Investing in Video Games

If you're interested in the financial side of the video game industry, a recent speech by Dean Takahashi, games industry journalist, might be up your alley. Some intriguing speculation about why movies attract so much more capital investment than video games.

EPIC 2014

EPIC 2014 is a Flash video on the (hypothetical) future of media. It was made in part by Robin Sloan, an MSU graduate. Perhaps best known for its prediction of a merger between Google and Amazon, resulting in "Googlezon". See also the backstory of the video's creation, and the updated, 2005 version: EPIC 2015.

10/3 Req: Cathy Camper, "A Note from the Future"

As you may have noticed, the Wired piece by Cathy Camper, "A Note from the Future", is no longer on the Wired website. I scanned it from the library's copy and posted it above. Click on the thumbnail to load the full-size image (easier to read).

Project 2 Discussion

Discuss your ideas / plans for project 2, especially the "peephole" idea that would involve submission to Kairos.

Project 1 Discussion

If you want to share your digital autobiography (Project 1), post a link in the comments!

9/21 Recommended Readings

Scott Lloyd DeWitt, "The Current Nature of Hypertext Research in Computers and Composition Studies: An Historical Perspective"
dewitt_hypertext_research.pdf

Johndan Johnson-Eilola and Amy C. Kimme Hea, "After Hypertext: Other Ideas"
johnson_eilola_kimme_hea_after_hypertext.pdf

9/21 Required Readings

Scott McCloud, "I Can't Stop Thinking"
http://www.scottmccloud.com/comics/icst/icst-1/icst-1.html

James R. Kalmbach, "Publishing Before Computers"
kalmbach_publishing_before_computers.pdf

Tom Wilson, "Electronic Publishing and the Future of the Book"
http://informationr.net/ir/3-2/paper39.html

John Dujay, "Will 'E-books' Make Paper Ones Obsolete?"
http://html.click2houston.com/sh/technology/techviews/dujayonthewww/stories/dujay-20000404-011646.html

"E-Books, Once Upon a Future Time"
http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,60435,00.html

Pew Internet & American Life Project, "Content Creation Online"
http://www.pewinternet.org/pdfs/PIP_Content_Creation_Report.pdf

Chip Scanlan, "The Web and the Future of Writing"
http://www.poynter.org/content/content_view.asp?id=14501

9/19 Recommended Readings

Web Style Guide, Chapter 6: "Editorial Style"
http://www.webstyleguide.com/style/index.html

Todd Taylor and Irene Ward, Introduction to Literacy Theory in the Age of the Internet
taylor_ward_intro.pdf

Ilana Snyder, Introduction to From Page to Screen: Taking Literacy into the Electronic Era
snyder_intro_page_to_screen.pdf

9/19 Required Readings

Jim Porter, "Why Technology Matters to Writing: A Cyberwriter's Tale"
porter_cyberwriter_tale.pdf

Geoff Hart, "Content, Structure, and Relevance: The Ploy's the Thing"
http://www.raycomm.com/techwhirl/magazine/usersadvocate/usersadvocate_webaudience.html

Scott Berkun, "The Role of Flow in Web Design"
http://www.scottberkun.com/essays/essay13.htm

Gerry McGovern, "Writing for the Web: Part 1"
http://www.gerrymcgovern.com/nt/2003/nt_2003_04_28_writing_1.htm

Constance J. Petersen, "Writing for a Web Audience"
http://www.smartisans.com/articles/web_writing.aspx

Scott McCloud, "10 Suggestions for First-Time WebComics Artists"
http://www.scottmccloud.com/comics/icst/icst-3/icst-3.html

9/14 Recommended Readings

Johndan Johnson-Eilola, "Living on the Surface: Learning in the Age of Global Communication Networks"
johnson_eilola_living_surface.pdf

Lester Faigley, "Literacy After the Revolution"
faigley_after_the_revolution.pdf

Christina Haas, "On the Relationship between Old and New Technologies"
haas_old_new_technologies.pdf

9/14 Required Readings

Laura J. Gurak, "Cyberliteracy: Toward a New Internet Consciousness"
gurak_cyberliteracy.pdf

"Definitions of Information Literacy and Related Terms"
http://www.denison.edu/collaborations/ohio5/grant/about/definitions.html

Association of College & Research Libraries, "Information Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education"
http://www.ala.org/ala/acrl/acrlstandards/informationliteracycompetency.htm

Bonnie Nardi and Vicki L. O'Day, "A Matter of Metaphor: Technology as Tool, Text, System, Ecology"
nardi_oday_info_ecol_chap_3.pdf

Open Thread

Open thread for general discussion, ideas, brainstorms, etc.

