3 Classic Anime

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I’ve been dipping into Japanese manga and anime culture. Japanese science fiction animated movies like Akira (1988), Ghost in the Shell (1995) and Metropolis (2001) have a visual grammar that has influenced computer game design and cyberpunk movies like the Matrix. They also have a willingness to tackle interesting philosophical issues like the nature of the soul or “ghost” in a cybernetic world (Ghost in the Shell).

In effect, boys anime and manga, like the fumetti I read as a kid in Italy (see uBC – Enciclopedia), combine smart speculative fiction plots with soft porn and tech-heavy violence. This mix can be seen in the Fraco-Belgian adult Bande DessinÈe like Moebius.

Whether we approve of this mix, and, of course, we don’t, there is an energy to boy culture and it is the source for much of the style of online culture.
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Making the case for arts and culture

Update: The link below is broken, but here is a link to their new Arts Promotion Kit. Lots of good links in there.

The Canada Council for the Arts has a neat little site that provides an Advocacy resource kit. It for Canada as it has mostly Canadian facts and quotes. Nobody like to do advocacy – it makes us feel dirty, especially if we are trying to advocate for noble enterprises like churches, universities or arts. That said, we can learn from the health sector. Through ongoing advocacy they have been able to effectively make the case for funding of health care (and health research). If we believe in what we do why should we be ashamed to tell people?
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DigiPlay: Experience and Consequence of Technologies of Leisure

DigiPlay is a UK network around technologies of leisure like computer games that has been running seminars.

CRIC has recently been awarded funding by the ESRC to organise a series of six seminars on technologies of leisure and create a virtual network of UK and international researchers in his area.

The seminar model they are using to bring people together has some interesting themes like “Leisure Constraints, Entitlement and Access to Technologies of Leisure.”

Successful Mid-sized Cities

My wife just attended a talk by Pierre Fillion where he argued that successful mid-sized cities have:

  1. Proximity to a university
  2. Cultural attractions and historical buildings
  3. Pleasant pedestrian walkways
  4. Retail space (but not a mall)

He argued that parking and malls are not helpful. A downtown should be different from surburbs or no one will bother going downtown. See Archives: Journal of the American Planning Association for his article on “The Successful Few: Healthy Downtowns of Small Metropolitan Regions”.
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Framework study: New media in Canada

The Women in Film and Television – Toronto commissioned an interesting study from EKOS Research Associates, Frame Work: Employment in Canadian Screen-Based Media – A National Profile. The Executive Summary is available in PDF format for download.
The Executive Summary looks at the Screen based industries from Film to New Media. It pays special attendtion to diversity issues and has a nice summary of where new media jobs are expected.

As technology advances, so does the need for a skilled workforce. Today, the screen-based media industries face the critical challenge of ensuring our workforce is trained to exploit new digital technologies on the one hand, and the increased need for creative/sophisticated business and financial skills on the other. (p. 14)

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Digital Pens (Anoto, io2, and Fly)

The Logitech Advanced io2 Digital Writing System is a pen which stores the paths that you write and draw for downloading to the computer. It works with special paper that has a pattern of tiny dots that are tracked by a sensor under the nib. (See LogitechÆ io‚Ñ¢ Digital Writing” href=”http://www.logitech.com/index.cfm?PATH=products/features/digitalwriting&PAGE=products/features/digitalwriting&CRID=1545&REF=CRID=1545&countryid=19&languageid=1″>Logitech Products >Logitech’s Digital Writing site.fly.jpg
The underlying technology is called Anoto and it is also being used in products like LeapFrog’s FLY pentop computer for kids. Fly lets kids draw out a piano keyboard and then lets you play the piano by pressing the pen to the keys. A sound synthesizer plays the note.
Such pen and voice systems suggest a whole new type of interface that is not screen or touch pad based. You could have a pen shaped phone where you just write the phone number down and it calls it. The trick is the paper that lets it tack its absolute position even if you raise the pen and move it. I’m sure we are going to see innovative uses for this technology that take advantage of what you can do when you don’t need a screen.
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Alias Visualization Studio

What would a high-end computer supported visualization studio look like? The Alias Visualization Studio, from the look of the web site, is a space for smaller groups to visualize design ideas (developed with Alias software no doubt) and discuss them. Unlike caves and walls that I have seen, this seems to use mostly projectors and seems to have benefited from an architect who thought of the whole space. How could we use these in education?
Thanks to Mark Chamberlain for this.