyright Term Extension Act, the last decade has seen a steady dwindling
of the intellectual and creative works in the public commons. This panel
demonstrates the significance of the current intellectual property climate
as it intersects with authorship, technology, the fiction of scarcity, and
the collaborative model of open source software. The presenters argue that
collaborative authorship and open access to information and creative works
portend thriving knowledge formation in composition pedagogy and
scholarship.
"Open Source/Open Access as Social Constructionist Epistemology"
In Eric Raymond's cathedral/bazaar dichotomy, the bazaar of open source
development is a highly collaborative method of constructing knowledge;
traditionally in our field and other scholarly disciplines, an individual
or small groups of authors construct texts that are distributed from our
ivory towers as finished, polished products, a parallel to cathedral
building. Such insights from principles of open source and open access,
when coupled with Kenneth Bruffee's social constructionist theories and
explanations of nonfoundational learning, illustrate openness as a
nonfoundational knowledge making paradigm that privileges sharing and
collaboration more than our current publishing model.
"The Author and The Commons"
Speaker #2 merges postmodern constructions of authorship in order to
provide a groundwork for examining authorship within the context of the
digital intellectual commons. Drawing upon the theories of Foucault,
Barthes, and Deleuze and Guattari, Speaker #2 develops a notion of
"rhizomatic authorship" that supports collaborative authorship as well as
the creation of derivative and shared works. Blogs and wikis may be
understood as sites of this commons, and thus serve as a proving ground
for the concepts discussed in this presentation.
"Hacking Higher Ed: Envisioning New Models of Institutional Knowledge
Production"
Transforming the classroom, department, or institution to operate more
like an Open Source software project, with its semi-autonomous teams of
knowledge developers, is a viable model for teaching and learning that
stands in contrast to the current proprietary model and engages the best
practices of collaboration and revision native to composition. Speaker #3
discusses the applicability of this model of literacy-centered,
community-driven, and cross-disciplinary processes of knowledge production
to the work of teaching and learning and explores implications for WAC and
service learning.
"How Much Should You Pay for a C+ Paper? The Production, Circulation, and
Ownership of Student Writing"
Speaker #4 uses scholarship on the use value and exchange value of student
writing as a starting point from which to examine the pedagogical problems
associated with understanding digitally reproducible text as economically
"scarce" (limited and unequally available) property. Applying neoclassical
and Marxian economic theories to the economies of wired writing classrooms
compels an understanding of such classrooms as potential sites for
students' upward class mobility, wherein digitally reproduced texts are
seen not as scarce and solely owned pieces of intellectual property, but
as circulating instances of students' communal appropriations of their own
surplus labor.
5.06.2004
all the fear, uncertainty, doubt that's fit to print
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/06/technology/circuits/06chat.html
more alarmist infoganda, this time from the new york times, focusing on IRC as the net's "wilder side" - it's basically all porn and pirates, folks - and oh yeah, a few unix geeks.
"When I.R.C. started in the 1980's, it was best known as a way for serious computer professionals worldwide to communicate in real time. It is still possible - though sometimes a bit difficult - to find mature technical discussions among the tens of thousands of I.R.C. chat rooms, known as channels, operating at any one time. There are also respectable I.R.C. systems and channels - some operated by universities or Internet service providers - for gamers seeking opponents or those who want to talk about sports or hobbies.blech! hey, quick, what's the way to journalism school?
Still, I.R.C. perhaps most closely resembles the cantina scene in "Star Wars'': a louche hangout of digital smugglers, pirates, curiosity seekers and the people who love them (or hunt them). There seem to be I.R.C. channels dedicated to every sexual fetish, and I.R.C. users speculate that terrorists also use the networks to communicate in relative obscurity. Yet I.R.C. has its advocates, who point to its legitimate uses."
5.05.2004
weirdest and longest URL i've seen
http://www.wemadeoutinatreeandthisoldguysatandwatchedus.com/No so much "new media" as it is putrid and foul
http://startribune.com/stories/509/4760901.html
Notice Ralph Nader's comment near the end of the article. Finally, a presidential candidate who is sounding off on what really matters.
You knew I'd say this after my reaction to Walter Benjamin. Notwithstanding copywrite issues owing to longer-than-three-second-samples, while I don't quite agree that "the elevation of all consumers to potential creators thereby denies the composer or musician an aura of autonomy and authenticity (345)"-he'd have to qualify it with "presumed marketable" (autonomy and authenticity), and admit that this supposition is solipsistic to the composer-as-marketable-object- I think it highly inappropriate that Sanjek assumes that the creation of an effective musical collage is somehow divorced from "real" musicianship. As he says on the following page, "the recording [and, I say, the recording instrument] itself [is] a musical instrument". The sampling apperatus requires considerable skill to use effectively (don't believe me? try to create your own voices on your Japanese synthesizer); too, the sampling musician/DJ must have a developed musical-aesthetic sense in order to create effective pieces of music. A composer arranges tones, an interior designer arranges furniture. Is there, outside of copyright legalities, any objection to sampling/collage-as-music, or "real" art?
5.04.2004
Per our outdoor file-sharing conversation last week
Coleman: Music industry must adapt to technology
Emily Johns, Star Tribune Washington Bureau Correspondent
WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Sen. Norm Coleman, R-Minn., told songwriters, lawyers and other music industry participants Monday that if the recording industry wants to survive the trend of downloading music, the industry will have to adapt rather than fight evolving technology.