9/12 Req: Madeleine Sorapure, Pamela Inglesby, and George Yatchisin, "Web Literacy: Challenges and Opportunities for Research in a New Medium"

Student researchers are turning in increasing numbers to the World Wide Web as a resource, though not necessarily with an understanding of how to assess the reliability or value of the information they find there. At all stages of the research process, but especially at the assessment stage, the Web poses challenges that writing teachers should address explicitly in guiding students to become skillful and discerning readers of Web sites.

9/12 Req: "Checklist of Internet Research Tips"

http://library.albany.edu/internet/checklist.html

The Internet is a self-publishing medium. It is not a library of evaluated publications selected by professionals. Rather, the Internet is a bulletin board containing everything from the definitive to the spurious. Everything, everything must be analyzed for its appropriateness for research use.

9/12 Req: Danny Sullivan, "Major Search Engines and Directories"

http://searchenginewatch.com/links/article.php/2156221

In the search engine list below, Search Engine Watch provides a guide to the major search engines of the web. Why are these considered to be "major" search engines? Because they are either well-known or well-used. For webmasters, the major search engines are the most important places to be listed, because they can potentially generate so much traffic. For searchers, well-known, commercially-backed search engines generally mean more dependable results. These search engines are more likely to be well-maintained and upgraded when necessary, to keep pace with the growing web.

9/12 Req: Adam Penenberg, "Searching for The New York Times"

http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,64110,00.html

How can the mighty New York Times, which considers itself America's paper of record, be the paper of record in cyberspace when its articles barely show up on Google? This has to be more than just a slight irritation to the Times, because search engines play a key role: They collate information, and on the Internet there's a whole lot of that, often too much. (Hence the term data smog.) In essence, they act as informational portals. So if you're trying to get the dope on your favorite author, hip-hop MC or representative, or learn more about an important issue dominating the news, your first stop may very well be Google.

9/12 Req: United States of America Federal Trade Commission, "Re: Commercial alert complaint requesting investigation of various Internet search..."

http://www.ftc.gov/os/closings/staff/commercialalertattatch.htm

Accordingly, the staff recommends that if your search engine uses paid placement, you make any changes to the presentation of your paid-ranking search results that would be necessary to clearly delineate them as such, whether they are segregated from, or inserted into, non-paid listings. Factors to be considered in making such a disclosure clear and conspicuous are prominence, placement, presentation (i.e., it uses terms and a format that are easy for consumers to understand, and that do not contradict other statements made), and proximity to a claim that it explains or qualifies.

9/12 Req: Danny Sullivan, "Buying Your Way In: Search Engine Advertising Chart"

http://www.searchenginewatch.com/webmasters/article.php/2167941

Do search engines sell listings? Yes. Should searchers fear this? Not necessarily. Paid listings generate revenue for search engines, which in turn helps them provide unpaid editorial listings to searchers for free.

Think newspapers. Newspapers have both "editorial" copy, which is not supposed to be influenced by advertising, as well as ads themselves. You may read the paper primarily for the articles, but there are certainly times when you may find the advertisements useful, as well.

9/12 Recommended: Nicholas Burbles, "Rhetorics of the Web: Hyperreading and Critical Literacy"

One of the perennial questions about reading on the internet, particularly in reading hypertexts, is whether this mode of reading is something new, or whether it is the same reading, involving the usual skills and strategies, simply being exercised in a new medium -- whether, indeed, hypertext itself is even something new, or simply another attempt, this time in the digital domain, to deconstruct linear narrative.

