This is a very early start to my film studies section of my comps. Here I'm interested in compiling a list of readings focusing on theory surrounding realism and representation, the body and technology, cyborgs, filmic and photographic realism.

Suggested:
Phil Rosen, Change Mummified [1st Chapter]
Mary Ann Doane chapter from Rites of Realism
Force Feed the Digital (trouble locating)
Hitchhiker's Photonomies (trouble locating)

Options:
Ursula Haise, Chronoschisms: Time, Narrative, Postmodernism [see also Hypertexts and the Limits of Interactivity]
Vivian Sobchack Carnal Thoughts: Embodiment and Moving Image Culture

Geez, it's been a long time since I've posted. I'm still alive (something my parents just figured out after a weekend of calling). I went to Iowa in June and am now prepping to go to the SECT seminar at UC Irvine. Online I've started my very own del.icio.us, which I should have started months ago, and Micah's fascinated with Stumble Upon. He sent me Level 1 Human and God FAQ yesterday.

Have you ever asked, "How can I own a house in Canada with under $1 in my bank account?" If so, please read on.

Today's bit of inspiration brought to you by one red paper clip.

In the next few months I'm putting together my reading lists.
The one below is for my cultural studies component which I hope will have an emphasis on audiences, fan cultures and technology/emerging media.

Books and Anthologies
Life on the Screen --Sherry Turkle
Cybersounds-- Michael D. Ayers ON ORDER AMAZON
Cassette Culture-- Peter Manuel ML3502 .I4 M36 1993 1 BOOK MUSICMEDIA
Listening In--Susan Douglas AMAZON
Where the Girls Are-- Susan Douglas P94.5 .W652 U634 1994 STACKS
Susan Smulyan- Selling Radio HE8698 .S6 1994 1 BOOK STACKS
British Cultural Studies-- Graeme Turner DA589.4 .T87 1990 STACKS
Reading the Romance-- Janice Radway Z1039 .W65 R32 1991 STACKS
The audience studies reader--Will Brooker and Deborah Jermyn REQUESTED
Sounding out the city--Michael Bull. REQUESTED
Music In Everyday Life-- Tia Denora ML3795 .D343 2000 MUSICMEDIA
Fan Cultures--Matt Hills, 2002
The Adoring Audience-- Fan Cultures and Popular Media, 1992
Textual Poachers-- Henry Jenkins
Enterprising Women-- Camille Bacon-Smith
Theorizing Fandom: Fans, Subculture and Identity, Cheryl Harris and Alison Alexandar
Cyberspaces of Their Own: Female Fandoms Online-- Rhiannon Bury
Cultural Studies and the Study of Popular Culture: Theories and Methods-- John Storey
Cultural Theory and Popular Culture: An Introduction --John Storey
American Cultural Studies--Catherine A. Warren and Mary Douglas Vavrus
Cult Television -- Sara Gwenllian-Jones and Roberta E. Pearson
Quality Popular Television: Cult TV, the Industry, and Fans by Mark Jancovich and James Lyons
Forms of Talk or Frame Analysis-- Erving Goffman
Desperately Seeking the Audience-- Ien Ang
Breaking Up America: Advertisers and the New Media World-- Joseph Turow


Articles
Media, Culture and Society
Women's Experience of On-Line E-zine publication-- Frances Cresser, Lesley Gunn, Helen Balme

Broadcasting in the 1990s: Competition, Choice and Inequality? -- Valerie Antcliff

Cultural Industires in the Digital Age: Some Provisional Conclusions-- Enrique Bustamante

Empire and Communication: The Media Wars of Marshall McLuhan-- Michael MacDonald

Arenas of Innovation: Understanding New Configurational Potentialities of Communication Technologies-- Harmeet Sawhney and Seungwhan Lee

Television Under Construction-- Jonathan Sterne

From Dr. Dowd's Syllabi

Cotton Seiler. 2000. “The Commodification of Rebellion: Rock Culture and Consumer Capitalism.” Pages 203-223 in New Forms of Consumption: Consumers, Culture, and Commodification, edited by Mark Gottdiener. Lanham, MA: Rowman & Littlefield.

David Halle. 1992. “The Audience for Abstract Art: Class, Culture, and Power.” Pages 131-151 in Cultivating Differences: Symbolic Boundaries and the Making of Inequality, edited by Michèle Lamont and Marcel Fournier. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Andrew Leyshon, Peter Webb, Shaun French, Nigel Thrift, and Louise Crew. 2005. “On the Reproduction of the Musical Economy after the Internet.” Media, Culture & Society 27: 177-209.

