Today we concluded the New Media Seminar with Scott McCloud’s now classic Ted Talk and a free-ranging discussion about why McCloud’s approach to “visions of the future” affords so many insights about the narrative potential of new media, and why a course on new media might conclude with McCloud’s work. We all agreed that McCloud […]
A. Nelson
Our reading for the seminar today is “Two Selections by Brenda Laurel,” and I am eager to hear what some of the experts in our group have to say about her insights on human computer interaction. My own thoughts about her conception of agency are here, but I’m wondering if they might change a bit […]
I’m sympathetic to Claire’s and Lauren’s assertions about technology itself being value neutral, and echo their claim that it’s how we use the technology (or the medium, since this is McLuhan’s week) that makes it positive or negative. And it is easy to criticize McLuhan for over-reaching and over-synthesizing by reducing the message to the […]
The last time I read Personal Dynamic Media, I blogged about the resonance of Kay and Goldberg’s flute metaphor for the possibilities of creating and communicating with the internet and new media. As a recovering musician with an interest in how music is created and perceived in times of political and social upheaval, I find […]
Ted Nelson’s Computer Lib / Dream Machines reading is among my favorites in the New Media Seminar. As Claire notes, even for the connoisseur nugget-searcher, this selection, and especially the “Dream Machines” section, abounds in provocative, compelling morsels. I’m going to just note one for now: “I believe computer screens can make people happier, smarter, […]
Yesterday in the seminar we kicked off our discussion of Douglas Engelbart’s work with a tribute video featuring interviews with Engelbart and footage from a conference commemorating the fortieth anniversary of the “Mother of All Demos” in 2008. Hearing Engelbart, who just passed away in July, talk about his life’s work and hopes for the […]
With support from the History Department, University Libraries and an Innovation Grant, I’ve been working on a blogging project with my Soviet history course this fall. Lots of people have asked me how things are going, so here’s an update: The short answer is: Great! The slightly longer answer is: There are some kinks to […]
This was not the advice I was looking for when I consulted my Old Media version of Brian Eno’s Oblique Strategies this morning. The new media version’s offering was more intriguing: “Be Dirty,” it suggested. Ok. I started cleaning my office. Boring, but not dirty. The opposite of dirty in fact. The instruction to “Be […]
Last January, I stumbled into a workshop on student blogging, spent the weekend revamping the course I was about to teach on the history of humans and domestic animals, and, without really realizing what was happening, fell into the slipstream of a richly rewarding, compellingly complex, and insistently dynamic network of practices and technologies. I […]