I just finished my conference report on Interacting With Immersive Worlds 2009 which was held at Brock. Keynotes included Espen Aarseth and Janet Murray, both of whom where interesting on narrative and games. Kevin Kee and I gave a dialogue on serious games which was well received.
Prezi – The zooming presentation editor
Screenshot of Prezi
Prezi – The zooming presentation editor is a neat PowerPoint alternative. You build a presentation that is one large map, then you script a tour that zooms in and out. This avoids the problem Tufte points out of fragmented discourse. Users can zoom in and out. Prezi is also presented as a service where you craft and store the presentations online rather than through local software.
Springer Exemplar: Search Results
Screenshot of Exemplar
Springer has an interesting tool that lets you search for a pattern and see its distribution. When you search for a term it allows you to see distribution over time in the upper left, then distribution over disciplinary categories. It also shows a KWIC (Keyword in Context.) See Springer Exemplar: Search Results for Interactivity. The design is clean and easy to explore, but the content seems to be only recent materials in Springer journals.
5000 words – Dictionary of Words in the Wild
The Dictionary of Words in the Wild has made it to over 5000 words thanks to its many contributors.
We also made a smooth transition over to the University of Alberta and a new domain name: lexigraphi.ca.
TPM: The Philosophers’ Magazine | The real thing?
Thanks to Peter I came across an article in The Philosophers’ Magazine titled The real thing? (by Julian Baggini, Issue 43, posted May 5, 2009) about social epistemology. Social epistemology according to Alvin Goldman, who was interviewed for the article, examines the social dimension of knowing. Goldman is quoted as saying,
Historically, epistemology focused on how you can get the truth about the world. The question for social epistemology is something like, how does the social affect people’s attempts to get the truth? So what I want to do, and this has been part of my efforts for these 10 years or so, is to try to give a bigger focus to the social side of epistemology, while remaining continuous with the philosophical tradition.
Twitterfall
Thanks to James K I discovered Twitterfall which shows a waterfall of tweets based on keywords and other settings. An interesting example of what St̩fan Sinclair and I call a Knowledge Radio Рan application that organizes knowledge into a live stream.
Hacking as a Way of Knowing: Our Project on Flickr
I put a photo set up on Flickr for our Hacking as a Way of Knowing project. The set documents the evolution of the project which I’ve tentatively named the “ReReader for the Writing on the Wall”. Thanks to all those who made the project and the workshop a success. Now I have to think a bit deeper about making as knowing and things as theories.
Hacking as a Way of Knowing – Part 2
So a bunch of us started a project yesterday as part of the Hacking as a Way of Knowing workshop. Ours is, of course, the best project. We have motors that drive a reading of a fax carbon based on a “knowledge radio” on the Day of Digital Humanities.
Hacking as a Way of Knowing – Digital History
Today was the first day of the Hacking as a Way of Knowing e-waste fabrication workshop. Above you can see the text from a fax thermal printer roll projected onto a wall. (At least I think that’s what it is.) Below is an Arduino connected to a a speaker. Stéfan has working on taking a RSS feed and triggering events so we can connect stuff to it to create cool stuff.
We got talking about why fabrication is taking off. Turkel has his lab. Matt Ratto at the Univerity of Toronto has a lab (with a great name – CriticalMaking.com. Some of the reasons are:
- There is a growing amount of electronic waste visible and available to be repurposed (and reminding us of how much we waste.)
- As manufacturing moves out of North America we respond by exploring micro and personal manufacturing through fabrication. It is possible that this is the future of manufacturing here.
- As manufacturing becomes so complex that we can’t imagine how everyday things are made, fabrication gives us a way of thinking about the making of what’s around us. It allows us to reappropriate the everyday.
- The costs of fabrication (tools and materials) have dropped to the point where it is a viable hobby. What will fabrication look like when it is not longer only for those with skills?
- We have what I call an “Ikea” effect where the labour and costs for certain items is shifting. Ikea moved part of assembly (the end assembly that takes relatively little skill) to the buyer by creating smarter hardware. They shifted engineering smarts to joining technology that could be used by anyone. Fabrication benefits from a shift in smarts so that assembly can doable.
goosh.org – the unofficial google shell.
From Steve Ramsay’s twitter I discovered goosh.org – the unofficial google shell. What an idea! I’m not sure what I would use it for, but it seems dangerously close to brilliant.