Sunday, July 11, 2010

MIT Comparative Media Studies: Theses

Here is some summer reading:
MIT Comparative Media Studies: Theses
JASON BEGY
Interpreting Abstract Games: The Metaphorical Potential of Formal Game Elements

AUDUBON DOUGHERTY
New Medium, New Practice: Civic Production in Live-Streaming Mobile Video

HILLARY KOLOS
Not Just in It to Win It: Inclusive Game Play in an MIT Dorm

MICHELLE MOON LEE
Designing Game Ethics: A Pervasive Game Adaptation of The Count of Monte Cristo

NICK SEAVER
A Brief History of Re-performance

SHEILA MURPHY SELES
Audience Research for Fun and Profit: Rediscovering the Value of Television Audiences


What I will be reading, at the very least, is from: AUDUBON DOUGHERTY,
New Medium, New Practice: Civic Production in Live-Streaming Mobile Video.

Think about everybody that has a cell phone today having that two-way streaming video phone everywhere they are. Think of all of the video clips shot, uploaded, sent around, maybe they are protests in another place. Now think of that video streaming live from millions of "phones".

I don't think we will see it or understand it until it is happening, and then we look back. Think back now to re-cell phone, or at least before you and most of the people you know had one.

I am posting this to my blog from my phone, and then I will "Share" it with my "Friends" on Facebook. 10 years ago nobody posted a sentence like that, it would not have any meaning. Words have added meanings unimagined before, therefore the way we think of the world has changed.

The first time I used my iPhone a couple years ago I felt like a spy, living in the present with technology of the future. My last two years at UW, 2007-2009, I was able to do most of my research and draft writing using my "cell phone".
A few months after I got my phone more people had similar technology, at some point we are stop being spies on the present social construct that is influenced by common communication technologies.

What strange and abstract metaphor will explain this next communicative state?
All guessing is wrong, here is mine:
We are entering a multimedia technology juiced world that is part 1950's television show You Are There, part Where the Heck am I (we send live video to friends who tell us when to turn left or right), and part family videographer at the supermarket (look what I am cooking for dinner).