Author Archives: Timothy Burke

Liveblogging State of Play, Day 2, Session 1

Posted on June 20, 2009 by Timothy Burke

I’m at the developer roundtable. Dan Norton, Raph Koster, Jesse Houston, Nick Fortugno, Mike Sellers [Me: Thank god for these guys, just as an aside: developers interested in exploratory conversations about the form, who don’t just stare at people and … Continue reading →

Posted in Games and Gaming, Information Technology and Information Literacy, Intellectual Property | 3 Comments

State of Play, Day 2

Posted on June 20, 2009 by Timothy Burke

Trying to think about yesterday’s sessions before we get started. What is sticking with me is this: 1. No application, design or game can live up to the utopian imagination of potential users or players, and that utopian imagination is … Continue reading →

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Liveblogging From State of Play, Session 4

Posted on June 19, 2009 by Timothy Burke

On Virtual Economies Julian Dibbell’s introduction: maybe virtual economies were not so important, or not as important as we thought in the way that we thought they were. Maybe RMT doesn’t have to be quite the battleground that it was. … Continue reading →

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Liveblogging From State of Play, NYC, Session 3

Posted on June 19, 2009 by Timothy Burke

“Breaking the Magic Circle” We had a prior discussion at my table about whether there’s anything much left of use in “the magic circle” as a concept, and someone mentioned a recent discussion by Jesper Juul on the issue. Jerry … Continue reading →

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Liveblogging From State of Play, NYC, Session 2

Posted on June 19, 2009 by Timothy Burke

Government and governance in virtual worlds panel. Tori Horton, description of how virtual worlds can link to public diplomacy, reviews weaknesses and strengths of virtual worlds for servicing public diplomacy. My comment: same issue as with Raph’s framing of Metaplace, … Continue reading →

Posted in Games and Gaming, Information Technology and Information Literacy, Intellectual Property | 1 Comment

Liveblogging From State of Play, NYC

Posted on June 19, 2009 by Timothy Burke

Raph Koster, “A New Kind of World”, keynote Focused on Metaplace. Had to ban his own brother from UO. Brother is now cyberactivist. But virtual worlds don’t have that relevance, really. Nothing has happened in them that matters by comparison … Continue reading →

Posted in Games and Gaming, Information Technology and Information Literacy, Intellectual Property | 2 Comments

This Cupcake Will Not Stand

Posted on June 17, 2009 by Timothy Burke

Don’t you kind of wonder how this woman thought she’d come out looking from this New York Times article? On one hand, she seems perfectly aware that most of the other parents at the schools her kids have been at … Continue reading →

Posted in Domestic Life | 11 Comments

History As It Was

Posted on June 16, 2009 by Timothy Burke

I’m finally getting around to last week’s NY Times piece by Patricia Cohen about the decline of the “traditional” specializations in history departments. Rather like the last Cohen piece that drew my attention, it feels a bit detached from time … Continue reading →

Posted in Academia | 2 Comments

The Usefulness of Scholarship

Posted on June 13, 2009 by Timothy Burke

If you define erudition as encyclopedic knowledge about a body of discrete facts, then welcome to the age of distributed erudition. It’s still a very good thing to have those facts in your head rather than to pop up on … Continue reading →

Posted in Academia, Africa, Information Technology and Information Literacy | 5 Comments

Colonial Africa: A List of Questions

Posted on June 12, 2009 by Timothy Burke

I think I’ve hit on a catchy structure for a modest reshuffling of my Honors seminar in Colonial Africa. Much of my reading list will remain the same, but this restructuring is designed to make the way I look at … Continue reading →

Posted in Africa | 9 Comments