A nice, small, and fun gathering with the narratives group tonight. It was a great cap to John’s demos of Deus Ex and Medal of Honor. Thanks, John.
Good to see Josh, Kasandra, Neha, Susan, Barbara, and John around the table.
At the narratives meeting, we read some great work, had nice conversation, and missed our absent friends. Excellent to spend some time with Neha, too. I continue to wish her well. Susan, thanks for the work, the poetry, and the coffee.
Now here’s the stuff I’ve been looking for. In a prior comment, Christopher writes
I think herein lies the problem for a teacher looking to use the interactive narrative. Children are now conditioned to full visual immersion along with reflexive twitching to accomplish their task, the games promoting instinctual rather than cognitive responses. How can I compete against a visual cornucopia?Students would already rather play with their Nintendo DS than listen to a teacher. How to then make my own work more interesting than playing the Sims or Everquest when they are given time at the computer?
So where do I start? Steve had posted a comment about the Cybernetic Teacher. Would that be enough to hold a student’s interest? I think it might work for a college student, especially one who was older than the fresh out of high school student.
Those entering college today have always known computers and gaming systems and have short attention spans that crave visual stimulus and immediate gratification.
I’d suggest that such a comment begin a long discussion on the veracity of the fundamental notion: how to use the “environment” to teach specific notions in the disciplines. Coonce-Ewing may be questioning the concept, but I think the comparitive reflex is flawed. Is the question one of competing influence? The learning vs. the gaming?
Partly, Coonce-Ewing digs into the nature of the contemporary student, a complex question because it draws us into asking what amounts to a metaquestion: what was the medieval student like vs. the contemporary student in terms of their learning conditioning? My disagreement comes here. I don’t agree that the modern student lacks an attention span. I’d suggest that their attention spans are neither lacking nor weakened by the influence of tech. There have always been distractions and bad habits to overcome.
Here’s another question that goes back to the problem of environment: how can we build environments that don’t compete with the PS2 but infuse a digital space with possible learning potential much as a game might. For the student, the reaction should not be “this isn’t enough like Kingdom Hearts,” it should be “wow, what’s in that box that I need to get into the King’s tomb.”
PS. How does the point of shift when we remember that even “now” kids (growing with computers as basic appliances) have also, like their elders, always had schools and classrooms?
Christopher writes
Children are now conditioned to full visual immersion along with reflexive twitching to accomplish their task, the games promoting instinctual rather than cognitive responses.
I wonder if this is true in general (this is why ludology is necessary too). Don’t most games still involve problem solving to guide the response? John and I will be dealing with this issue in terms of Deus Ex on the big screen in room 201 today if anyone would like to join us. 2pm, I think.
From Wired News via Ludology
“The weird thing was that last night in my half-sleep, half-awake haze, I thought I was playing Katamari Damacy, too, and I kept trying to roll Kozy up in my ball,” said Dan Kitchens. “I think I got this just from watching Kozy play the game for hours.”
I only link to this because I’ve played KD. I’ve had no urge to roll over anything when I’m out and about but the game is curiously immersive. The music is also fantastic. I’m sure Susan Gibb will be tickled by this article.
And Coonce-Ewing will understand a little better the link between game immersion and the classroom and why I’m so interested in it. And if Jordan White’s reading, it’s for you too.
January 10, 2005:
Weakened bones, radiation-damaged cells, spacecraft malfunctions — when you think of journeying through space, these are the threats that come to mind. Yet, there’s another issue equally critical.That issue is teamwork.
Astronauts don’t travel through space by themselves. They go in pairs or threesomes or even larger groups. Maintaining a successful team in a risky, isolated environment calls for finely honed people-skills. It means that astronauts must develop a keen awareness both of themselves, and of the way they interact with those around them.
This is a NASA and new media issue with interesting consequences on the design side. The approach
includes an interactive simulator set onboard a virtual space station akin to the International Space Station (ISS). It allows an astronaut to role-play interpersonal conflicts on the computer. For example, the simulator might present this situation: one crewmember (represented by an actor) accidentally damages a piece of equipment, and asks a crewmate (the role assumed by the astronaut working through the program) for help in concealing the damage. The astronaut decides how to answer the request, and then the program responds, based on that answer.
Avida is an auto-adaptive genetic system designed primarily for use as a platform in Digital or Artificial Life research. In lay terms, Avida is a digital world in which self-replicating computer programs mutate and evolve.
From the Digital Evolution Lab at MSU.
So we have out CCSUers (I don’t mean to leave out the others, the Nehas, the Maureens, but this is one of those what’s going on posts) moving onto the next semester. But I’m wondering what they’re getting out of it all. What are the insights that Cindy’s been drawing from her experiences? What is catching the fancy of Christopher in his intensive study of history? What are the links between story, history, and interactive fiction?
I’ve added a new category called epistemology to the sidebar because a lot things are going to keep falling under that heading, especially the posts that have to do with decision making. In my reading, I keep feeling Francis Bacon behind my shoulder.
Instance, “how does one come to know when a game is saving”? is this partly a question of knowledge borders? When is this concept committed to memory? Is a database an epistemological figure?
