Archive for June, 2008
playtime
June 16th, 2008 • penny dreadfuls, research
I’m going to be down in London next week to work (The Penny Dreadfuls‘ two Greenwich theatre gigs) and, more importantly, to play - at the Hide and Seek festival.
I’ll be playing Jane McGonigal’s Lost Sport of Olympia on Sunday afternoon, and hand-carrying a secret message to one of the participants (games within games for extra fun). Anyone around in the city want to join me?
links for 2008-06-10
June 10th, 2008 • links
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20 minute video of Jane McGonigal’s quickfire talk/interview at the 2008 New Yorker Conference: Stories from the Near Future.
links for 2008-06-09
June 9th, 2008 • links
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Britannica has long been a vocal critic of Wikipedia’s user-generated content.. unsurprisingly then, it is keen to stress that its new website will not be following the Wiki-model, describing it “as a collaborative process but not a democratic one.”
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“It’s wrong to have millions of Americans living as second-class citizens in this nation… Equality is a moral imperative.”
copyrighting culture
June 8th, 2008 • research, teaching
Jackson Publick - interviewed at The AV Club about the new series of The Venture Brothers - says something that chimes with the arguments Lawrence Lessig has repeatedly made about the way our culture has evolved until extremely recently:
Our characters were part of the world that we were, and they love and remember and hate the same things that we did, and it’s affected their lives. That’s why it kills me when we get legal notes about some of this stuff, because you’re just like, “I don’t understand why I can’t use that, or talk about that, or reference it. I was bombarded with this on television when I was 6. Somebody spent a lot of money making sure that I would never forget this, and now when I act like it’s a household word, I’m not allowed to use it.” There’s your irony!
The relentless, unthinking pursuit of copyright - unlimited by any time limit or condition of fair use - is the death of culture.
links for 2008-06-05
June 5th, 2008 • links
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Another oil crisis simulation in the vein of World Without Oil, this one apparently designed for the classroom.
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Skip to about 1.45 for a lovely WWLD (What Would Lincoln Do?) moment..
next semester
June 5th, 2008 • teaching
A few days of head-to-desk pounding and I think I’ve finalised the plays and playwrights I’ll be teaching on my new Honours course. I’ve listed the current line-up after the jump. A small prize if you can guess the topic of the course.. Read more »
