http://machinemachine.net/stream/feed en-us http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss Sweetcron text@machinemachine.net 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.wired.com/techbiz/people/magazine/17-10/ff_smartlist Warning: The ideas expressed here may be dangerous. For this year's list, we walked right past the usual suspects and went looking for trouble. We wanted radicals, heretics, agitators—big thinkers with controversial, game-changing propositions. We found a prison reformer who wants to empty jails, an economist who thinks foreign aid hurts more than it helps, and a military theorist who believes the US should launch preemptive cyberattacks, right now. Then there's secretary of defense robert gates, who wants to win wars, not just prep for them. Risky? Sure. But this is no time to play it safe. ]]> Sun, 06 Jun 2010 03:54:00 -0700 http://www.wired.com/techbiz/people/magazine/17-10/ff_smartlist http://www.wired.com/techbiz/people/magazine/17-10/ff_smartlist Warning: The ideas expressed here may be dangerous. For this year's list, we walked right past the usual suspects and went looking for trouble. We wanted radicals, heretics, agitators—big thinkers with controversial, game-changing propositions. We found a prison reformer who wants to empty jails, an economist who thinks foreign aid hurts more than it helps, and a military theorist who believes the US should launch preemptive cyberattacks, right now. Then there's secretary of defense robert gates, who wants to win wars, not just prep for them. Risky? Sure. But this is no time to play it safe. ]]> Sun, 06 Jun 2010 03:54:00 -0700 http://www.wired.com/techbiz/people/magazine/17-10/ff_smartlist http://speedbird.wordpress.com/2010/04/24/frameworks-for-citizen-responsiveness-enhanced-toward-a-readwrite-urbanism/ Provided that, we can treat the things we encounter in urban environments as system resources, rather than a mute collection of disarticulated buildings, vehicles, sewers and sidewalks. One prospect that seems fairly straightforward is letting these resources report on their own status. Information about failures would propagate not merely to other objects on the network but reach you and me as well, in terms we can relate to, via the provisions we've made for issue-tracking.

And because our own human senses are still so much better at spotting emergent situations than their machinic counterparts, and will probably… ]]> Tue, 27 Apr 2010 06:35:00 -0700 http://speedbird.wordpress.com/2010/04/24/frameworks-for-citizen-responsiveness-enhanced-toward-a-readwrite-urbanism/ http://www.we-make-money-not-art.com/archives/2010/01/-tatjana-hallbaum-in-between.php Manipulating Reality presents a selection of 23 artistic approaches that work through photography and video to develop possible models of reality. Its aim is not to understand whether photographs can convey reality but how this can occur. The works exhibited represent different artistic strategies addressing the construction, reflection or distortion of reality in images. In addition to investigating the value of documentary photography today, many of the artists presented reflect in part the conditions of the tool of photography and adopt known artistic techniques such as collage, presentation in model form, abstraction and the assemblage of different elements. ]]> Fri, 29 Jan 2010 17:00:00 -0700 http://www.we-make-money-not-art.com/archives/2010/01/-tatjana-hallbaum-in-between.php http://www.lettersofnote.com/2009/12/we-have-message-from-another-world.html In the summer of 1899, whilst alone in his Colorado Springs laboratory working with his magnifying transmitter, the inimitable Nikola Tesla observed a series of unusual rhythmic signals which he described as 'counting codes'. Having just detected cosmic radio signals for the first time, Tesla immediately believed them to be attempted communications from an intelligent life-form on either Venus or Mars, and later said of the experience, 'The feeling is constantly growing on me that I had been the first to hear the greeting of one planet to another'. The next year, Tesla was asked by the Red Cross to… ]]> Fri, 11 Dec 2009 17:11:00 -0700 http://www.lettersofnote.com/2009/12/we-have-message-from-another-world.html http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/science/eureka/article6934963.ece There is something stirring in the world of science writing. Since it emerged as a labelled corner of the bookshop, the genre has been dominated by practising scientists who also write; Dawkins way ahead of the pack, then Steve Jones and Richard Fortey. Bill Bryson, of course, is the great exception but he is sui generis — millions would buy his take on the history of beer mats if that’s what he wrote about. But this year’s winner of the Royal Society science book prize, science’s Booker, was Richard Holmes for The Age of Wonder. He is our great Romantic… ]]> Mon, 07 Dec 2009 18:07:00 -0700 http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/science/eureka/article6934963.ece http://inbflat.net/ In Bb 2.0 is a collaborative music and spoken word project conceived by Darren Solomon from Science for Girls, and developed with contributions from users. The videos can be played simultaneously -- the soundtracks will work together, and the mix can be adjusted with the individual volume sliders. ]]> Mon, 14 Sep 2009 08:37:00 -0700 http://inbflat.net/ http://photooftheday.hughcrawford.com/ A collection of Polaroids, one per day, from March 31, 1979 through October 25, 1997: http://www.mentalfloss.com/blogs/archives/15131 There’s no author listed, no contact info, and no other indication as to where these came from. ]]> Wed, 24 Jun 2009 15:24:00 -0700 http://photooftheday.hughcrawford.com/