William T. Bielby and Denise D. Bielby. 2003. "Controlling Primetime: Organizational Concentration and Network Television Programming Strategies." Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic Media 47: 573-596.

Eszter Hargittai. 2000. “Open Portals or Closed Gates? Channeling Content on the World Wide Web.” Poetics 27: 233-253. (This will probably go in my New Media Section w/ Dr. Friedman)

Denise D. Bielby and William T. Bielby. 1996. " Women and Men in Film: Gender Inequality among Writers in a Culture Industry." Gender & Society 10: 248-270.

Catherine E. Kerr. 1990. “Incorporating the Star: The Intersection of Business and Aesthetic Strategies in Early American Film.” Business History Review 64: 383-410.

Allen J. Scott. 2004. “The Other Hollywood: The Organizational and Geographic Bases of Television-Program Production.” Media, Culture & Society 26: 183-205.

Shyon Bauman. 2001. “Intellectualization and Art World Development: Film in the United States.” American Sociological Review 66: 404-426.

Denise D. Bielby and C. Lee Harrington. 2004. “Managing Cultural Matters: Genre, Aesthetic Elements, and the International Market for Exported Television.” Poetics 32: 73-98.

Melissa C. Scardaville. 2005. “Accidental Activists: Fan Activism in the Soap Opera Community.” American Behavioral Scientist 48: 881-901.

William T. Bielby and Denise D. Bielby. 1994. "'All Hits are Flukes': Institutionalized Decision-Making and the Rhetoric of Network Prime-Time Program Development." American Journal of Sociology 99: 1287-1313.

Janice A. Radway. 1992. "Mail-Order Culture and Its Critics: The Book-of-the-Month Club, Commodification and Consumption, and the Problem of Cultural Authority." Pages 512-527 in Cultural Studies, edited by Lawrence Grossberg, Cary Nelson and Paula Treichler. New York: Routledge.

Steven J. Tepper. 2000. “Fiction Reading America: Explaining the Gender Gap.” Poetics 27: 255-275.

Lakshmi Srinivasi. 2002. "The Active Audience: Spectatorship, Social Relations and the Experience of Cinema in India." Media, Culture & Society 24: 155-173.

Sarah Thornton. 1996. Club Cultures: Music, Media and Subcultural Capital. Hanover, NH: Wesleyan University Press. Chapters 1-3.

There were just LOADS of great opportunities on CFP last week. I should have checked my email earlier.

Videogames and Cinema (edited collection of essays + conference, Italy)

Deadline: September 1, 2006

We are currently seeking for essays that analyze the interplay between
videogames and cinema for a a book provisionally titled Videogames and
cinema. Digital play, screen pleasures, This edited collection will be
published in Italy in Winter 2006 in the ongoing "videoludica.game
culture series" [www.videoludica.com].


Edited by Matteo Bittanti, videoludica. game culture is a series of
books about critically acclaimed and much-loved videogames of the past
40 years. By turns passionate, creative, and always informed, the
thought-provoking books in this series demonstrate many different styles
of thinking about videogames. What binds this series together, and what
brings it to life, is that all of the authors  scholars/critics/gamers
- represent the cultures that these games spawned after their releases.
Each meditation revels in the distinct nature of the chosen game, series
or genre - providing insightful commentary to an overlooked practice.
Available in three formats ('Monographs', 'Readers', and, soon,
'Illustrated'), these volumes discuss videogames from a broad academic
and critical perspective, setting characteristics, themes and techniques
in context and exploring the games significance. More info:
www.videoludica.com.

Micah and I went to Iowa last week to visit my parents and his family. Check out pics at the family blog!

CFP Technoculture
Computers and Writing Online 2007
February 5 through February 9, 2007

Conference Co-Chairs:
Dr. Keith Dorwick,
The University of Louisiana at Lafayette
Dr. Kevin Moberly,
St. Cloud State University

Conference Co-Chairs Keith Dorwick and Kevin Moberly
are seeking synchronous and asynchronous presentations
that address a wide conception of scholarship that
focuses on a range of issues that could be briefly
summed up as “technology and society,” or, perhaps,
“technologies and societies.” Successful papers for
this online conference should focus on the ways
humanists read technology as a special case of
cultural studies.