9/7 Recommended: Billie Walhstrom and Chris Scruton, "Constructing Texts/understanding Texts: Lessons from Antiquity and the Middle Ages"

This era of CMC resembles other ages-particularly manuscript eras-when changes in
communication media restructured human thought, how communicators and teachers conceived of and constructed texts, and the processes by which they made sense of texts and imparted them with authority. By studying the areas of similarity between the rabbinic and medieval manuscript eras and our own time, technical communicators may come to an understanding of how changes in technology sparked shifts in the social and intellectual dynamics of text construction.

9/7 Req: John Battelle, "The Birth of Google"

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/13.08/battelle.html?tw=wn_tophead_5

Crawling the entire Web to discover the sum of its links is a major undertaking, but simple crawling was not where BackRub's true innovation lay. Page was naturally aware of the concept of ranking in academic publishing, and he theorized that the structure of the Web's graph would reveal not just who was linking to whom, but more critically, the importance of who linked to whom, based on various attributes of the site that was doing the linking.

9/7 Req: John Perry Barlow, "A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace"

http://hotwired.wired.com/wired_online/4.06/declaration

Governments of the Industrial World, you weary giants of flesh and steel, I come from Cyberspace, the new home of Mind. On behalf of the future, I ask you of the past to leave us alone. You are not welcome among us. You have no sovereignty where we gather.

9/7 Req: Pew Internet & American Life, "America's Online Pursuits: The Changing Picture of Who's Online"

http://www.pewinternet.org/PPF/r/106/report_display.asp

Online activity has consistently grown over the course of our research. Internet users discover more things to do online as they gain experience and as new applications become available. This momentum often fuels increasing reliance on the Internet in everyday life and higher expectations about the things people can do online. Despite this growth in activity, the growth of the online population itself has slowed. There was almost no growth over the course of 2002 and there has been only a small uptick in recent months to leave the size of the online U.S. adult population at 63% of all those 18 and over.

9/7 Req: Bruce Sterling, "A Short History of the Internet"

http://www.library.yale.edu/div/instruct/internet/history.htm

The principles were simple. The network itself would be assumed to be unreliable at all times. It would be designed from the get-go to transcend its own unreliability. All the nodes in the network would be equal in status to all other nodes, each node with its own authority to originate, pass, and receive messages. The messages themselves would be divided into packets, each packet separately addressed. Each packet would begin at some specified source node, and end at some other specified destination node. Each packet would wind its way through the network on an individual basis.

9/7 Req: Walt Howe, "A Brief History of the Internet"

http://www.walthowe.com/navnet/history.html

The Internet, then known as ARPANET, was brought online in 1969 under a contract let by the renamed Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) which initially connected four major computers at universities in the southwestern US (UCLA, Stanford Research Institute, UCSB, and the University of Utah). The contract was carried out by BBN of Cambridge, MA under Bob Kahn and went online in December 1969.

9/7 Req: Anthony Anderberg, "History of the Internet and Web"

http://www.anderbergfamily.net/ant/history/

1966
* Scientists used fiber optics to carry telephone signals for the first time.
* Donald Davies coins the term 'packets' and 'packet switching'.
* ARPA's Bob Taylor receives funding for a networking experiment that would tie together a number of Universities the agency was funding. With no formal requests and in under an hour Charles Herzfeld agrees to fund what three years later would become the ARPANET.

9/7 Req: Stuart Moulthrop, "A Subjective Chronology of Cybertext, Hypertext, and Electronic Writing"

http://iat.ubalt.edu/moulthrop/chrono.html

This is a sketch of developments relating to creative work in hypertext/hypermedia, cybertext, and ergodics. It is cranky, biased, and hobbyhorsical--nothing like an objective account. The project began as my own mental core dump but has turned into a communal basket-weaving session in which straws, feathers, and other matter have been donated by several other inmates.

Welcome!

This blog is a site for class discussion of readings for WRA 415: Digital Rhetoric, a class at Michigan State University taught by Danielle Devoss. Each week, I'll post an entry for each of the upcoming readings, providing the title and link along with an abstract or excerpt. Please comment as you feel inclined.