http://machinemachine.net/stream/feed en-us http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss Sweetcron therourke@gmail.com http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=gamers-outdo-computers-matching-disease-genes/gamers-outdo-computers-at-matching-up-disease-genes-scientific-american An excellent example of distributed cognition. http://t.co/O3V5h1Nv – Sam Scott (bigsagacity) http://twitter.com/bigsagacity/status/184651180788551680 ]]> Tue, 27 Mar 2012 07:58:19 -0700 http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=gamers-outdo-computers-matching-disease-genes/gamers-outdo-computers-at-matching-up-disease-genes-scientific-american http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2011/08/force-versus-heuristics-the-contentious-rise-of-computer-chess.ars When you visit the History of Computer Chess exhibit at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California, the first machine you see is "The Turk."

In 1770, a Hungarian engineer and diplomat named Wolfgang von Kempelen presented a remarkable invention to the court of Maria Theresa, ruler of Hungary and Austria. It consisted of a mechanical figure dressed in (what Europeans saw as) Oriental garb, presiding over a cabinet upon which a chess board sat. Full of gears ostentatiously placed in a front side drawer, The Turk was cranked up by hand, after which an opponent… ]]> Mon, 08 Aug 2011 08:39:13 -0700 http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2011/08/force-versus-heuristics-the-contentious-rise-of-computer-chess.ars http://www.themillions.com/2011/01/interactive-art-what-video-games-can-learn-from-freud.html What if the best thing art has to offer is freedom from choice?
There’s a reason it’s high praise, not criticism, to say that a film or a piece of music or a good novel “sweeps you along.” There’s a selflessness in it: not just the pleasure in pausing the parts of the brain that plan and calculate and select, but in the temporary surrender of investing in someone else’s choices. Good art can be where we go for humility: when we’re encouraged to treat each of our thoughts as worthy of being made public, it can be almost… ]]> Sat, 08 Jan 2011 08:38:49 -0700 http://www.themillions.com/2011/01/interactive-art-what-video-games-can-learn-from-freud.html http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dE1DuBesGYM&feature=youtube_gdata ]]> Wed, 08 Dec 2010 08:50:00 -0700 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dE1DuBesGYM&feature=youtube_gdata http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=myfGt1esA5g&feature=youtube_gdata ]]> Wed, 06 Oct 2010 11:45:07 -0700 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=myfGt1esA5g&feature=youtube_gdata http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/23960/Analysis_Portal_and_the_Deconstruction_of_the_Institution.php In this in-depth analysis, Daniel Johnson discusses games, language and sociology with regard to Valve's Portal - please note that the article contains story spoilers for the game.

In 1959 Erving Goffman released The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life; a book that went on to heavily influence future understanding of social interactions within the sociology discipline. In it, he discusses social intercourse under the metaphor of actors performing on a stage. Specifically, in the second chapter he shares the idea of a front and backstage to social interaction.

As with the theater, we… ]]> Fri, 10 Sep 2010 07:33:00 -0700 http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/23960/Analysis_Portal_and_the_Deconstruction_of_the_Institution.php http://www.kotaku.com.au/2010/04/video-games-and-the-philosophy-of-art/ The film critic Roger Ebert’s recent comments about video games and their potential as art, and especially the immense stir the comments caused on discussion forums all over the internet, shows the intrinsic interest there is in the question of whether video games are art. Of course, many people see the debate as entirely pointless, and there is the separate question of why we should want to establish that video games are art.

But the question remains, and it is entirely sensible: are video games art?

Individual opinion on this issue is understandably varied,… ]]> Sun, 11 Jul 2010 16:32:00 -0700 http://www.kotaku.com.au/2010/04/video-games-and-the-philosophy-of-art/ http://www.salon.com/books/feature/2010/06/20/tom_bissell_extra_lives_interview_ext2010/index.html Video games have come a very long way since the 1980s... As Tom Bissell, a journalist, former Salon writer and lifelong gamer, explains in his new book, "Extra Lives: Why Video Games Matter," the graphics, storytelling and interactivity of gaming have all made tremendous leaps forward in recent years, allowing players to intermingle with nuanced, fleshed-out digital characters in near-photo-realistic environments. Among the most notable recent examples is Rockstar's "Red Dead Redemption," a game the New York Times hailed as a "tour de force" for its ability to submerge players in a complex and believable world. In his book, Bissell… ]]> Mon, 21 Jun 2010 07:02:00 -0700 http://www.salon.com/books/feature/2010/06/20/tom_bissell_extra_lives_interview_ext2010/index.html http://famicase.com/10/index.html With its latest entries having just appeared online, the Famicase exhibition -- curated by Tokyo game culture shop Meteor -- once again proves why it's a yearly art/game highlight. The premise? A collective of Japanese designers and artists imagine cartridges for their favorite Famicom (8-bit Nintendo) games that never were.

