Digital Skulduggery & more
Maybe this post is only of local interest, but I wanted share some insight into a disturbing rumor that went viral at Davidson College after credible evidence emerged about neo-Nazi activity among a few Davidson students. The rumors were scary. The gist was that plans for a school shooting were discovered on a whiteboard in… Continue reading How a Student Project on Conspiracy Theories Became a Conspiracy Theory
For years—like ever since I started blogging in 2003 or so—I've wanted to include a link blog on this site. You know, one of those side bars that just has cool links. Back in the day, Andy Baio's link blog was my jam, something I often paid more attention to than his main blog. It looks… Continue reading A Link Blog, Finally
Every so often I have an opportunity to teach a section of Davidson College's first year writing course, WRI 101. It's the only required class that all Davidson students take, but each section is shaped around a different topic. In Fall 2018 topics will range from "Writing about Modern Physics and Technology" (Section A) to… Continue reading WRI 101: Monsters
Yesterday in Facebook Killed the Feed I highlighted the way Facebook and Twitter have contributed to the decline of scholarly blogging. In truth though, those specific platforms can't take all the blame. There are other reasons why academic bloggers have stopped blogging. There are systemic problems, like lack of time in our ever more harried… Continue reading What about Blogging Keeps Me from Blogging
There's a movement to reclaim blogging as a vibrant, vital space in academia. Dan Cohen, Kathleen Fitzpatrick, and Alan Jacobs have written about their renewed efforts to have smart exchanges of ideas take place on blogs of their own. Rather than taking place on, say Twitter, where well-intentioned discussions are easily derailed by trolls, bots,… Continue reading Facebook Killed the Feed
I'm spending July in Cádiz, Spain, with my family and a bunch of students from Davidson College. The other weekend we visited Granada, home of the Alhambra. Built by the last Arabic dynasty on the Iberian peninsula in the 13th century, the Alhambra is a stunning palace overlooking the city below. The city of Granada… Continue reading The Maze and the Other in Interactive FictionOn Labyrinths, the Infinite, and the Compass
I’ve broken up the crazy end-of-the-semester season by sneaking in episodes of The Magicians, the SyFy series based on Lev Grossman’s novels. The premise of the novels and TV adaptation blends Harry Potter, The Chronicles of Narnia, The Paper Chase, and a host of generic 90s shows about good-looking 20-somethings to imagine a grad school… Continue reading Throwing Shade: The Metaphysics behind Objectification in The Magicians
The novelist Colson Whitehead just wrapped up a visit to Davidson College as our 2019 Reynolds speaker. The annual Reynolds Lecture was established in 1959 through a gift from the Z. Smith Reynolds Foundation. Every year this endowed lecture brings a distinguished guest from the humanities, arts, or sciences to campus. Former Reynolds speakers have… Continue reading Colson Whitehead at Davidson CollegeOr, Who Will Survive in America?
Explore the dark web Mod a videogame Witness the Network Effect Make counter-animated GIFs Research alternative timelines of gamergate Decide whom to kill with self-driving cars Write one billion poems Read videogame code Build speculative designs with Arduinos Visualize something that will outlast the heat death of the sun
In September 2017, a Davidson College alumna alerted the college via a tweet that the Davidson College Alumni Association was advertising on the alt-right website Breitbart. The display of promotional material for Davidson College next to the ultra conservative and nativist rhetoric of Breitbart was not only a jarring juxtaposition, it was also completely inadvertent,… Continue reading Hacking Facebook’s Ad Network for JusticeAn Assignment for "Gender and Technology"
Overview [This is a duplicate post of an assignment for my Introduction to Digital Studies class at Davidson. My course site was temporarily down, so I made a back-up copy of the assignment here!] The phrase cultural analytics generally refers to analyzing vast amounts of image, text, or other media through computational methods. Think of… Continue reading Image AnalysisAn Intro to Digital Studies Lab
A few weeks ago I wrote about studying digital culture through the lens of specific file types. In the fall I'm teaching DIG 101 (Introduction to Digital Studies)—an amorphous course that is part new media studies, part digital humanities, part science and technology studies. I was imagining spending a week on, say, something like GIFs… Continue reading Essential File Types for Understanding Digital CultureA Roundup of Community Ideas
I am revamping "Introduction to Digital Studies," my program's overview of digital culture, creativity, and methodology. One approach is to partially organize the class around file types, the idea being that a close reading of certain file types can help us better understand contemporary culture, both online and off. It's a bit like Raymond William's… Continue reading Studying Digital Culture through File Types
Are you sick of parallax scrolling yet? You know, the way the foreground and background on a web page, iPhone screen, or Super Mario Brothers move at different speeds, giving the illusion of depth? Parallax scrolling is a gimmick. Take it away and not much changes. Your videogame might be a tad less immersive, but… Continue reading A Parallax Reading of Roethke’s “My Papa’s Waltz”On Abuse and Close and Distant Readings
Digging through some old files I came across notes from a roundtable discussion I contributed to in 2009. The occasion was an "Unthinking Television" symposium held at my then-institution, George Mason University. If I remember correctly, the symposium was organized by Mason's Cultural Studies and Art and Visual Technology programs. Amazingly, the site for the… Continue reading Unthinking TelevisionFour Trends with our Screens