In particular, the conference co-chairs are interested
in a conception of “technology” and the “humanist
impulse” that pushes beyond contemporary American
culture and its fascination with computers; we seek
papers that deal with any technology or technologies
in any number of historical periods from any relevant
theoretical perspective.

Presentations from scholars in all disciplines who are
working on the intersection of culture and technology
(see our now lapsed call for "Technoculture," a
special issue of Interdisciplinary Humanities archived
on this site for a further description of our
interests) are welcome. Papers need not focus on
writing instruction, in spite of the name of the
conference, to be considered. Papers about how to do
or work with technology that do not look beyond the
use of technology to its cultural meaning will NOT be
accepted.

NOTE ABOUT THE CONFERENCE: For years, the research of
scholars involved with the connections between
computers and writing (CW) has focused largely on,
well, “computers” and “writing.” With the continued
maturation of that sub-discipline, CW scholars have
begun to think about a wider conception of our own
work, with research and teaching that focuses on a
range of issues that could be briefly summed as
“technology and society.”

Successful presentations for Computers and Writing
Online 2007 should focus on the ways compositionists
and other scholars currently studying the use of
technology might rethink our work and move beyond
composition to a larger focus on cultural studies that
could include but not be as dependent on writing
instruction.

The keynote events will consist of panels comprising
first, second and third generation scholars (those who
founded the subdiscipline without specific training in
CW but in other areas of English studies; those
trained by those first wave scholars specifically in
CW; and those new voices trained by specialists by
training and research now graduating and entering
their careers) and other online events that focus on
where we’ve been and where we need to go.

For both asynchronous and synchronous events, eight
page papers will be due in .doc, .rtf, .pdf (or the
hypertext equivalent) and placed on the
computersandwriting.org website for pre-conference
reading by Jan. 31, 2007; discussions will follow
during the conference period. The conference will be
held February 5 through February 9, 2007. Synchronous
events will be held in AcadianaMOO at
http://acadianamoo.org; asynchronous events will be
held on the Computers and Writing website.

One page conference proposals due to
kdorwick@louisiana.edu by midnight, Friday November
17, 2006.


Dr. Keith Dorwick
Assistant Professor of English and Rhetoric
Department of English
The University of Louisiana at Lafayette
P.O. Box 44691
Lafayette, LA 70504-4691
Internet (VoIP) Number: 1 (773) 362 4707

CALL FOR PAPERS

SAVE AS...:DIGITAL MEMORIES

Edited Collection

=20

Edited by Anna Reading (London South Bank University), Joanne
Garde-Hansen (University of Gloucestershire and Andrew Hoskins (Swansea
University)

This co-edited book aims to address how digital media are changing the
languages, forms and practices of memory. The book explores how digital
media technologies such as the World Wide Web, mobile video phone,
personal computer, digital archives and video games may be
rearticulating discourses of memory, memory prosthetics and the
practices associated with commemorating, recalling and memorialising the
past. Articles in the book will include original, trans-cultural and
international research and may critically synthesize and seek to extend
theoretical material from the disciplines of anthropology, cultural
studies, geography, history, holocaust studies, psychology, philosophy,
sociology, media studies, museum studies, and psychoanalysis. The book
seeks to be an accessible but scholarly critique aimed at level 2 & 3
undergraduates and MA level postgraduate students on a growing number of
courses/modules in memory studies from within a variety of disciplines.=20

=20

We require abstracts for chapters of 200 words plus a biography for one
of the following sections. We strongly encourage submissions from non-UK
scholars or on non-UK themes. DEADLINE AUGUST 31st 2006 to Anna Reading,
readinam@lsbu.ac.uk

=20

Part One: Digital Memory Discourses (section editor Andrew Hoskins)

This section traces the growing public, academic, and mediated
discursive contestations of a past that seems increasingly
interdependent upon digital media, for its survival in the present.
Contributions will map the shifting modes and media of documentation and
later representation of the past, against discourses on that past.
Abstract proposals for this section can include (but are not restricted
to) the following topics/themes:

Digital media as memory 'schema', Digital media ecologies, Personal vs.
public memory discourses, Virtual spaces, biographies, Institutional
memory, News narratives, Journalistic testimonies, Visual media
'templates', Photojournalism

=20

Part Two: Digital Memory Forms (section editor Anna Reading)

This section addresses how digital, mobile and interactive media
environments are providing new media forms and prosthetics for personal
and public memories in different cultural contexts. The contributions
will address the extent to which the impact of digital media on forms of
memory is important to a reworking of the theoretical understandings of
time and space in relation to mediated commemorating, remembering,
witnessing and forgetting in post-industrial 21st century societies.
Abstract proposals for this section could include new research on the
past in relation to digital media forms and environments such as history
in video games, the digital mobile family album; sound and music
sampling; digital diaries and blogs.