While this year's crop has strayed away from anything as blatantly/lightly controversial as last year's Bush Jr cart, it takes no less a sardonic swipe at Western culture with Burp'n'Shoot! above. The game, the artists say, is a "fun lazy redneck experience" that involves "sitting on the… ]]> Thu, 13 May 2010 05:25:00 -0700 http://famicase.com/10/index.html http://blogs.suntimes.com/ebert/2010/04/video_games_can_never_be_art.html Having once made the statement above, I have declined all opportunities to enlarge upon it or defend it. That seemed to be a fool's errand, especially given the volume of messages I receive urging me to play this game or that and recant the error of my ways. Nevertheless, I remain convinced that in principle, video games cannot be art. Perhaps it is foolish of me to say "never," because never, as Rick Wakeman informs us, is a long, long time. Let me just say that no video gamer now living will survive long enough to experience the medium as… ]]> Sun, 18 Apr 2010 15:47:00 -0700 http://blogs.suntimes.com/ebert/2010/04/video_games_can_never_be_art.html http://www.joystiq.com/2010/04/05/hands-on-sleep-is-death A lot of game critics you talk to will tell you that, after making a career of playing games, it takes a lot to impress them. But that's not exactly the truth.

Perhaps I shouldn't speak for them, but I know for me that all it really takes for a game to knock my socks off is that smallest yet boldest of features: A single great, new idea. I'm not talking about squishing together the dual-stick shooting of Geometry Wars and RPG elements and hoping for the best. I'm talking about an innovation that takes a single… ]]> Tue, 06 Apr 2010 09:03:00 -0700 http://www.joystiq.com/2010/04/05/hands-on-sleep-is-death http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/8367957.stm Not long ago Second Life was everywhere, with businesses opening branches and bands playing gigs in this virtual world. Today you'd be forgiven for asking if it's still going. Once upon a time Second Life had a Twitter level of hype. Even those without a cartoon version of themselves couldn't plead ignorance due to blanket coverage in newspapers and magazines. Second Life is a virtual world started by the US firm Linden Lab in 2003, in which users design an avatar to live their "second life" online. And everything about this world can be customised for a price - new… ]]> Sat, 21 Nov 2009 05:20:00 -0700 http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/8367957.stm http://www.stfj.net/art/2009/loselose/ Lose/Lose is a video-game with real life consequences. Each alien in the game is created based on a random file on the players computer. If the player kills the alien, the file it is based on is deleted. If the players ship is destroyed, the application itself is deleted. Although touching aliens will cause the player to lose the game, and killing aliens awards points, the aliens will never actually fire at the player. This calls into question the player's mission, which is never explicitly stated, only hinted at through classic game mechanics. Is the player supposed to be an… ]]> Thu, 01 Oct 2009 05:30:00 -0700 http://www.stfj.net/art/2009/loselose/ http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=video-games-by-prescription Growing scientific evidence demonstrates that the human brain dynamically changes in response to experience and to changes in the environment, a phenomenon that is known as “plasticity.” It is also believed that timing is crucial – our brains appear to be more susceptible to change early in our developmental lives. Thus, a world with vastly different technology driven demands, opportunities and challenges, is surely going to lead to brain changes: the brain of our children will be different from those of the generations who rode their bikes, jumped rope, and played sports in the backyard, rather than throwing a football… ]]> Wed, 01 Jul 2009 09:22:00 -0700 http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=video-games-by-prescription http://grumpygamer.com/8280380 About a year and a little more ago, as I began designing the uber-awesome DeathSpank at Hothead Games, I played all the way through The Secret of Monkey Island to refresh myself on the puzzles and dialog. I know this will come as a shock to many of you, but I don't spend my evenings playing through Monkey Island. It's probably been 15 years since I sat down and really played it. Much like the experience of watching the Maniac Mansion Speed Run, it bought back a lot of memories and little tid-bits of facts, so I started keeping notes… ]]> Sat, 06 Jun 2009 09:31:00 -0700 http://grumpygamer.com/8280380 http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/480006 A surreal spectacle of a game, balanced half-way between the whole and the gap ]]> Sun, 24 May 2009 15:04:00 -0700 http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/480006