Surface Reading
Worth including at the beginning of the semester in an e-lit class
Jeffrey Epstein’s influence in the science world is a symptom of larger problems | Kate Darling | Opinion | The Guardian
A not entirely convincing case for why Joi Ito should remain head of MIT’s Media Lab (because he has the humility to work toward change)
My Twenty Favorite Works of Interactive Fiction
A great overview of some must-play new and newish interactive fiction, including Twine, ChoiceScript, and other platforms.
Verge exposé on the horrific working lives of Facebook content moderator
“Facebook needs to shut down” says one content moderator.
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Glitching images and making eerie glitched GIFs out of photos
AI Ethics: Seven Traps
The traps that discussions about AI ethics fall into. Especially appreciate “the rule of law” trap, wherein we assume *laws* about AI will inherently be ethical.
DNA Friend
“All it takes is a mouth and a phone” – Brilliant parody of the DNA-testing industry
“Pac-Man: The Untold Story of How We Really Played The Game”
Fascinating look at the embodied and material nature of the classic arcade game
How Amazon’s Algorithms Curated a Dystopian Bookstore
Honestly though you’ll soon be able to replace “bookstore” with any noun.
The Famous Photo of Chernobyl’s Most Dangerous Radioactive Material Was a Selfie
Good background on Chernobyl for when we talk about “dark tourism” in “Death in the Digital Age”
Inside the Secret Sting Operations to Expose Celebrity Psychics
Perfect timing for this NYT article on contemporary mediums. Just yesterday in DIG 215 we were talking about the Fox sisters and their “spiritual telegraph” to the afterlife.
Thieves of experience: On the rise of surveillance capitalism
Pretty thorough review of Shoshana Zuboff’s new book. Key idea is the “extraction imperative” that drives Google, Facebook, etc.
They Will Not Return
Possible Twine game to include on my Death in the Digital Age syllabus, with shades of Bradbury’s “There Will Come Soft Rains”
The Fyre Festival and the Trumpet of Amplification
Terrific/terrifying post by Mike Caulfield showing that the same principles that underwrote the Fyre Festival apply to disinformation and conspiracy theories
How To Pay Attention
Tips include “Look slowly,” “Look repeatedly,” “Follow the quiet,” and “Let a stranger lead you”
Code and data for paper “Deep Painterly Harmonization”
Maybe I should add “deep painting” to the glitching and databending section of my “Hacking, Remixing, and Design” seminar…
STET by Sarah Gailey
Short experimental fiction with a fresh take on the AI trolley problem.
“Blackfishing” on Instagram
Adding this to future syllabuses, to be paired with Lauren Michele Jackson’s digital blackface article in Teen Vogue.
Video Games In East Germany: The Stasi Played Along
Fascinating history of the Commodore 64, East Germany in the 80s, and the surveillance state.
Atlantic article on the rise of exorcisms
Adding to my Death in the Digital Age class, where we’re already discussing demons and exorcism in the 21st century
Before You Make a Thing
Yeah, I think I’m stealing this for my spring Hacking, Remixing, and Design course.
The United States of Guns
Powerful post by @jkottke on the (minority of) Americans’ obsession with guns.
MIT’s Docubase
Not sure why I didn’t know before about MIT’s Open Documentary Lab and its Docubase, a database of digital documentary projects
Cult Conversations: A Series on Horror, Exploitation and the Gothic · Henry Jenkins
Terrific look at where horror has been in the past 100 years, and what the genre looks like now.
Digital immortality: How your life’s data means a version of you could live forever
Adding this to my “Death in the Digital Age” syllabus for the spring.
Games really need to fall out of love with Lovecraft
“It’s time to let go of Lovecraft. No more tentacled multi-eyed monstrosities, no foggy fishing towns or ancient aliens posing as gods.”
From Memes to Infowars: How 75 Fascist Activists Were “Red-Pilled”
White supremacists credit YouTube with being the single-most important media source in their radicalization.
Standard Patterns in Choice-Based Games
A bit dated now, but still a good overview of the dynamic between interactive narrative structures and narrative motifs.
“We’re Going to Have to Do Things That Are Unthinkable”: Masculinity/Games/Torture
Fascinating reading of torture in videogames as masculine ritual and affect (and builds on my own work on virtual torture)
Undum returns
Undum, an interactive fiction platform that was never as widely adapted as it should’ve been, is now on Github, complete with all the documentation. Go write something!
Walmart’s Patent for a Biometric-Enhanced Cart
Walmart just patented a procedure for capturing customer health data via shopping cart handles. No way this data could be misused, no-sir.
Two popular conservative Twitter personalities were just outed as Russian trolls
Revisiting this 2017 article after reading about Kathleen Hall Jamieson’s new “Cyberwar” book.
Amazon Alexa Will Take Over Your Home – The Atlantic
Will probably add this to my DIG 101 syllabus. And it would pair well with Bradbury’s “There Will Come Soft Rains.”