=20

Part Three: Digital Memory Practices (section editor Joanne
Garde-Hansen)

History from below is now mediated through digital storytelling,
weblogs, personal journalism, online reunion sites, personal digital
collections, digital memory mapping, as well as peer to peer networks. A
number of theoretical implications now arise as personal memories
intersect with 'memory institutions'; concerning editing, organization,
interpretation, visibility, accessibility, archivability, permanency,
corruptibility, obsolescence, and future use. This section addresses
such implications for our understanding of mediated memory, history and
forgetting.

This might be interesting for all those friends of fanfic.

CALL FOR PAPERS



SLASH 2: THE 2nd DMU FANFICTION STUDY DAY



Faculty of Humanities, De Montfort University, Leicester, UK.



Tuesday 27th February 2007

10.00 am - 6.00 pm



After the success of last year's Slash Fiction Study Day, Slash 2 offers
another slash-friendly forum for discussion of the most exciting
developments in fanfic.



The main focus will be on slash fiction, a category of fan stories, almost
exclusively by women, about homoerotic affairs between male characters in
popular films and TV series. Proposals are invited, however, for papers on
all fanfic topics and controversies. Contributions are especially welcome
for panels on fan films, yaoi and Brokeback Mountain.



Please send an abstract of 200 words for a 20 minute paper to Dr Ian Hunter,
iqhunter@dmu.ac.uk or to the following address:



Dr Ian Hunter

Principal Lecturer in Film Studies

Faculty of Humanities

De Montfort University

Clephan Building

The Gateway

Leicester LE1 9BH



DEADLINE FOR PROPOSALS: 15th December 2006



All readers, writers and academic researchers of fan fiction, as well as
interested members of the public, are welcome to participate. Delegates at
the Redemption 2007 Conference might wish to stay over for Slash 2: the two
events are both in Leicestershire, UK.



There will be an attendance fee. Please contact Ian Hunter at
<mailto:iqhunter@dmu.ac.uk> iqhunter@dmu.ac.uk to reserve a place.



Slash 2 launches a series of regular seminar and lecture events hosted by
the Cult Media Research Group.

Star Trek Fans Film their Own Series

This article from the New York Times, commented on by phylogenetics
and circulated on Galactica News.

Full Text:

By DANNY HAKIM
Published: June 18, 2006

MASON NECK STATE PARK, Va. — Paul Sieber was wearing a "Star Trek" uniform in the deep Virginia woods when he found himself surrounded by a leathery-looking gang.
Skip to next paragraph
Multimedia
Video: 'Star Trek' Lives On, Online
Video: 'Star Trek' Lives On, Online
Bill Crandall for The New York Times

Sally Arkulari is prepared for her Klingon role in "Starship Farragut."
Enlarge this Image
Bill Crandall for The New York Times

Actors playing Klingons in "Farragut" ride to the set.

Fortunately, the ruffians were dressed up as Klingons, and Mr. Sieber, with a cigarette dangling from his mouth, was preparing to film them with a $6,000 digital video camera. At times like this, Mr. Sieber, the writer and director of "Starship Farragut," must come to grips with the obvious — not all Klingons are trained actors — and bellow, "Quiet on the set!"

From these Virginia woods to the Scottish Highlands, "Star Trek" fans are filling the void left by a galaxy that has lost "Star Trek." For the first time in nearly two decades, television spinoffs from the original 1960's "Star Trek" series have ended, so fans are banding together to make their own episodes.

Fan films have been around for years, particularly those related to the "Star Wars" movies. But now they can be downloaded from the Web, and modern computer graphics technology has lent them surprising special effects. And as long as no one is profiting from the work, Paramount, which owns the rights to "Star Trek," has been tolerant. (Its executives declined to comment.)

Up to two dozen of these fan-made "Star Trek" projects are in various stages of completion, depending what you count as a full-fledged production. Dutch and Belgian fans are filming an episode; there is a Scottish production in the works at www.ussintrepid.org.uk.

