While giving away Bezos’s money, I thought back to the wonderful work of Bo Burnham. If you’re feeling sinister, check out the hilarious Bezos I and II here:
https://open.spotify.com/embed/album/35qVMfUfBN6q2xzm9rZn5a?utm_source=generator
A bit late to the party, but this just in from the left-wing journal of politics and culture, Jacobin:
Gamification Is Exploitation
The trend of gamification – applying elements of game play to other areas of life – is the apex of the neoliberal fantasy, rendering both work and our leisure time outside of it into a series of games that we supposedly enjoy playing for their own sake.
Just wanted to alert you to two extremely helpful facets of our program:
1. You can consult with the simpatico and highly skilled/knowledgeable GC Digital Initiatives Fellows: they’re great for chatting through ideas for final projects, thesis topics, etc.
2. You can attend one of the many stimulating workshops on offer each semester from the GCDI, starting with tomorrow’s Intro to Python, Part 2.
See you Monday!
Great talk last night, and thanks to the presenters, Katie and Dan.
I wanted to post a link to the free/open Manifold edition of the book I mentioned last night, Metagaming. We will read an excerpt for the 11/20 class under the “critical play” rubric, but I think the argument is relevant to the “gamification” topic as well.
Have a great week and see you Monday.
I’m sure I’m not the only Black Mirror fan in this crowd. While reading about “gamification” and thinking about the various ways play has been instrumentalized to managerial ends in the past 10+ years, I thought back to one of the first episodes, “Fifteen Million Merits.”
I’ll spare you the plot summary, but it’s interesting to me that the episode aired in 2011, at precisely the time that Bogost’s notorious rant on gamification as “bullshit” took place…
I should’ve posted this earlier, but here’s a 20 min peek at McGonigal’s work at TED, where she’s a frequent contributer:
Jane McGonigal: Gaming can make a better world
Games like World of Warcraft give players the means to save worlds, and incentive to learn the habits of heroes. What if we could harness this gamer power to solve real-world problems? Jane McGonigal says we can, and explains how.
Also, here’s a link to ChoreWars, discussed in chapter 7, and World Without Oil, one of McGonigal’s own games, just for fun.
Having confronted our first frustrating broken object with Norman’s Window, I wanted to point anyone who’s interested to some of the critical literature within DH on the topic of digital preservation. As has been widely observed in DH circles in the past 10 years or so, DH erupted onto the scene in the 2000s amid a broad techno-utopianism that was fascinated with the new. More recently, the field has started to look back and consolidate its own history and discovered that … everything is broken.
I exaggerate, but the deprecation of Adobe’s Flash and the obsolescence of early experiments predicated on particular soft- and hardware configs means that countless projects, including projects that were very prominent and widely-discussed in their time, are largely unread and are being forgotten.
This is a dynamic area in DH, and if anyone’s interested would make a great final project topic. Here are a couple of books that will get you started.
Pathfinders: Pathfinders
Introduction to Pathfinders An introduction to Pathfinders with detailed information about the project Judy Malloy’s Uncle Roger Judy Malloy’s Opening Page John McDaid’s Uncle Buddy’s Phantom Funhouse John McDaid’s opening page for Uncle Buddy’s Phantom Funhouse Shelley Jackson’s Patchwork Girl This is the opening page of the Jackson Reading Path
Traversals
An exercise in reclaiming electronic literary works on inaccessible platforms, examining four works as both artifacts and operations.Many pioneering works of…
I wanted to pass along Nicole’s self-introduction and contact info. I’ve invited her to visit us in class as well, but especially since you’re plunging into the group projects this week, she might be a good resource/sounding board. Here’s what she gave me:
I am a PhD candidate in English at the Graduate Center, where I broadly work on topics related to the environment, media studies, and the history of technology. I have also taught various coding and tech skills at the GC and elsewhere—for example: JavaScript (w. HTML/CSS), D3, git/GitHub (w. Markdown/Command Line), Python, accessible design ideas, & etc.—and have worked broadly on applied digital media and digital humanities projects.
I am reaching out to share that I am available to meet with students to discuss coursework and project-based questions as well as program related queries (i.e. advising on course selection and the like). I will be holding office hours for students this semester by appointment.Alternatively, for quick questions, students can always just message me on the department’s Slack or email me.
A hearty welcome to all students in DH 780 this term. I look forward to meeting you on Monday (note that we’re in 4119). In the meantime, please look around. There’s nothing to prepare for our first meeting, but if you’d like to introduce yourself via the charming microblogging interface, Padlet, be my guest:
https://huntercollege68.padlet.org/jallred/dh-780-introduction-games-people-play-eju0g92tcgz67v2h
I trust that you’re on the Commons and a member of our group + site if you’re reading this, but email me if you’re having issues.
Re-reading Wardrip-Fruin on playable media this week, I thought of Wallace Stevens’s great long poem, “The Blue Guitar” (1937). The poem is a long riff on the way “things as they are” are transformed through the refracting energies of poetry (the titular “blue guitar”). I think both Bogost and Wardrip-Fruin, in different ways, want to think about how digital texts can marshal some of this deformative energy and create new ways of thinking about the same old, same old.
Here are some excerpts from the poem for those who are interested from a charming olde website of yore from one of my mentors, Al Filreis.
