The Future of the Map Isn’t a Map at All—It’s Information – Rebecca J. Rosen – The Atlantic

To Parsons, maps can be so much more than maps. They can be all the information that exists in physical space, and then a layer of intelligence that can put that information to use. He says in the interview, "How can we almost predict the sorts of information that you’re going to need in your day to day life? Can I say, uh well, this morning you’ve got an extra 20 minutes to have your breakfast cereal because the train you normally take has been delayed. You haven’t asked me that, but I know because of what you do usually, and I’ve got these various feeds of data that are contextual. I can start to make those decisions for you." Of course, he notes, Google’s going to have proceed with caution as it rolls out these kinds of services because "there’s kind of a fine line that you run between this being really useful and it being creepy." That’s going to be pretty tough to get around.

via The Future of the Map Isn't a Map at All—It's Information – Rebecca J. Rosen – The Atlantic.

Steidl

This is an opportunity to celebrate all the gloriosensuality of books, at a time when many in the industry are turning against them. The idea is that is should relax you, like when you read a book, to a level of meditation and concentration. Paper Passion has evolved into something quite beautiful and unique. To wear the smell of a book is something very chic. Books are players in the intellectual world, but also in the world of luxury.

via Steidl.

Engaging with the ‘Screwmeneutical Imperative,’ or why I teach humanities students how to code

But since most of my days are spent embedded in development of “new” ways of interacting with cultural artifacts—texts, images, and even code itself—I figured I’d get a little meta in this space. I’m going to discuss why the heck I’d ever teach programming concepts (and code) to humanities students.

via Engaging with the 'Screwmeneutical Imperative,' or why I teach humanities students how to code – ProfHacker – The Chronicle of Higher Education.

NAFashion

New Aesthetic fashion: anything that doesn’t reference retro or make you look like a village blacksmith / see also http://cheath.co/NAFashion

via NAFashion.

“Exhausting Gameplay” by Douglas Edric Stanley (@abstractmachine) #theory #games

A significant percentage of video games employ in one way or another the figure of death. The thanatological sub-species of video game representations are practically endless: dismemberment, infection, untreatable wounds, explosion, etc. Players can be eaten, crushed, sliced, diced, quartered, electrocuted, impaled, and so on. Many of these representations are more or less approximate: in Doom, for example, a player’s state of “health” is represented by an abstract percentage value where players do not die of any specific organ failure, but instead from some sort of provoked exhaustion. In role playing games, players kill their opponents in a similar manner, i.e. by reducing this all-encompassing numerical value of their enemies to zero. In other games, players simply keel over, or disappear in a puff of smoke when touched, as in Pacman. In Super Mario Bros. players can just run out of time. Death in gaming is more a question of symbol than of substance. While we are still in the realm of simulation, the simulation is so figurative as pull us into an wholly other realm of representation.

via "Exhausting Gameplay" by Douglas Edric Stanley (@abstractmachine) #theory #games.