There is a group in Los Angeles that has filmed more than 40 episodes, according to its Web site, www.hiddenfrontier.com, and has explored gay themes that the original series never imagined. Episodes by a group in Austin, Tex., at www.starshipexeter.com, feature a ship whose crew had the misfortune of being turned into salt in an episode of the original "Star Trek," but has now been repopulated by Texans.

"I think the networks — Paramount, CBS — I don't think they're giving the fans the 'Trek' they're looking for," said Mr. Sieber, a 40-year-old engineer for a government contractor who likens his "Star Trek" project, at www.starshipfarragut.com, to "online community theater."

"The fans are saying, look, if we can't get what we want on television, the technology is out there for us to do it ourselves," he added.

And viewers are responding. One series, at www.newvoyages.com, and based in Ticonderoga, N.Y., boasts of 30 million downloads. It has become so popular that Walter Koenig, the actor who played Chekov in the original "Star Trek," is guest starring in an episode, and George Takei, who played Sulu, is slated to shoot another one later this year. D. C. Fontana, a writer from the original "Star Trek" series, has written a script.

For many Trekkies, contemporary science fiction on television — like "Battlestar Galactica" and the more recent Star Trek spinoffs — are too dark.

"Modern science fiction takes itself too seriously," said Jimm Johnson, 37, who presides over Starship Exeter.

John Broughton Jr., who founded the Farragut project, agreed. "One thing about the classic 'Star Trek' is at the end of the episode, it was pretty much a happy ending," he said. "It was sort of like 'The Brady Bunch.' It was all tidied up."

Mr. Broughton, a wiry Navy veteran with spiky hair, is a serious collector of all things "Star Trek." His avocado tunic, he said, is made from bolts of the nylon used for the original "Star Trek," purchased at $100 a yard. His boots are made by the son of the man who made the boots used in "Star Trek," he said. His megaphone, bought for $325 on eBay, was the one used by William Shatner when he directed "Star Trek V."

In the woods with the Klingons, Brad Graper, 52, finished detailing a pair of Nerf guns painted gray, with sections of chrome tailpipe added to them as gun barrels. Mr. Graper sat at a cluster of picnic tables in this lush 1,814-acre park. Klingon re-enactors from Virginia, Maryland and Pennsylvania played extras.

"I'm General DuraD," Mr. Graper said. "The D and the D are capitalized."

Around him, Klingons applied swarthy face paint and black hair dye, adjusted silvery sashes, and tottered in platform boots. They usually portray the more heavily costumed Klingons from "Star Trek: The Next Generation," the series spinoff that started in 1987. Those Klingons had big ridges on their heads requiring elaborate prosthetics.

"This is the first time I've ever done an original Klingon," said Sally Arkulari, 46, who works on a large farm in Lancaster, Pa. "It's a lot less work."

Ms. Arkulari is a tall woman, in a shimmering green dress, heavy eyeliner and orange hair extensions. What's her view on the Klingon woman?

"Love 'em because they're so tough," she said. "Part of that is not my personality. I need to be more aggressive as a person, and I'm not, so I like that."

The couple of dozen people on the set are either related, are friends or met at a Star Trek convention. David Sepan, 31, who plays a security officer, is a spacecraft analyst at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory and monitors a space probe heading to Mercury. Mr. Sieber is a family friend. Mr. Sepan's sister Amy, 29, is Farragut's makeup artist and costume designer.

"I'm also Dr. Christina Hawley," she said, and then performed a line from her script: "Captain — he's dead!"

Holly Bednar, 42, who plays an engineer, is the executive director of a theater in southern Maryland and one of the few participants here with theater experience. Her husband, Mike Bednar, 45, is the prop man, cameraman, science officer and a friend of Mr. Broughton's. The Bednars were childhood sweethearts who lost touch for 23 years and then reconnected and got married in 2004.

Ms. Bednar came late to "Star Trek" and considers herself in the married-to-Trekkie category.

"It was kind of a nice thing for Mike and I to work on together," she said. "For Mike, it's the 'Star Trek' stuff. For me, it's the acting."

At 11 a.m., Mr. Sieber rounded up the Klingons and explained plot points. "You guys are generating a cloaking field from the planet around the orbiting weapon," he explained. Heads nodded. "They heard a rumor from some Orion spies that you guys might be trying to do something on this planet, not knowing that there's this many of you here, and that's why they end up getting ambushed."

Fair enough. The group packed into a caravan of cars and headed into the woods at the park south of Washington. They had the camera, a boom mike, even a Hollywood scene marker. Mr. Sieber yelled "Action!" A trio of Klingons charged a gully, crouched into firing positions and tumbled as they pretended to be shot.

