ENGL 680M: New Media

Also, this is the trailer for "Afrika", a game of indeterminate purpose that claims that it will capture the spirit of Africa.

ALSO, this is the website of the StoryCorps, an organization dedicated to recording the oral histories of the outgoing generation.

So I got a chance to join the multiplayer beta for Crysis (which I took) and it is quite an experience. To say that it's pretty would be an understatement, and the gameplay is sublime. What's most impressive to me, though, is the conceptualization of the interface.

the desire for video games to be more like reality is disappearing with this generation. where the generation that saw the introduction of video games into culture wants video games to emulate pre-existing reality, the generation that was born into near-photorealistic videogames doesn't particularly care - for my generation, video games are part of reality, and what we want made better is the game itself.

this idea of "layers" strikes me as more a convenient way to conceptualize new media rather than a defining principle of it.

my desktop says "do your money!" to remind me to update my financial spreadsheet. other than that, it is black. :-/

before that, though, it was a cool swirly thing using vista's active background feature. that background says about me "you like shiny techie things."

these keyboards are unnecessarily noisy.

note to self - wikipedia game!

i begin to get the strong impression that i'm among the more socially conservative in the new media group. i'm cool with contrary.

the obsession of the LDSs with record has fascinated me since high school - the families of many of my LDS friends have in their homes near shrines to their ancestry. it's a fascinating tribute to the need for "memory" as a cultural group that the CoJCoLDS exhibits - they're proud of their heritage, for reasons i won't comment on. that'll keep for another post, perhaps.