sect : day one
[john seeley brown, doug thomas, world of warcraft]
day one at UCHRI SECT [http://flatiron.sdsc.edu/projects/sect/main.php]. i think i'll try to post once every day while i'm here, mostly just to clear my head. or atleast clear my head of the thoughts that can be shared in a potentially public forum.
the day started not so good, a crank came loose on my bike on the way to the metrolink train, i had to stop and hand tighten every 3 blocks and try to pedal with only one foot. i rushed and sweated and got there out of breath just in time to sit around and wait for the train to be 40 minutes late. great. the bus driver from the Tustin train stop to UCI did a fine job of driving like a madman and making up the time and i actually got there just in time to sit down and the seminar began. whew. no surprise, the whole thing started out with a group intorduction excercise. never a good idea with 60 people, i lost focus right away. also, got an introductions from the two folk running the show, Anne Balsamo and David Theo Goldberg, also not so much with focus. Balasmo talked about theory like photographers talk about photos "i make theory," which i find odd, but an interesting way to think. but, important thing is, people seem interesting and the plan is to talk about interesting stuff i actually care about.
the afternoon was much more engaging. John Seely Brown and Doug Thomas talked about "the play of imagination" and world of warcraft. no surprise WoW dominated the discussion, but way more interestingly than usual. today it also made sense to me why people who think about WoW are so defensive -- no one thinks that WoW means what they think it means. bummer is, this reactive approach makes for very descriptive work and insight like "people who play together for social support networks." shocker. the discussion was good, trying to figure out how war matters in WoW [or the "outside world" in general] yet, at the base of this are interesting questions:
+ what do people learn from managing all the complexity that is necessary to play WoW?
+ how can we think about citizenship in WoW? [what are people submitting themselves to, what are the social costs of guild laws, what are the parameters of acceptable personhood in WoW and how are they enforced}
+ how do people find different ways to "play the game" and are they WoW citizens?
+ how is WoW different from fan fiction? [really, it started to seem damn similar, both rewrite narratives and meanings of a cultural product and really begin to do so "when the narrative ends"] this also reminded me how much i love the very secret diaries. Doug sorta answered this by saying that the difference is that in WoW, the players make the game what it is, give the game new meaning, etc. this seems true, but is it? the very secret diaries made lotr a different experience for me, helped me rewrite the movies to my liking.
+ why can't smart folk who talk about WoW seem to talk about gender and race?
other random thoughts
when people say "new" it always makes me skeptical. all said and told there was a whole lot of talk about "new forms," "new games," "new modes," "new knowledges," "new theory," new most anything ... but the great thing was that several of the participants made comments about maybe things not being so new and tried to historicize things, and even better, several of the days speakers clearly stated what the hell they meant by new -- what was new and why it matters. i may not agree, but great to hear critical approaches to "new" ...
it seems that "communities of practices" are another way of talking about standards. standards seem to be the tools of raciality that allow for twists of the universal and particular. a clear example about came from john seeley brown (i think it was him) about how amateur astronomers across the globe see the same thing across the globe (because of standards) while aboriginal doctors all see things differently because of the lack of standards.
[from ways of seeing to the IEEE] these standard seem to be the tools of raciality that allow for twists of the universal and particular that allow for assumptions that amateur astronomers see the same thing across the globe while aboriginal [it was either doctors or scientists, i don't remember] see things differently.
the WoW talk [which was kinda focused on thinking about teaching with/through games] was concluded by saying that all of this leads to us trying to figure out how to make a better non-violent game that teaches good things. [more or less] this was an utter surprise to me, i just don't get why this is the point? or that "we" can make this happen, or care to.
at the end we got play with Julian Bleecker's wi-fi-bedouin which was pretty neat, maybe more so in concept than as a user experience for now, but neat.
sites of interest gleamed today
+ http://www.hastac.org/ : i think they have they're hands in alot of interesting things, but as a collaboration portal/tool/resource center its beyond me.
+the cyberinfrastructure channel hosted by USCD's super computing center. seems like it actually might be streamed conferences worth watching. maybe. i might have to check out the "intro to hastack" ... people here seem to think big things of it ...
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