Month: October 2005
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alan wake central
My cyberian tribe’s limbo has been enlarged by the emergence of the new website ↑AlanWAKECentral.com … Style and usability looks very much like ↑AlanWAKE.Net [wtf?] Anyway, I immediately registered and am one of the earliest members now ;-) via entry at AlanWAKE.Net
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synthetic worlds
↑Edward Castronova, who rose to fame with his ↑Virtual worlds: A first hand account of market and society on the cyberian frontier (↵Castronova 2001—see also ↵Castronova 2003 and ↑terra nova) has written his first full-length monograph [↑Overview]: ↑CASTRONOVA, EDWARD. 2005. Synthetic worlds: the business and culture of online games. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. via…
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otaku, doujinshi, and gamemodding
↑Mizuko Ito [↵keitai-scholar and sister of blogosphere-legend ↑Joi Ito] introduces us to ↑Otaku Media Literacy—if one would replace ‘anime otaku’ by ‘gamemodders’ and add one or two adjustments, her text still would be ‘the truth’. Here’s an excerpt: ↑[…] Overseas anime otaku—fans of Japanese anime—represent an emergent form of media literacy that, though still marginal,…
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the end
Yesterday night Stephen Hawking—being on promotion tour for his new book—was guest at a late night show on German national TV. I watched some ten minutes of the show and the way Professor Hawking was presented decidedly reminded me of ↑Professor [Charles] X[avier], the founder / mentor / leader of the ↑X-Men. Then this…
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speed runs revisited
Nice article on speedruns at SpOn: ↑Speedrun: Spiel auf Zeit [in German. As usual with issues like that, the Wikipedia-entry ↑Speedrun is more comprehensive.] Goes well with ↵speed runs, ↵piling up, and ↵appropriation by mastership. via entry at hinterding
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back from conference
The ↑2005 installment of the biannual Conference of the German Anthropological Association (GAA aka DGV) is over and I am well back in Munich. My ↵cyberanthropology workshop now is history—it went well, and from all I heard till now it was very well received, too [Or is it my intimidating personality that no one dares…
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keitai
The Japanese term for mobile phone, keitai (roughly translated as “something you carry with you”), evokes not technical capability or freedom of movement but intimacy and portability, defining a personal accessory that allows constant social connection. Japan’s enthusiastic engagement with mobile technology has become—along with anime, manga, and sushi—part of its trendsetting popular culture. Personal,…
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FLOSS developers as a social formation
↑Frauke Lehmann, who will give a ↵presentation at my ↵cyberanthropology workshop, has put her M.A.-thesis (↵Lehmann 2004a) online under a CC-licence. The thesis is called ↑Entwickler Freier Software als soziale Formation [in German | .pdf | 873KB] and an English-language derivate of it (↵Lehmann 2004b) has been published at ↑First Monday: ↑FLOSS developers as a…