Later, they filmed 12 takes of a scene in which Mr. Broughton, as the captain of the Starship Farragut, and the Bednars walk through the gully, talking. There are sound problems, battery problems, glare problems.

Next scene: the three jump behind a fallen tree. They pretend to be pinned down by Klingons.

"Reinforcements! Crossfire!"

In a quiet moment, Mike Bednar reflected on what brings a man into the woods, wearing a form-fitting blue tunic, jet-black pants and shiny ebony boots, and carrying a camera. He recalled meeting Mr. Broughton years ago, when his friend was ending his stint in the Navy.

"I used to joke with him, 'You'd never get me in a "Star Trek" uniform, even on Halloween, it's not going to happen,' " he said. "Next thing I know, I'm wearing a uniform."

This week, chess camp invaded Emory. Dozens of adolescent boys tromp around campus in pairs, staring at the ground in silence and carrying green vinyl bags stuffed with chess pieces and rolled up plastic chess mats. This morning I walked through the student center, past rows of empty tables with cheap chess sets covering their tops. A blond kid and a gangly boy with moppish brown hair sat in a corner staring at a board, engrossed in a match and oblivious of the other's company. I watched a man standing next to a game stare at me as I walked past the rows of pawns and I saw a boy with big brown eyes and thick glasses point to his throat and grimace as he looked to the camp nurse.

Detox Center Opens for Gamers



By FIA CURLEY, Associated Press WriterThu Jun 8, 4:12 PM ET

An addiction center is opening Europe's first detox clinic for game addicts, offering in-house treatment for people who can't leave their joysticks alone.

Video games may look innocent, but they can be as addictive as gambling or drugs — and just as hard to kick, says Keith Bakker, director of Amsterdam-based Smith & Jones Addiction Consultants.

Bakker already has treated 20 video game addicts, aged 13 to 30, since January. Some show withdrawal symptoms, such as shaking and sweating, when they look at a computer.

His detox program begins in July. It will run four to eight weeks, including discussions with therapists and efforts to build patients' interests in alternative activities.

"We have kids who don't know how to communicate with people face-to-face because they've spent the last three years talking to somebody in Korea through a computer," Bakker said. "Their social network has completely disappeared."

It can start with a Game Boy, perhaps given by parents hoping to keep their children occupied but away from the television. From there it can progress to multilevel games that aren't made to be won.

Bakker said he has seen signs of addiction in children as young as 8.

Hyke van der Heijden, 28, a graduate of the Amsterdam program, started playing video games 20 years ago. By the time he was in college he was gaming about 14 hours a day and using drugs to play longer.

"For me, one joint would never be enough, or five minutes of gaming would never be enough," he said. "I would just keep going until I crashed out."

Van der Heijden first went to Smith & Jones for drug addiction in October 2005, but realized the gaming was the real problem. Since undergoing treatment, he has distanced himself from his smoking and gaming friends. He says he has been drug- and game-free for eight months.

Like other addicts, Bakker said, gamers are often trying to escape personal problems. When they play, their brains produce endorphins, giving them a high similar to that experienced by gamblers or drug addicts. Gamers' responses to questions even mirror those of alcoholics and gamblers when asked about use.

"Many of these kids believe that when they sit down, they're going to play two games and then do their homework," he said.

However, unlike other addicts, most gamers received their first game from their parents. "Because it's so new, parents don't see that this is something that can be dangerous," Bakker said.

Tim, a gamer who is currently under treatment, agreed to discuss his addiction on condition of his last name not being used. He said he began playing video games three years ago at age 18. Soon he wouldn't leave his room for dinner. Later, he began taking drugs to stay awake and play longer. Finally he sought help and picked up other hobbies to occupy his time.

Symptoms of addiction are easy to spot, Bakker says. Parents should take notice if a child neglects usual activities, spends several hours at a time with the computer and has no social life.

Bakker said parents of game addicts frequently echo the words of partners of cocaine addicts: "'I knew something was wrong, but I didn't know what it was.'"

I don't know why it takes me so long to reimerge after the the end of a semester, but it always seems to take a few weeks.

I read this in the Times this morning and thought i'd pass it along

Alan Kotok, a computer designer who helped create Spacewars, arguabley the first video game program, as a member of a small group of MIT students in the early 1960s, died at his home in Cambridge, Mass., on May 26. He was 64.

