ACRL-NEC 2008 presentation

Cyberculture, Academia, and the New Web University of Connecticut ACRL/NEC 2008 conference

Plan of the talk

Pieces of Web 2.0

Gaming the world

(Vermont trees and sky, winter 2008)

Plan of the talk

Not talking about:

Mobile/ wirelessness

“ Web 3.0”

(Second Life message, 2006)

Thematics

Emergence in

time and space

Pedagogy

Open determinism

(“Sorpdragon,” Voicethread 2007)

Memes

Shadow IT

Storytelling

Giants

(Middlebury bridge, January 2006)

One odd metaphor

Web 2.0 and education is like gaming and education: awareness is challenging

Huge, financially and quantitatively successful worlds

Global and rapidly developing scope

Bad anxieties, policies, and media coverage

Perceived lack of seriousness

Five responses

Web 2.0 and education is like gaming and education: intersections are happening

Take advantage of preexisting projects and services

Mod/warp/hack

DIY

Literacy: new media

Influence

(World of Warcraft)

I. Web 2.0

(Web 2.0 Bullshit Generator, http://emptybottle.org/bullshit/ )

“ Technorati is now tracking over 70 million weblogs, and we're seeing about 120,000 new weblogs being created worldwide each day. That's about 1.4 blogs created every second of every day.”

(David Sifry, April 2007 )

(Flickr blog, March 2008)

Will YouTube kill the podcasting star?

(eMarketer, February 2008; Via Podcasting News)

(Le Monde, January 14 2008)

(March 2008 http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Press_releases/10M_articles )

The term’s history: Tim O’Reilly, 2005

Expands “social software”

Draws on Web history

Microcontent, rather than sites or large documents

(NITLE blog Liberal Education Today, http://b2e.nitle.org )

I. Web 2.0

Multiply authored microcontent

Open content and/or services and/or standards…

(Pepysblog, 2003-)

… leading to networked conversations

(Pepysblog, 2003-)

O’Reilly: Web 2.0 is a platform for development

Open APIs

Access to data

Virtue of the lazyweb

( http://www.hurricanearchive.org/ , Center for History and New Media,George Mason University)

Programming staff

Perceived recognition

Web 2.0 components, movements

Collaborative writing platforms: the wiki way

-Viégas, Wattenberg, Dave (Historyflow, IBM, 2004) Wikis are (often) textually productive

Web 2.0 components, movements

collaborative writing platforms: the blogosphere

(Radio Open Source blog/podcast)

State of the blogosphere, more

Diversity: diaries, public intellectuals, carnivals, knitters, moblogs, warblogs home and abroad…

12 people million using three platforms, including LiveJournal: majority women (Anil Dash, MeshForum 2006)

NIH guidelines, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/bv.fcgi?rid=citmed.section.61024

What’s happened since “podcasting” in 2004? Neologisms:

godcasting

nanocasting

podfading

podsafe

podspamming

podvertising

porncasting

(Missing Link podcast, Southwestern University)

Web 2.0 influences rich media: video

(Gootube? Suetube?)

Videoblogging

(vlog? vog?)

(Ask a Ninja; Rocketboom; Howard Rheingold)

Social object: the person

FaceBook

MySpace

LinkedIn

ZoomInfo

CyWorld…

“ Less than four years after its launch, 15 million people, or almost a third of the country's population, are members.” ( BusinessWeek , September 2005)

Social organization of information, new forms: folksonomy

Search

Retrieval

Self-awareness

http://del.icio.us/

for DoctorNemo

Community surfacing

Ontology

Concepts

Collaborative research

Keeping up

NITLE workshop tag cloud, 2008

Extrapolating principles: Ton Zylstra on the social object:

“ In general you could say that both Flickr and del.icio.us work in a triangle: person, picture/ bookmark, and tag(s). Or more abstract a person, an object of sociality , and some descriptor...” (Zylstra in Second Life, 2007)

“… In every triangle there always needs to be a person and an object of sociality . The third point of the triangle is free to define[,] as it were.”

