Category Archives: non-fiction

science fiction debt

Posted on Wednesday, 18th April 2012 by

Jo Walton’s ↑The Best Science Fiction Ideas in any Non-Fiction Ever: David Graeber’s Debt: The First Five Thousand Years has some nice ideas about why so many science fiction readers and writers are fascinated by ↵anthropologist David Graeber’s book ‘Debt’ … Continue reading →

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fistful of quarters

Posted on Sunday, 15th April 2012 by

Joshua Bearman’s article ‘↓The perfect game‘ (2008) since years slumbers on my HDD—luckily it’s still available online for everybody. Testimony to the amazing zen-like perfect-flow achievable in high-end arcade gaming. Additionally there are two magnificent documentaries on the subject: ‘The … Continue reading →

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ambiguity, oscillation, disorder

Posted on Saturday, 7th April 2012 by

Online life is usually held to present particular problems for ethnography as it is hidden and ambiguous, and boundaries are not clear. However, ethnography and online daily life are similar procedures in which people go about constructing ‘culture’ to make … Continue reading →

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cyberculture as discourse

Posted on Wednesday, 4th April 2012 by

After elaborating on methodological concerns and before delving into detailed analysis of the representational politics in selected cyberpop examples, it is important to situate the objects of this book in their cultural context. Chapter 2 is an overview of several … Continue reading →

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playing with videogames

Posted on Sunday, 1st April 2012 by

[abstract:] Playing with Videogames documents the richly productive, playful and social cultures of videogaming that support, surround and sustain this most important of digital media forms and yet which remain largely invisible within existing studies. James Newman details the rich … Continue reading →

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magic kingdom pilgrimage

Posted on Friday, 30th March 2012 by

[abstract:] This essay explores the proposition that Walt Disney World is an amusement park whose form is borrowed from the pilgrimage center. Bateson, Norbeck, and Turner have shown that play and ritual together comprise a metaprocess of expressive behavior rooted … Continue reading →

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cues in cyberspace

Posted on Wednesday, 28th March 2012 by

[abstract:] Although the relative paucity of social cues in computer-mediated communication poses problems of the organization of social relations in cyberspace, recent studies have begun to focus on the ways in whicht this deficit is managed. This article contributes to … Continue reading →

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corporeal virtual reality

Posted on Tuesday, 27th March 2012 by

[abstract: ] This paper considers the experience of embodiment in current and (possible) future virtual reality applications. A phenomenological perspective is adopted to explore user embodiment in those virtual reality applications that both do and do not include a visual … Continue reading →

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turing’s cathedral

Posted on Sunday, 25th March 2012 by

Here’s the official synopsis of historian of science ↑George Dyson‘s latest book ‘Turing’s Cathedral’ (2012): “It is possible to invent a single machine which can be used to compute any computable sequence,” twenty-four-year-old Alan Turing announced in 1936. In Turing’s … Continue reading →

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pfaffenberger on society

Posted on Saturday, 24th March 2012 by

Today, most sociologists accept that communities arise, not necessarily from face-to-face interaction, but rather from shared meanings. Because they are capable of promulgating shared meanings on an unprecedented scale, new communication and media technologies (including newspapers, motion pictures, radio, television, … Continue reading →

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