Ted Friedman posted:

A. J. Liebling warned, "Freedom of press is guaranteed only to those who own one." The internet has spawned millions of printing presses, leading to an explosion of democratic discourse perhaps unmatched in human history. Anybody with access to a computer and a web connection can join the fray.

But don't think it can't be taken away.

Right now, there's a debate in congress over "net neutrality." It's hard to get worked up over something that sounds so technical, but the stakes couldn't be higher.

The end of net neutrality would mean the end of the internet as we know it today in America. The giant corporations which provide internet access to most Americans would be free to sell preferential access to the highest bidder - and to squeeze the bandwidth of the websites that don't pay their protection money.

The internet didn't get the way it is today by accident, or simply because of the "free market." The system was coded - by regulators and technologists - in ways that enforce fair, equal treatment to all speakers. But code can be altered, and don't think big media wouldn't love to see all us uppity bloggers put back in our place, and the net turned from a global public square to just another mass medium...
Go to read more

I recently read Lutz and Collin's Reading National Geographic and was happy to see chapters that could be easily taken as stand-along readings for an udnergraduate course. I teach Visual Culture, or at least I taught it last semester and will teach it again next year, and I really like this book in terms of thinking about post-colonialism, photography and mass-media distribution. I wrote a synopsis and thought about it in relation to the Circuit of Culture, but I think in the future I may just use selected chapters. It's a nice book especially if you're trying to teach an undergrad course without a central reader.

In Reading National Geographic, Lutz and Collins examine how National Geographic, the popular magazine with a scientific aura, is produced. Looking inside the National Geographic Society, the authors investigate how photographers, editors and designers select and layout images and text to give readers representations of the third world. Lutz and Collins then turn to close reading of published photographs, considering issues of race and gender, along with socio-economic status and modernity work within the photographer’s aesthetic parameters: color, pose, and perspective. The authors then turn to interviewing readers of the magazine in Chapter 8, in order to determine how messages offered in National Geographic are received by the magazine’s readers. In this section, they examine how factors in the readers’ lives such as race, class, religion, as well as political and cultural sympathies and self identification, play a part in their reading of National Geographic. [This chapter 8, in particular, I think would make an excellent reading for a Visual Culture course. Chapter 5 would also make for an interesting reading, however their conclusion is not particularly new with regards to post-colonial theory: these photographs reify Western pre-conceptions and “provide the elements for powerful stories about the origins and rationality of gender and race distinctions.”]

In terms of the DuGay/Hall’s Circuit of Culture, Lutz and Collins’ text seems to touch on every aspect.
Identity: the self-made identity of the National Geographic society as well as the politics of identity with regards to the people/cultures depicted in each magazine and the readers own identities.
Production: how National Geographic is produced, through an examination of content layout, selection and design.
Consumption: a look into who reads the magazine
Regulation: this ties to production, in terms of how the magazine is designed—particularly the editing process. (i.e. self-regulation)
Representation: how people/cultures are represented by the magazine. The close-reading of photographs section seeks to analyze this.

Although they capture all the nodes on the Circuit of Culture, the most compelling section of their study is in the first few chapters in the book, particularly Chapter 3, “Inside the Great Machinery of Desire.” The inner workings and decisions made for the publication, in addition to the history offered in Chapters 1 and 2, sets up a compelling discussion of the magazine, which often seems to present itself as scientifically transparent.

Radical Evolution: The Promise and Peril of Enhancing our Minds, our Bodies-- and What It Means to Be Human
by Joel Garreau (2005)[writer for the Washington Post, member of Global Business Network]
Personal Website

Through vignettes, factoids and anecdotes Joel Garreau displays the impacts of extraordinary technologies on today’s world and today’s human. Like N. Katherine Hayles, Garreau contemplates the intersections between man and machine, offering images of what today offers and what tomorrow may have in store. His style, designed for a much broader audience than Hayles and Wired magazine, complements many of the other texts read over the semester: Ambient Findability, The Audible Past, Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom, How We Became Posthuman, even Kuhn vs. Popper. Garreau’s text could be used either as a closing text, as is this case, or might make for an excellent opening text for Technology and Society Course. It also would be a nice undergraduate text. The journalistic human-interest style of prose offers a survey of issues graspable for those not particularly voiced in them.