Coleman, chairman of the Senate's Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, spoke at the Future of Music Coalition Policy Summit in Washington and told industry leaders that litigation is not the answer.
"You are the creative force in America; be creative," Coleman said. "I don't believe you can stop illegal use by suing a few people."
Coleman has taken a leading role in investigating problems the recording industry faces with "peer-to-peer" downloading or Internet file swapping of copyrighted music. In the past several months he has met with representatives of the Recording Industry Association of America, the Motion Picture Association of America, Universal Studios and the Distributed Computing Industry Association, a group that represents the computer industry.
Coleman said the recording industry is going to have to develop more competitive alternative business models in order to keep the industry running in an era of digital technology.
But suing customers, he said, is not a good business strategy.
"The answer is not going to come from government. The answer is not going to come from Washington," he said.
Paul Metsa, a Minneapolis songwriter and music director for Famous Dave's Barbeque and Blues in Uptown who also attended the summit, said that although Coleman was speaking to a "primarily liberal" audience, he is one of the only Congress members taking a firm stand on the issue of file sharing.
Metsa said he has known Coleman for 20 years.
"He might have the head of a Republican, but he's got the heart of a Democrat," Metsa said. "He's bright and very soulful -- the arts are very important to him."
Emily Johns, Star Tribune Washington Bureau Correspondent
WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Sen. Norm Coleman, R-Minn., told songwriters, lawyers and other music industry participants Monday that if the recording industry wants to survive the trend of downloading music, the industry will have to adapt rather than fight evolving technology.
Coleman, chairman of the Senate's Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, spoke at the Future of Music Coalition Policy Summit in Washington and told industry leaders that litigation is not the answer.
"You are the creative force in America; be creative," Coleman said. "I don't believe you can stop illegal use by suing a few people."
Coleman has taken a leading role in investigating problems the recording industry faces with "peer-to-peer" downloading or Internet file swapping of copyrighted music. In the past several months he has met with representatives of the Recording Industry Association of America, the Motion Picture Association of America, Universal Studios and the Distributed Computing Industry Association, a group that represents the computer industry.
Coleman said the recording industry is going to have to develop more competitive alternative business models in order to keep the industry running in an era of digital technology.
But suing customers, he said, is not a good business strategy.
"The answer is not going to come from government. The answer is not going to come from Washington," he said.
Paul Metsa, a Minneapolis songwriter and music director for Famous Dave's Barbeque and Blues in Uptown who also attended the summit, said that although Coleman was speaking to a "primarily liberal" audience, he is one of the only Congress members taking a firm stand on the issue of file sharing.
Metsa said he has known Coleman for 20 years.
"He might have the head of a Republican, but he's got the heart of a Democrat," Metsa said. "He's bright and very soulful -- the arts are very important to him."
5.03.2004
user experience
http://www.opennetinitiative.net/
if it seems to you like the internet is turning into a virtual company town, with omnipresent surveillance, spyware and surrepitious data mining, there are a few interesting projects out there.
generally speaking, they protect privacy, such as invisible IRC where your IP address is not revealed; they prevent or undermine censorship, like Peekabooty, which allows users to get around firewalls that prevent them from accessing the internet; or they enable users to resort to steganographic methods such as camerashy software or other strongly encrypted programs that interface with computer networks without revealing your identity and activity. some might want to add encryption technology to AOL Instant Messenger, so that your conversations remain safe from eavesdropping; others might go through anonymizer when browsing the web, or through hushmail when sending or receiving sensitive information via email.
there is even a range of suites like this one or this one that combine several tools for guaranteeing privacy, freedom of access, and freedom of speech.
last but not least, the U.S. charged the International Broadcasting Bureau (formerly known as voice of america) with a federal initiative to bypass other nations' restrictive blocks in accessing the net. however, as recently transpired, their implementation of a porn filter backfired, since blocking words such as "ass" (inadvertently preventing access to usembassy.state.gov), "hot" (as in hotmail.com and hotels.com) and "pic" (as in epic.noaa.gov) is clearly not having the desired effect. see the report by the open net initiative.
generally speaking, they protect privacy, such as invisible IRC where your IP address is not revealed; they prevent or undermine censorship, like Peekabooty, which allows users to get around firewalls that prevent them from accessing the internet; or they enable users to resort to steganographic methods such as camerashy software or other strongly encrypted programs that interface with computer networks without revealing your identity and activity. some might want to add encryption technology to AOL Instant Messenger, so that your conversations remain safe from eavesdropping; others might go through anonymizer when browsing the web, or through hushmail when sending or receiving sensitive information via email.
there is even a range of suites like this one or this one that combine several tools for guaranteeing privacy, freedom of access, and freedom of speech.
last but not least, the U.S. charged the International Broadcasting Bureau (formerly known as voice of america) with a federal initiative to bypass other nations' restrictive blocks in accessing the net. however, as recently transpired, their implementation of a porn filter backfired, since blocking words such as "ass" (inadvertently preventing access to usembassy.state.gov), "hot" (as in hotmail.com and hotels.com) and "pic" (as in epic.noaa.gov) is clearly not having the desired effect. see the report by the open net initiative.
flashback games
http://pacmanhattan.com/
PacManhattan is a live-action version of PacMan, played around Washington Square Park, in which people in Pac Man and ghost suits chase each other through the streets, seeking out power-pellets.