- http://www.zylstra.org , 2006

(emphases added)

(“Online Communities”, XKCD, April 2007 )…

For academia, this can seem a bit overwhelming

(“Online Communities”, XKCD, April 2007 )

Already out of date

For academia, this can seem a bit overwhelming

Flickr and storytelling

Tell a story in 5 frames group

“ Gender Miscommunication”, Nightingai1e, 2006

“ Gender Miscommunication” (Nightingai1e, 2006)

Social photo stories

Or remix social media into narratives

Example: "Farm to Food", Eli the Bearded (2008)

Library of Congress collections

Flickr, Tell A Story in Five Frames group ( http://www.flickr.com/groups/visualstory/ )

Example: "Food to Farm", Eli the Bearded (2008)

Social photo stories Example: "Food to Farm", Eli the Bearded (2008)

Pedagogies:

Remix

Archive work

Social presentation

Visual literacy

( http://www.flickr.com/groups/visualstory/discuss/72157603786255599/ ; http://www.flickr.com/photos/library_of_congress/ )

Social workshopping

In the Tell a story in 5 frames group, 'Alone With The Sand' , moliere1331 (2005)

Pedagogies and publications

Teaching with Web 2.0: it’s not all new

- Web 1.0, internet pedagogies

Hypertext

Web audience

Discussion fora

Collaborative document authoring

Groupware

Teaching with Web 2.0: it’s not all new

Earlier pedagogies

Journaling

Media literacy

Teaching with Web 2.0: principles

http://smarthistory.blogspot.com/ Distributed conversation Collaborative writing Object-oriented discussion Connectivism (G. Siemens, 2004)

Wiki pedagogies

Collective research

Group writing

Document editing

Information literacy

Discussion

Knowledge accretion

(Romantic Audiences project Bowdoin College, 2005-present

Discussion

Knowledge accretion

Social object pedagogies

Prompts

Discussion object

Composition materials

More social object pedagogies

Annotate details

Remix (“Make it mine”)

Edugadget http://www.edugadget.com/2005/05/07/flickr-creative-commons

RSS pedagogies

Shaping Web reading

Pushing student-created content (mother blog, Feed to Javascript)

Web 2.0 wrangling

(Bloglines)

Teaching with Web 2.0: “ net.gen ”:

“ Fully half of all teens and 57 percent of teens who use the Internet could be considered Content Creators, according to a survey by the Pew Internet & American Life Project.”

http://www.pewtrusts.com/pdf/PIP_Teens_1105.pdf

“ [S]tudents… write words on paper, yes— but… also compose words and images and create audio files on Web logs (blogs), in word processors, with video editors and Web editors and in e-mail and on presentation software and in instant messaging and on listservs and on bulletin boards—and no doubt in whatever genre will emerge in the next ten minutes.

Note that no one is making anyone do any of this writing .”

Kathleen Blake Yancey, "Made Not Only in Words: Composition in a New Key." CCC 56.2 (2004):297-328. Emphasis added.

Academic open archives for social media

Freesound archive

DIY copyright

Social networking values

University of Pompeu Fabra (Barcelona)

( http://freesound.iua.upf.edu/ )

Podcasts and teaching: profcasting

Bryn Mawr College: Michelle Francl, chemistry

Duke: “Classroom recording”

Learning objects: Gardner Campbell, University of Richmond

Duke: “Course content dissemination”

Information literacy

Student program podcasting on campus

War News Radio

(Swarthmore College)

PEPI courses (University of British Columbia, department of Land and Food Resources)

Media to enhance other media

Podcast + pdfs: Allegheny College, Gothcast

Podcasts and research

Public intellectual

Out of the Past

Engines of Our Ingenuity

In Our Time

University Channel

The Missing Link

New forms of scholarly communication

CommentPress implementation, Institute for the Future of the Books McKenzie Wark, Eugene Lang College

Still more bookblogging

Siva Vaidhyanathan, University of Virginia

Combining Web 2.0 forms

Podcasting

Blogging

Digital storytelling

Web-based photography

YouTube

Video mashups

Middlebury College, Jason Mittell and Barbara Ganley

Blend teaching with research

BG now involved in rural community media

II. Gaming

Long history of gaming

Predigital

Chess, go, Senet, mancala, backgammon, dice, cards

Kriegspiel

Cold War games

Digital

Spacewar

Zork to IF boom (1980s)

1990s rebirth

Gaming in 2008

Physical platforms

Console

Cell phone

PSP

Extended forms (DDR)

New forms: Wii

PC

CD, DVD

Browser

Downloadable

… And these can be combined

Size: huge

(WoW: 10 million subscribers, January 2008)

Player range: genders, classes, nations

Interface, device driver

Eve Online, from site

Growing content diversity

Current events (Kumawar)

Political argument (September 12th, FoodForce)

Religious gaming (Left Behind: Eternal Forces, 2006)

Literary gaming (Kafkamesto, 2006)

(BBC Climate Challenge; Ayiti: both 2007-present)

Genres

First-person shooter

Puzzle

Platform jumper

Strategy

“ Adventure”

Sports

Minigame (Koster fractals)

New forms

Katamari

Portal

Augmented reality games

Economics of games

Who creates games?