Chapter 1, 2—Gina Goldblatt, Michael Goldblatt, Belle – telepathic monkey, DARPA (present-day incarnation of Licklider’s ARPA.)
GRIN—four interrelated, intertwining technologies are cranking up to modify human nature… genetic, robotic, information and nano processes. These four advances are intermingling and feeding on one another, and they are collectively creating a curve of change unlike anything we humans have ever seen. (5)

Chapter 3—Moore’s Law, The Curve, Innovators, Early Adopters, Early Majority, Late Majority, Laggards. Possible outcome of The Curve is The Singularity—a huge but unpredictable social change driven by The Curve. Vinge introduced the idea in 1993

The Curve Scenario p. 80-81, Singularity Scenario 82-83

Chapter 4
Heaven Scenario—Kurzweil Technologies, Ray Kurzweil.
MOSH—Mostly Original Substrate Humans.
Heaven Scenario—130-131

Chapter 5
Hell Scenario
Literary dystopias and prognostications of the demise of the human race by rapidly advancing technology. Hell Scenario—184-185

Chapter 6—Prevail
Garreau’s own hypothesis: Humans will not be ultimately changed, even by these leaps in scientific advancement. Science and technology should be approached with caution, not fear. Prevail Scenario- 224- 225

Chapter 7—Transcend
Transhumanism—“loosely defined movement that started in the 1970s but is gaining heightened attention as the genetic, robotic, information, and nano technologies—the GRIN technologies—make the transhumanists’ interest in engineered evolution increasingly credible.” (231)

“The central argument about the future of human nature is whether it is fixed and immutable, once and forever, or whether it can continue to evolve.” (235)

Someone mentioned this factoid in a class last Wednesday and I just thought I'd look it up. It turns out David Bowie was a mime, in an earlier career. Not only did he daun the white paint and lipstick before his "talkie" period, but he founded a mime troupe called "Feathers."

"After recording an unsuccessful solo album, Bowie dropped out of the music business for a spell, and began to study mime. In 1969, he formed his own mime troupe, Feathers, as well as an experimental art ensemble. Neither was commercially successful, so Bowie signed a deal to record another album, which included the offbeat ‘Space Odyssey'." (From the Biography Channel UK)

For anyone looking for good internet radio stations who hasn't yet discovered KCRW, you should check it out. I started listening a couple years ago online and then switched over to different things, but now I'm in falling in love with the station all over again. It's way better than KEXP.

pwned KEXP!!!

If anyone has other suggestions for online stations, I'm all ears.

J.J. Abrams to direct Star Trek XI


"By Christian
April 21, 2006 - 8:39 AM

Paramount Pictures announced today that Lost creator J.J. Abrams will co-write, produce and direct the eleventh Star Trek film, set for release in 2008.

According to an article in the Daily Variety, the new film will be a prequel to the original Star Trek series, featuring younger versions of characters like James T. Kirk and Spock. The movie will chronicle events such as their first meeting at Starfleet Academy and their first mission into outer space.

The as-yet untitled new film will be written by Abrams together with Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci. Abrams is the creator of television series such as Felicity, Alias and Lost, and will soon be making his debut as a feature film director with Paramount's Mission Impossible: III. He's also written the scripts for films such as Regarding Henry and Armageddon. Kurtzman and Orci cooperated with Abrams on the MI: III script, and were previously part of the Alias writing staff, as well as writing the scripts for films such as The Island and the upcoming Transformers movie.

Besides Abrams, the film's producing team will include Damon Lindelof and Bryan Burk, who both also produce Lost. The Variety article made no mention of the fate of Rick Berman, who has been heading the Trek franchise for the past two decades.

According to Variety, the decision to produce a new Trek film is part of an effort by new Paramount head Brad Grey to try and raise the profile of Paramount by producing several "high-profile tentpole" movie, and having them developed by some of the most talented people in Hollywood.

The Starfleet Academy concept is an idea that has been floating around Paramount for several decades now. In February, former Trek movie producer Harve Bennett told the Trek Nation that as recently as two years ago he had a discussion with the then-current regime at Paramount about reviving the idea. Variety confirmed Bennett's statements, writing that several years ago Rick Berman was asked by Paramount to develop a Starfleet Academy feature together with Jordan Kerner and Kerry McCluggage. Presumably this idea evolved into the Star Trek: The Beginning concept, which now appears dead in the water."

I need to just get together a bibliography on Millenials for my own sake. I feel like there's a lot out there and I'm not really familiar with it.

I'm starting with this article called Case Study: Use of Handheld Computers by University Communications Students published in Jolt. If anyone else knows of some must reads, could you please let me know?