Category Archives: Information Technology and Information Literacy

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 →

Posted in Games and Gaming, Information Technology and Information Literacy, Intellectual Property | Comments Off on Liveblogging From State of Play, Session 4

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 →

Posted in Games and Gaming, Information Technology and Information Literacy, Intellectual Property | Comments Off on Liveblogging From State of Play, NYC, Session 3

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

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

The Laptop in the Classroom

Posted on May 6, 2009 by Timothy Burke

Our Lady of Scathing Online Schoolmarmery forgive me, but I don’t think I will be banning laptops in my classrooms in the near-future. The case against classroom laptops is that they encourage students to divert their attention from class, either … Continue reading →

Posted in Academia, Information Technology and Information Literacy | 35 Comments

Cramer and Stewart

Posted on March 13, 2009 by Timothy Burke

I’m very much enthused by the proposition that Jon Stewart and his merry band of TIVO-ing staffers should step up their attacks and go after much of the rest of the media. The basic drive behind the Daily Show‘s criticism … Continue reading →

Posted in Information Technology and Information Literacy, Politics, Popular Culture | 21 Comments

Journalism, Civil Society and 21st Century Reportage

Posted on March 6, 2009 by Timothy Burke

As the failure of many newspapers looms and public radio cuts its journalistic offerings, the complaint against new media by established journalists gets sharper and sharper. The key rallying cry is that new media can’t provide investigative reporting, that it … Continue reading →

Posted in Blogging, Books, Information Technology and Information Literacy, Miscellany | 18 Comments

Textbook Costs

Posted on February 12, 2009 by Timothy Burke

Lots of cross-blog talk on this subject at the moment: why are textbooks so expensive? The answer is mostly that it’s a racket with some resemblance to some of the weird pricing that happens inside the health care system. The … Continue reading →

Posted in Academia, Information Technology and Information Literacy, Intellectual Property | 11 Comments

The Embarassment of Paratext, the Insufficiency of Culture

Posted on February 8, 2009 by Timothy Burke

It’s a little thing, but let me make it into something slightly bigger. In the Sunday Week in Review section of the New York Times today, there’s a brief item about road signs warning of zombies ahead. The item mentions … Continue reading →

Posted in Information Technology and Information Literacy, Popular Culture, Production of History | 10 Comments