Transforming courses into games

I will be transforming my Winter 2012 quarter courses into gaming experiences to immerse students in the media careers they aim to build. Forming new gaming company: Media Futures Interaction, Inc. Encounter your media future and aspiring role today! I teach three courses and each course will have its own gaming kit. The first one I'm building is the Organizational Futures Game Kit under a new subdivision of the company known as iOrganizeFutures, Inc. Each subdivision has the potential to spin off. iAdvertisetheFuture Advertising You-niversity Game Kit or Advertising Media Mogul Game Kit. iSpinCollectiveImaginations, Inc. Public Relations Spinning Social Media Game kit. I want learning and teaching to be as fun and as exciting as a game! 


Immediate inspirations: http://2020mediafutures.ca/About

Queering the Future

I want to recommend Zach Blas and his creative project entitled Queer Technologies. This is one in a series of creative steps in looking at what a Queer perspective would be on ubiquitous computing. Check his work out at: http://www.zachblas.info/

Performing the future as Public Relations

I'm starting to evaluate and distinguish the difference between critically evaluating future scenarios and what it means to evangelize new social media. Here is Ogilvy's 360 blog
http://blog.ogilvypr.com/ and the Institute For The Future: www.iftf.org

In my forthcoming book, Performing in the Future Tense at The Institute For The Future (IFTF), I have researched the past and future development of social media as part of evangelizing and promoting an augmented and networked mind. I look at the scenarios, games, and theater, that the RAND corporation and its offspring, IFTF have developed over the past 50 years to look at the future of digital media.

Long Now Seminars

Upcoming Seminars

Find out what's next by viewing or subscribing to our seminar calendar (also available in: XML, iCal format) and mailing list.

* 02008
o Feb. 4 (MONDAY) - Nassim Nicholas Taleb, "The Future Has Always Been Crazier Than We Thought"
o Feb. 25 (MONDAY) - Craig Venter, "Joining 3.5 Billion Years of Microbial Invention"
o Apr. 25 (Friday) - Niall Ferguson & Peter Schwartz, "Historian vs. Futurist on Human Progress"
o May 21 (WEDNESDAY) - Iqbal Quadir, "Technology Empowers the Poorest"
o Jul. 23 (WEDNESDAY) - Edward Burtynsky, "The 10,000-year Gallery"

New Book Reviews from RCCS

Each month, the resource center for cyberculture studies (RCCS)
publishes a set of book reviews and author responses (
http://rccs.usfca.edu/booklist.asp ).

I am happy to say that I have a book review posted for this month!

books of the month for february 2008 include:

Control and Freedom: Power and Paranoia in the Age of Fiber Optics
Author: Wendy Hui Kyong Chun
Publisher: MIT Press, 2006
Review 1: Jentery Sayers
Author Response: Wendy Chun

From Counterculture to Cyberculture: Stewart Brand, the Whole Earth
Network, and the Rise of Digital Utopianism
Author: Fred Turner
Publisher: University of Chicago Press, 2006
Review 1: Lonny J Avi Brooks
Review 2: William Bryant
Review 3: Merav Katz-Kimchi
Review 4: Linda Levitt
Review 5: Alan Razee
Author Response: Fred Turner

La Comunicazione del Terzo Settore nel Mezzogiorno
Author: Stefano Martelli
Publisher: Franco Angeli, 2006
Review 1: Gaetano Gucciardo (Italiano)
Review 2: Gaetano Gucciardo (English)

Organized Networks: Media Theory, Creative Labour, New Institutions
Author: Ned Rossiter
Publisher: NAi Publishers, 2006
Review 1: Daren C. Brabham
Author Response: Ned Rossiter

Reformatting Politics: Information Technology and Global Civil Society
Editors: Jodi Dean, Jon W. Anderson, Geert Lovink
Publisher: Routledge, 2006
Review 1: Athina Karatzogianni

The Internet Imaginaire
Author: Patrice Flichy
Publisher: MIT Press, 2007
Review 1: M. Beatrice Bittarello
Author Response: Patrice Flichy

The Iron Whim: A Fragmented History of Typewriting
Author: Darren Wershler-Henry
Publisher: Cornell University Press, 2007
Review 1: Adam Tourek
Author Response: Darren Wershler-Henry

The Politics of Cyberconflict
Author: Athina Karatzogianni
Publisher: Routledge, 2006
Review 1: Andrew Robinson
Author Response: Athina Karatzogianni

Uses of Blogs
Editors: Axel Bruns, Joanne Jacobs
Publisher: Peter Lang, 2006
Review 1: Tricia Farwell
Review 2: Tama Leaver
Review 3: Damien Pfister
Review 4: Daniel C. Smith
Author Response: Axel Bruns & Joanne Jacobs

enjoy. there's more where that came from.

Cal State East Bay Communication Students visit The Institute For The Future

Students from my research methods and organizational communication courses attended a talk at the FutureCommons, a public forum initiated by the Institute For The Future last year that features speakers in industry, academe, and IFTF on forces shaping the future. The turnout by students exceeded my expectations. As my student Jennifer Medina put it; "it's about time for us to see this Institute you speak about in your classes!". For some students, it was the first time they had set foot in Palo Alto; for others, it revealed a new type of workspace for thinking and creativity--a loft like setting with no cubicles and comfortable spaces for collaboration.

It was great to see San Jose State anthropology professor, Jan English-Lueck, who worked with IFTF on a study of the impact of new media on Silicon Valley life.

Andrea Saveri, one of the directors at IFTF and one of its leading anthropologists, welcomed us and had everyone introduce themeslves as we settled in for a fascinating talk by professor Sue Thomas, Professor of New Media in the Institute of Creative Technologies and the Faculty of Humanities at De Montfort University, Leicester, UK.

She spoke on the subject of Transliteracy:
Transliteracy: crossing divides
Transliteracy involves the ability to read, write and interact across a range of platforms, tools and media from signing and orality through handwriting, print, TV, radio and film, to digital social networks. It is not a new behavior but has only been identified as a working concept since the internet generated new ways of thinking about human communication. To date, the concept has largely been developed by Professor Sue Thomas and her colleagues at the Institute of Creative Technologies, De Montfort University, England, but it is an open source idea ripe for expansion. This talk discusses examples from history, orality, philosophy, literature, and ethnography and asks whether transliteracy could provide a unifying perspective on what it means to be literate in the twenty-first century. http://www.transliteracy.com

We even viewed scenes from Singing in the Rain as an example of actors struggling to transition from working in silent films to the talkies, a period of learning new literacies. I can't wait to take more students across the bay to explore IFTF and other sites of interest connected to new media and organizational communication! This energized me!

Disciplined Imagination

Building another thought stub here; stay tuned!
Disciplined imagination: Building scenarios and building theories