But if the sim crashes and green cubes rain from the sky, do you get a refund on tuition?
CyberOne: Law in the Court of Public Opinion
“Enrollment to the Harvard Extension School is open to the public. Extension students will experience portions of the class through a virtual world, known as Second Life. Videos, discussions, lectures, […]

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Steven Levy, author of the fabulous book Hackers, writes this excellent column about WoW.
World of Warcraft: Is It a Game? - Newsweek Technology - MSNBC.com
What distinguishes Warcraft from previous blockbuster games is its immersive nature and compelling social dynamics. It’s a rich, persistent alternative world, a medieval Matrix with lush graphics and even a seductive […]

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Well, isn’t this interesting? Makes me wish I still lived in nearby Louisville.
Synthetic Worlds Initiative at Indiana University
“The Synthetic Worlds Initiative is a research center at Indiana University whose aim is to promote innovative thinking on synthetic worlds. Synthetic worlds are immersive digital spaces that can host many online users on a persistent basis. […]

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The article I wrote for the August/September 2006 ASIS&T Bulletin is up. Thanks to Stacy Surla and the gang at the Bulletin for helping me get it into shape. I’m pleased to say it’s sharing space with a lot of really excellent writing.
It’s weird to read it now, in a way. It’s a snapshot […]

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I’ve been working for a couple of months now on an article for the ASIS&T Bulletin (American Society for Information Science and Technology). It started out as an article version of my “Clues to the Future” presentation, but I soon realized that 1) I couldn’t really explain the same stuff very well in a […]

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WSJ had a front page (!!!) story on Friday called “To Find a Mate,
Raid a Dungeon Or Speak Like an Elf” that tells of people who have met their significant others in MMOGs. Luckily, it’s not written as a puff piece or a “hey, look at these weirdos” piece but seriously considers the fact that […]

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This is mindblowing. Take a bit of time to read about it and let your head wrap around the idea for a bit.
At first, it looks like another one of those hokey “three-dimensional OS” ideas — but the architecture behind it is anything but. Essentially, it’s a peer-to-peer generated massively shared metaverse-as-operating-system. The implications […]

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Coworker & colleague Priyanka alerted me to this conference, which is relevant to my Summit presentation: DIS2006 | workshop | Designing Interactive Systems
The game industry is often involved in game-specific game design methodologies and academics are concerned with theoretical foundations. The goal of this workshop is to start a dialogue between the two communities and […]

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Ubiquitous computing research from AIGA
AIGA - Augmenting the City: The Design of a Context-Aware Mobile Web Site
The produced solution augments the city through web-based access to a digital layer of information about people, places and activities adapted to users’ physical and social context and their history of social interactions in the city.

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Thanks to Irene Wong who pointed me to this article at HBS from a couple of years ago. I haven’t managed to read the “Gamer Generation” book yet, but it sounds like I really should have.
Managing the Gamer Generation : HBS Working Knowledge
This is one of the huge points creating the generation gap. Gaming […]

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I had a blast presenting Clues to the Future as an IA Institute redux session today via phone, gatherplace.com and campfirenow.com. It was a little awkward, honestly, because I haven’t done a presentation that way before. But people were very accomodating.
And some of them had some very cool suggestions about some relevant articles […]

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Bulletin April/May 2006, From Game Studies to Bibliographic Gaming: Libraries Tap into the Video Game Culture
Take a digital game world, throw it in a blender, add some information and research skills, sift out the word educational and maybe, just maybe, we have a new and effective way to teach our students bibliographic instruction.
As I […]

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