I hadn’t caught this newest post over at Jesse Abbot. Professor Abbot is one of the tightest writers I know and he negociates the circles with crisp and luminous fingertips:
In the last decades of the Twentieth Century, Postmodernism accentuated all of the discoveries that Modernism made (in the face of contemporary fears and stressors) regarding relativism and the reality of multiple subjectivities and yet lost the inner value of these finds in a pit of nihilism. Nihilism mistakenly identifies the Dream and the Machine as one entity and unfolding process, as two poles cut from the same cloth, subatomic particles, or what have you. It fails to see the necessary dance between the two with the Dream leading that sustains concrete historical possibilities.Helping to further the work of literature in its mission of promoting human survival and beyond that, nurturing the meaning of what it is to be human is our work.
I’d like to hear more about this issue of dreaming.
And thanks for the Ersinghaus post.
Nevertheless, I wonder if Jesse is a little rough on postmodernism by calling upon the metaphor of “the pit”? Is this not a matter of a particular priority given a point of view or world view. That is, I could create a monolith made of raised smudges and call it The Faces of Homer, a minimal sculpture that asks a question of the viewer,and leave it at that. Perhaps the question is: in postmodernism, who is the nihilist? Or better who are the postmodernists? Have we not seen Blake walking the streets with his bother Bonaventure at his side?
In 1939, Germany attempted to negiate various economic and political deals with the Soviet Union specifically having to do the trade mission in Praque and with the political question of what to do with Poland leading up to the Three Power Pact. Reading the various memoranda between foreign office secretaries and ambassadors is vivid stuff.
MOST URGENTBERLIN, May 30, 1939.
No. 101. For the Ambassador.
For information.
Contrary to the policy previously planned, we have now decided to undertake definite negotiations with the Soviet Union. Accordingly, in the absence of the Ambassador I asked the Chargi, Astakhov, to see me today. The Soviet request for further continuance of their trade mission at Prague as a branch of the trade mission at Berlin provided the starting point of our conversation. Since the Russian request presents a question of policy the Reich Foreign Minister had also been considering it and he had taken the matter up with the F|hrer. To my inquiry as to whether the maintenance of the trade mission at Prague involved a permanent situation or a continuance over a limited period, the Chargi remarked that in his personal view it seemed most likely that the Soviet Government was thinking of a permanent arrangement. I replied that it would not be an easy matter for us
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to grant permission for continuance of the trade mission in Prague, since Ambassador Count Schulenburg had just received from Molotov a not very encouraging pronouncement on the subject of the general state of our relations. The Chargi, in the absence of more definite instructions, interpreted the conversation between Count Schulenburg and Molotov, of which he had knowledge, as meaning that at Moscow they wished to avoid a repetition of the course of events of last January. In Molotov’s view political and economic matters could not be completely separated in our relationship. Between the two as a matter of fact, there was a definite connection.
. . . WEIZSDCKER
The story conitnues with this
The German Ambassador in the Soviet Union (Schulenburg) to the German Foreign OfficeTelegram
No. 113 of June 27
Moscow, June 27, 1939-5:42 p. m.
Received June 27, 1939-8:30 p. m.
Reference your telegram of the 26th No. 132 [12]
As I see it, Mikoyan’s tactics can be interpreted as follows: Mikoyan does not want to see the talks with us broken off, but wishes to keep
[12] Not printed.
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the negotiations firmly in hand, in order to control their progress at any time. Obviously it would not fit very well into the framework of the Soviet Union’s general policy, if a stir should be created by a resumption of the trade negotiations, and above all by repeated journeys of a special plenipotentiary to Moscow. The Soviet Government apparently believes that by resuming the trade negotiations at this particular moment we intend to influence the attitude of England and Poland, and thereby expect to gain certain political advantages. They fear that after gaining these advantages we would again let the negotiations lapse.
. . .
SCHULENBURG
There is, of course, a huge story behind all this. But the point is that the “primary” sources and access to them are critical to the story. Why? In seeking out books on certain inflammatory issues that I wanted to pick up and read, I kept on coming on reviews discounting the books because of their “political leanings.” Whatever the politics. These are books written by experts in their fields as were the reviews, but no matter. The review functions on its own terms, good and bad, the study on another, good or bad. But in my searching I kept on coming back to the notion of the “good stuff.” “The horse’s mouth.” “The source.”
This is an epistemological quandry. If I say, I want to learn about Galileo and thus read a book about Galileo, I will learn about Galileo, sure. But then what? But I could also ask another question. What did Galileo write, and then I could read Dialogue Concerning the Two Cheif World Systems. Then what?
I can feel myself about to win an award soon for ugliest weblog on the internet. I don’t know what it is about the look of things but I think the size of my laptop screen is bumbling my sense of what things should look like, if that makes any sense. But the way I’m thinking about design has a lot to do with my search for a new laptop, a journey that isn’t going all that well, and one that’s not all that necessary at the moment.
On a particular machine, a component is missing; on another, same thing. Why doesn’t IBM slip some Firewire into a motherboard or two on their Thinkpads? Why is the Dell machine that seems like a nice fit suffer from the same absence? Why can’t Sony add some stoutness to their keyboards?
I will be adding a reading list onto the right hand sidebar soon and a photograph I’ve been meaning to take somewhere there too for a little more frivolous color and corner balance. Ah, the scales of things, one place to the next.