Category: Uncategorized

Nintendo Switch Announcements

I’m watching Nintendo Treehouse Live with Nintendo Switch™ which follows key presentations and hands-on sessions in Tokyo and elsewhere. This are all part of Nintendo’s major promotion of the forthcoming Switch system which will be released March 3rd at a cost of $299.99 (otherwise known as $300) according the web site. I assume that is USD.

As I watch(ed) Shigeru Miyamoto and others were talking about and playing the new The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild for Switch. I am usually bored by live public relations presentations, but this one was nicely handled with translators sitting with the others. It was a bilingual conversation where the translators seemed comfortable adding thoughts.

Here is some of the news about the presentations:

 

Never Again pledge

Today we stand together to say: not on our watch, and never again.

Thanks to Bettina a link to the Never Again pledge not to help build databases to manage people based on their religious beliefs.

We refuse to participate in the creation of databases of identifying information for the United States government to target individuals based on race, religion, or national origin.

The web site neveragain.tech includes information about how the pledge was developed. (The group that developed it reject “tech solutionism.”) There is also a page of resources and a page on how to take action.

I, Geoffrey Rockwell, hereby commit to the neveragain.tech pledge. Please stand with me and hold me to it.

DIAGRAM :: Intensities of Need and Press Variables as Expressed in Stories Told by Men

Conductors Work Report (found document)

From Granta I found a link to this online magazine DIAGRAM that gathers writing and diagrams, like the one above. The diagrams are found representations of things like Intensities of Need and Press Variables as Expressed in Stories Told by Men. (I can’t quite figure this out, but it looks like some sort of manual sentiment analysis.)

The interface is simple which makes it hard to get to back issues. Edit the URL to do so.

Spanish Cops Use New Law To Fine Facebook Commenter For Calling Them ‘Slackers’

Heather tweeted me a link to a story from Techdirt on how Spanish Cops Use New Law To Fine Facebook Commenter For Calling Them ‘Slackers’. The police in Spain can now fine people for disrespecting them. This outrageous law was also reported on by The Telegraph in a story First victim of Spain’s 'gag law' fined for criticising 'lazy' police. Despite Snowden’s revelations governments seem to be passing more and more laws to restrict speech and travel, often in the name of fighting terrorism. As Techdirt reports, the law is being defended with Orwellian arguments,

Defending the new law, the PP government has said that “demonstrations will become freer because they will be protected from violent elements”. (Quote from Telegraph article)

Wearable Computing

 

I just came across a chapter on Wearable Computing by Steve Mann (pictured above) from the Interaction Design Foundation. The chapter is part of a larger open Encyclopedia of Human-Computer Interaction. You can read it online for free or become a member of the organization and get a PDF or buy it.

Steve Mann is the researcher who has been working on wearable and bearable computing for decades. He has developed systems that I am told are better than Google Glass.

Japanese Game Culture Blogs

This term I’m teaching a course on Understanding Japanese Game Culture and I’ve just discovered (again) that my students know more than me. This is a graduate version of the seminar I taught this summer at Ritsumeikan University for University of Alberta undergraduates. For the graduate version I asked students to keep a blog with responses to the readings and as I checked their blogs this week I realized how interesting their interventions are. Many of their entries expand on issues from the readings in ways that remind me (once more) how much more learning takes place in a seminar where everyone contributes than in a instructor-driven course. Here are the links to their blogs. Enjoy:

Happy Ada Lovelace Day! A Collection of Essays on Gender and Tech From Your Friends at The Atlantic – Rebecca J. Rosen – The Atlantic

The Atlantic has a great collection of essays on gender and technology gathered in one place, Happy Ada Lovelace Day! A Collection of Essays on Gender and Tech From Your Friends at The Atlantic. The page of stories includes a scan of the 1951 internal memo that allowed IBM female employees to get married (that you see above.) It also includes a story about Etsy’s prioritizing diversity in hiring which led to a significant improvement in the ratio of female to male engineers.

All of this in honour of Ada Lovelace Day!