The BBC carries a short piece by ↑Genevieve Bell, corporate anthropologist at Intel, on what a corporate anthropologist does: ↑Viewpoint: Anthropology meets technology. And ↑anthropologies has the essay ↑Anthropology in High Tech by John Sherry, yet another anthropologist at Intel. from ↑John Postill via medianthro list—tnx … Continue reading
The patent portfolio battles between Apple on the one side and Samsung, Google, and whomyouhave on the other sides, are all over the news. Within the gaming industry since some months there is a disturbing trademark battle on, too. It has its fun sides, but is a more serious and deep-probing issue than I first thought. At the core is a dispute between the companies ↑Mojang and Zenimax/Bethesda over the use of the word ‘Scrolls.’ Mojang is the company of ↑Markus “Notch” Persson, the creator of the indie cult title ↑Minecraft. ↑Bethesda Softworks is the developer and publisher … Continue reading
On 26th September 2011 ↑Noam Chomsky announced his solidarity with the Occupy Wall Street movement. The next day ↑Cornell West addressed the crowd in person. And on 09th October ↑Slavoj Žižek gave a talk at ↑Liberty Plaza (formely Zuccotti Park). Not that I am much in synch with Žižek, but it’s the second time this year that I read something from him which made me applaud. Have a snippet from the transcript: In April 2011, the Chinese government prohibited on TV and films and in novels all stories that contain alternate reality or time travel. This is a good sign … Continue reading
During the upcoming winter term it is me who has to deliver the ‘Introduction to social and cultural anthropology’ lecture (anthro 101) at ↑my institute—I guess as a starter for the session on ↑economic anthropology I will use the 12 September entry ↑Why? posted at ↑OccupyWallStreet: Contemporary society is commodified society, where the economic transaction has become the dominant way of relating to the culture and artifacts of human civilization, over and above all other means of understanding, with any exceptions being considered merely a temporary holdout as the market swiftly works on ways to monetize those few things which … Continue reading
My new book ‘↑Cyberanthropology‘ has been published. You absolutely are invited to order it online ↑via amazon [I have absolutely nothing against you clicking the like-button there] or ↑via Peter Hammer Verlag. Offline every decent bookshop can get it for you, too. As the book is in German, here is my description of its contents in German: In “Cyberanthropology” geht es um moderne Technik und den Menschen, um Computer und Internet, um Computerspiele, aber auch um GPS, Automobile, Roboter … Was vor nicht allzu langer Zeit Science Fiction war, ist Lebenswirklichkeit geworden. Die vielfältigen Erscheinungsformen digitaler Elektronik und … Continue reading
The ‘free’ in ↵my last entry was meant as in speech, now it is meant as in beer. Just for clarification—the following links do not lead to illegal hacks or cons, but to sites and services maintained by the respective licence holders. The reason why I post those here is that it is economically interesting that top-notch game titles are made available for free in order to try out new business models. Especially for the anthropology-of-economy buffs there’s a ton of interesting issues to be discovered. That settled, here’s what I have to say: ↑TF2 is F2P :-) … Continue reading
It must have been four, five, or more years ago, when I had a conversation on the anthropology of work with one of my three teachers, ↑Kurt Beck. Somewhere into our talk Kurt mentioned Chaplin’s ‘↑Modern Times‘ (1936), associating the famous scenes of Chaplin at the assembly line with instances of workers ‘fighting against the conveyor belt,’ described in ethnographies of work. The gist was that workers at assembly lines by their practices not necessarily do fight metaphorically against their bosses, or even commit sabotage. Happens, of course, but isn’t always the case. Rather they actively ↵appropriate the technological artefact … Continue reading
All right, I am on my way to proof a point regarding the cyberpunk genre, respectively the discourse which in my view it has become. And Foucault really has me now, as I am creating lists, tables, and stuff for that. In respect to motion pictures variables of interest are budget (correllating with the faith the producing industry had in the project) and gross revenue (correllating with the audience’s interest in the project). At the moment I am concerned with the budget. The idea is to make a comparison through time. Now, the earliest motion picture … Continue reading
Spillovers from the computer game industry include technological spillovers from games into other industries, impacts on education and impacts on learning and social interaction. It provides an ongoing example of the development of new business and payment models which may have applications in other content sectors […] Technology originally developed for games is increasingly used in other applications. Games developments in computer images, graphics resolution, high-speed interactivity, and touch feedback are used in other applications. Many of these technologies had theirs origins in defence (e.g. flight simulators, pilot helmets, etc.) and medical imaging where virtual modelling developed for … Continue reading
His total assets were quickly converted to New Yen, a fat sheaf of the old paper currency that circulated endlessly through the closed circuit of the world’s black markets like the seashells of the Trobriand islanders. (↵Gibson 1984: 6) … Continue reading