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For the first time ↵I was faster ↑than Industrial Technology & Witchcraft, but of course still ↑way slower than boingboing ↑and slashdot. … Continue reading
Monthly Archives: October 2005
The secret of the stairs at Aragon Essentially, hypermedia is a non-linear multi-media document. By its inclusion of data stored by using the more traditional technologies of representation (film and text for example), in a user-directed, non-linear publication, hypermedia creates a fresh, user-driven means for reading and writing culture. [↵Anderson 1999] So far I agree—but I’d like to amend that ‘a piece of’ hypermedia can contain a linear path, at least there is the possibility to propose one [or more?] linear path[s] to the recipient. Like Astrid Blumstengel did it in her hypertext ↑Entwicklung hypermedialer Lernsysteme [in German]. The non-linear … Continue reading
↑ANDERSON, KEVIN TAYLOR. 1999. ↑Ethnographic hypermedia: Transcending thick descriptions. ↑SIGHTS: Visual Anthropology Forum. Working paper from the visual anthropology workshop and course Transcultural Images and Visual Anthropology organized by ↑The Centre for Cross-Cultural Research, 3 to 28 August, 1998. Canberra: Australian National University of Canberra. Electronic Document. Available online: http://cc.joensuu.fi/sights/kevin.htm In 1986 Marcus and Clifford compiled a series of essays entitled Writing Culture [↵Clifford & Marcus 1986], which spawned critical academic debate and reassessment of the practice of ethnography itself. Yet, for all of the arguments and debates contained within the book, and those which have followed […], the discourse … Continue reading
↑BURKE, TIMOTHY AND KEVIN BURKE. 1999. Saturday morning fever: Growing up with cartoon culture. New York: St. Martin’s. GOLDSTEIN, JEFFREY. 2001. ↑Does playing violent video games cause aggressive behavior?. Chicago: University of Chicago. Electronic Document. Available online: http://culturalpolicy.uchicago.edu/conf2001/papers/goldstein.html … Continue reading
During the recent weeks and months quite some discussion about ↑Wikipedia in general and its academical usage in particular has aroused—especially interesting to the anthropologist are the according entries and replies over at ↑Savage Minds. Among those teaching at my institute the use of Wikipedia by students is an issue, too. In fact just the day before yesterday I gave my students the ‘order’ not to cite Wikipedia-articles in their papers. I did that for two reasons: 1) I have doubts in undergraduates’ abilities to judge the quality of an anthropology-related Wikipedia-article. 2) I take undergraduate-papers to belong to the … Continue reading
↑Garry’s mod [Gmod], of which ↑version 9.0 was released just today, is a ↵HL2-mod[ification] which allows you to ↑do uncanny things in HL2. ↑Wikipedia says: “Garry’s Mod (Gmod), a successor to the throne of the original JBMod, is a simple modification created by Garry Newman. While it does not have any actual gameplay value, it functions as a huge sandbox, where the player is free to manipulate most of the objects and features of the Source engine. This has allowed an extensive community to build up and creating mini-games with Gmod, therefore creating a “Game in a Game” of … Continue reading
As I am an advocate for learning from ‘Writing Culture’ [and everything in its wake] and from visual anthropology, when using ICTs as a tool for sociocultural anthropology, it is my duty to hint you to the website of the ↑AG Visuelle Anthropologie [in German] which went online just recently. … Continue reading
↑All your base are belong to us (AYBABTU)—although many times declared dead for good—still is one of the most widespread Internet topoi. As an ↵easter egg AYBABTU made its way into countless artefacts. Already in the tutorial level [containing even another ↑secret] of ↵Max Payne it can be read on a coffee-shop sign [see above]. Now there is one more wonderfully creative example of artistical expression of gamer culture—↑Zero Wing Rhapsody [↑mirror] is “an anime-style musical remake of the infamous ‘All Your Base’/Zero Wing intro, with the words set to a well-known piece of music by Queen… with a few … Continue reading
Pitfalls of virtual property (↵Bartle 2004) The power of gifts: organizing social relationships in open source communities (↵Bergquist & Ljungberg 2001) Anthropological perspectives on technology (↵Schiffer 2001) Technology as the anthropology of cultural practice (↵Aunger 2003) Ethnologie des joueurs d’échecs (↵Wendling 2002) Pushing the wood: Chess playing as an anthropological subject (↵Lavenda 2003) Nexus: Small worlds and the groundbreaking science of networks (↵Buchanan 2002) Six degrees: The science of a connected age (↵Watts 2003) A new science for a connected world (↵Valverde 2004) Self-organization and identification of web communities (↵Flake et al. 2002) A highly efficient waste of effort: Open … Continue reading
Although I have read “Techgnosis” (↵Davis 1998) and still am deeply impressed and quite influenced by William Gibson’s rendition of a voodoo-haunted cyberspace in “Count Zero” (↵Gibson 1986), and although I have been into the anthropology of religion, magic, and all other things that go bump in the night for the longer time of my being at the university, I am not on a quest for finding salvation in cyberspace [really?]. But spirituality [in the broadest sense possible] of course always has to be an issue when trying to understand cultures. That’s the background of my using according metaphors … Continue reading