21 of the Best Horror Books by Women
I second many of the novels here, but will admit I was disappointed by The Grip of It.
First Monday Volume 23, Number 9
The entire September 2018 issue of First Monday is devoted to emoji 💛🧡❤️💚💙💜
GIFs as Disinformation Remedy (aka The GIF Curriculum)
Explainer GIFs for link-averse media consumers…Perfect for my DIG 101, where we’re discussing animated GIFs next week and Internet conspiracies a few weeks later.
THE MEANING OF COLORS by Molleindustria
An MS Painterly send-up of conspiracy culture
All the Emoji
A good Emoji resource, with hex codes FOR ALL THE EMOJI
The Nimble Tents Toolkit for Rapid Response Research
Seriously thinking about making a rapid response research project part of my spring “Hacking, Remixing, and Design” seminar.
Around the Antenna Tree: The Politics of Infrastructural Visibility
We touched upon Lisa Park’s critique of the hypervisibility/weird invisibility of antenna trees yesterday in DIG 101. Wish we could have spent more time on it.
AI Literacy: The basics of machine learning
Just discovered this great AI primer from Liz Daly. Perfect for the syllabus.
Facebook is rating the trustworthiness of its users on a scale from zero to one
Key quote: “It is unclear what other criteria Facebook measures to determine a user’s score, whether all users have a score, and in what ways they’re used.”
Fabricationist DeWit Remakes the World
A Twine game about rebooting the world after the apocalypse
Parser Parer
A tool to shrink recognized commands in Inform in order to create limited parser games. Good for games about power and agency.
All Those Parties We Didn’t Cry At (Redux)
Added to my to-play Twine list
twitter.com
Gotta pull this out whenever we talk about infrastructure in class.
Battery death is the new horror film staple · kottke.org
Going to revisit this next semester for my Death in the Digital Age course
“10 Gaps for Digital Literature” – Serge Bouchardon #ELO18 Keynote
A birds-eye view of the state of the field, plus a good assortment of links to digital literature old and new.
Nintendo’s Offensive, Tragic, and Totally Legal Erasure of ROM Sites
Nintendo sees emulation only through the lens of IP, sadly. What about preservation, access, or pedagogy?
The death of truth: how we gave up on facts and ended up with Trump
A great critique of that awful earnest bromide “Teach the controversy” from Michiko Kakutani
Maps as Media – Fall 2018
As usual, @shannonmattern’s new course on maps as media looks awesome. Gorgeous design, but even better, wonderful pedagogy.
Horror Blackademics: The Get Out (2017) Syllabus
Some great resources here for teaching the intersectionality of “Get Out”
Why Reddit’s face-swapping celebrity porn craze is a harbinger of dystopia
There are a lot of deep fake articles out there, but I think this is the one I’ll use in Intro to Digital Studies this year.
Microsoft’s Undersea Data Center
You can easily apply Holt and Vonderau’s critique of the discourse around data centers in “Where the Internet Lives” to Microsoft’s discourse about its undersea data center.
PYMK: A Controversial Facebook Feature’s 10-Year History
Facebook’s People You May Know “mines information users don’t have control over to make connections they may not want it to make.”
Watch an Art Work About the Dark Web, on the Dark Web | The New Yorker
Dark Content is a video series on the dark web about people who perform commercial content moderation on the open web.
xkcd: Free Speech
Every once in a while it’s worth resurfacing this xkcd explainer of free speech.
Who are QAnon supporters? The QAnon subreddit, analyzed with data. – Vox
Excellent digital forensics work on QAnon. Surprise! Most QAnon posters also post on videogames and Men’s Rights.
What HBR Gets Wrong About Algorithms and Bias · fast.ai
“algorithms can often exacerbate underlying societal problems”
The consequences of framing digital humanities tools as easy to use | hc:20283 | Humanities CORE
Paige Morgan’s engagement with Tsing’s theory of nonscalability is worth including in my DIG 401 (Hacking, Remixing, and Design) class.
How journalists should not cover an online conspiracy theory | Opinion | The Guardian
Another great piece by Whitney Phillips, one of the best thinkers about toxic media. A critique of they way the news has covered QAnon conspiracists.
This is why Alex Jones has been able to get away with exploiting social media – The Washington Post
Worth including on my DIG 101 syllabus, where I will have a whole section on conspiracies.
Unintended Consequences to Google Context Cards on Conspiracy Videos?
A good look at how affordances of platforms could enable a kind of crackpot hermeneutics.
Yelp, The Red Hen, And How All Tech Platforms Are Now Pawns In The Culture War
A _Buzzfeed_ piece on the way fringe political groups hijack social media platforms.
The Oxygen of Amplification | Data & Society
Fantastic report from Data & Society on the ways the media inadvertently amplifies the messaging of hate groups