WRT: Writer Response Theory

Critical Code Studies, the critical interpretation of computer source code, was born on this blog (here and here). Several years, presentations, debates, annexations, blogs, and new allies later, I am back to announce that I’m turning up the heat on (& giving more bandwidth to) Critical Code Studies.

One of the crucial developments has been the parallel growth of Software Studies. Without speaking to the academic hierarchy of Critical Code Studies and, um, Software Studies, I would say that what’s good for Software Studies is good for Critical Code Studies. In San Diego last year, Lev Manovich, Noah Wardrip-Fruin, and WRT’s own Jeremy Douglass put on quite the tech studies smorgasbord, complete with Kate Hayles, some more GTxA-ers, Ian Bogost, and other notables.

Leaving that session, I was convinced Software Studies was materializing, and Matt Kirschenbaum’s article in the Chronicle of Higher Education sealed the deal.

More Developments:
Continue reading ‘Critical Code Studies 2009-2010′

Critical Code Studies, the critical interpretation of computer source code, was born on this blog (here and here). Several years, presentations, debates, annexations, blogs, and new allies later, I am back to announce that I’m turning up the heat on (& giving more bandwidth to) Critical Code Studies.

One of the crucial developments has been the parallel growth of Software Studies. Without speaking to the academic hierarchy of Critical Code Studies and, um, Software Studies, I would say that what’s good for Software Studies is good for Critical Code Studies. In San Diego last year, Lev Manovich, Noah Wardrip-Fruin, and WRT’s own Jeremy Douglass put on quite the tech studies smorgasbord, complete with Kate Hayles, some more GTxA-ers, Ian Bogost, and other notables.

Leaving that session, I was convinced Software Studies was materializing, and Matt Kirschenbaum’s article in the Chronicle of Higher Education sealed the deal.

More Developments:
Continue reading ‘Critical Code Studies 2009-2010′

Ah, the Internet. Gregory Zobel ran this wonderful interview about managing your RSS feeds with WRT-amigo David Parry (of Academic Hack) on the now-defunct “Adjunct Advice.” Unfortunately, that “long tail” can sometimes be severed, so to help it grow back, we are reposting that interview here. This marks the second in our continuing attempts to unseat The Wayback Machine as THE place to go for your golden oldies.

Revving Up Your RSS Feeds with David Parry

Once again, Dr. David Parry has agreed to share his tech wisdom with Adjunct Advice. Rather than going for a broad sense of technology, this interview focuses exclusively on the effective and efficient use of RSS feeds. As this interview demonstrates, RSS is much easier to use and more powerful when you organize your feeds. In addition to this interview, I suggest you read David’s own article about RSS feeds here.

Dr. David Parry is an Assistant Professor of Emerging Media at the University of Texas in Dallas.

RSS feeds seem like a great tool, but I find myself never having enough time to read them. I suspect I have sloppy RSS habits. Can you offer any secrets to effective RSS feed management (just like file management)?
Continue reading ‘Revving up Your RSS (Re-post)’

At the end of the school year, LAUSD, the second largest school district in the U.S., canceled summer school for K-8 students. Reports estimate 225,000 students affected, but surely this is an understatement because every child is affected when children in their class have not received the instruction they need. This summer, my students at the University of Southern California have been tackling this problem using social bookmarking tools, namely Diigo and Delicious. The project aims to crowsource education.

SOS Classroom

What would it mean to crowdsource education? Send all of LA’s students to New Delhi? (No, that would be outsourcing.) To crowdsource education is to take something very time consuming, like tagging free online educational sites, and to distribute the labor across the playbor factories of Internet users. Nana and Granddad can find sites along with the teacher of room 24 and the average person on the street.

That last term, playbor, came up in a heated IDC discussion that Trebor Scholtz began when he started the thread: The Internet as Playground and Factory.

Continue reading ‘SOS Classroom: Crowdsourcing Education’

In the most recent step toward the conversational agent takeover (a conversonator apocalypse), the new video game Bot Colony by Montreal-based North Side marches toward its launch. The game’s website promises “Unrestricted conversation in English between players and characters.” WRT took some time out from rearing our own chatbots for some unrestricted conversation with Bot Colony chief designer, Eugene Joseph.

Trailer for Bot Colony

WRT: Bots attract people for lots of different reasons. Can you describe when and how you first became interested in developing conversation bots?

We are working on NLP since 2003, and initially the target application was different (specifying simulations in English).

It is a very large effort to do NLP, and the simulation market is a fairly small outlet for it. I started thinking about other applications, and one day I decided to let my right hemisphere take over. I have always enjoyed writing, and that’s how Bot Colony was born.

WRT: What bots (of the the Loebner world) would you say yours are most similar to? ALICE, JABBERWACKY, ELIZA, (I’m assuming Jabberwacky)

You should not assume anything. We have nothing to do with any of them, and you can add MyCyberTwin to the list.

I think people get tired very quickly of bots that don’t UNDERSTAND what they’re saying, and don’t show they make a real effort to understand. We do.

Continue reading ‘Interview with Bot Colony creator Eugene Joseph’