Businesses

Governments

Nonprofits

Amateurs

Scales

Large games

$millions

EA, Microsoft

Modding

Back to Doom, hacking, View Source

Neverwinter Nights

Casual games

Other economics

Gambling

Gold farming

Currency trading

Offshoot: machinima

Tools

Counterstrike, Halo

Second Life

The Movies

Art movement

Machinima Academy of Arts and Sciences ( http://www.machinima.org/ )

(Koulamata, “The French Democracy”, 2006)

Virtual worlds

“’ Cyberspace. A consensual hallucination experienced daily by billions of legitimate operators, in every nation, by children being taught mathematical concepts. A graphic representation of data abstracted from the banks of every computer in the human system…”

Antecedents, early digital: science fiction 1984: William Gibson, Neuromancer 1992: Neal Stephenson, Snow Crash - Neuromancer

Antecedents, digital: the MUD, Adventure (1970s-present)

(LambdaMOO, 1990-present)

Antecedents, predigital: Theater of Memory

(from Philippe Codognet, http://webia.lip6.fr/~codognet/ )

Avatar spaces

-Activeworlds

-Atmospheres

-There

(Activeworlds, 1995-present; image via www.virtualworldlets.net )

-Habbo Hotel

-Cyworld

(Club Penguin, 2005-present) 2d-3d worlds -Runescape -VMK

Google Earth -Keyhole DB -2d: KML -3d: Sketchup -reach -Geotagging photos: videos Mirror worlds

Augmented Reality

“ Human Pacman,” Adrian David Cheok, circa 2005

-mobile devices game players general use tools -science fiction explores (Vernor Vinge, Rainbows End )

Interactive Fiction

Speaking of text adventures:

1980s boom: Infocom

Ongoing art form

Nick Montfort, Twisty Little Passages

(“Dead Cities”, from Lovecraft Commonplace Book project 2007 http:// www.illuminatedlantern.com/if/games/lovecraft / )

Interactive Fiction

Speaking of text adventures:

Inform 7, free IF editor

(Richard Liston, Ursinus College, classroom example 2008)

Narrative

Where is storytelling in a game?

Sequence of activities

Cut-scene or cinematic

Writerly player

Encyclopedia world (Murray, Manovich)

Ludology vs. narratology

Linearity?

Game on rails

Branching outcomes

Multilinear

Open-ended

IF: established long enough to be used for political satire…

Defective Yeti, January 2006 http://www.defectiveyeti.com/archives/001561.html

Alternate reality games

Permeability of game boundary (space and time)

Focus on distributed, collaborative cognition

Increased ephemerality

(Perplex City, 2003-2006)

Political ARGs (ex: World Without Oil , May 2007)

()

Example: Chain Factor – casual game, TV show (2007)

Combined with other games, media

New platforms (ex: Myspace, for SilverLadder, 2007-ongoing)

Most widely played ARGs

Art of the Heist, various for Audi, 2005 (500,000 website visitors, on-going players ?);

The Beast, Sean Stewart et al for Microsoft & Dreamworks, 2001 (3 mill players worldwide);

I Love Bees (aka Haunted Apiary), 42 Entertainment for Microsoft, 2004 (3 mill+ players worldwide);

Jamie Kane, BBCi, 2005/..(20,000+ players)

Alternate reality games

Majestic, Electronic Arts, 2001(800,000 initially registered, 70,000 ongoing players);

MetaCortechs, independent [“Project Mu” in credits](1.3 mill, 113 countries);

Perplex City, Mind Candy, 2005/.. (100,000s website visits, 14,000+ players worldwide).

-Christy Dena, “ARG-stats” (2007-ongoing) http://www.christydena.com/online-essays/arg-stats/

Gaming and education

“Video games… situate meaning in a multimodal space through embodied experiences to solve problems and reflect on the intricacies of the design of imagined worlds and the design of both real and imagined social relationships and identities in the modern world.”

21-century boom

James Paul Gee (author of preceding quote)

Marc Presnsky

Henry Jenkins

John Seely Brown

Mia Consalvo

Constance Steinkuehler

Kurt Squire

James Paul Gee’s argument

Semiotic domains; tranference

Embodied action and feedback

Projective identity

Edging the regime of competence (Vygotsky)

Probe-reprobe cycle

Social learning (roles; consumption-production)

Gee on Rise of Nations

“Fish tank” tutorial

Strategic self-assessment

Multimedia literacies

Gee: multimodal principle

Selfe et al : multimodal literacy

Bogost: procedural rhetoric

Dean for American game (2004) Archived at http://www.deanforamericagame.com/play.html

Multimedia literacies

“… within games, there are in fact multitudes of literacy practices – games are full of text, she asserted, to say nothing of the entirely text-based fandom communities online that take place in forums, blogs and social networks.”