On the website googlizationofeverything.com, theorist Siva Vaidhyanathan states that the current web is dominated in several ways by search engine Google. Google related sites and ‘Googleware’ like Google Books and Google Earth and the video channel YouTube. In a lot of countries, Google is by far the most used search engine; in the Netherlands, Google…
The World Wide Web and Social Development symposium at the VU University Amsterdam welcomed a variety of prominent speakers to discuss answers to the question: How can the Web contribute to the social and economic development in the world? The event culminated with the VU granting Sir Tim Berners-Lee an honorary doctorate for his contribution to the development of the World Wide Web.
In a discussion between the Paris-based culture theorist Paul Virilio and Jérôme Sans titled ‘The game of love and chance’, Virilio questions what kind of form virtuality has currently taken on nowadays:
The imminent home installation of domestic simulators and virtual space rooms for game-playing, poses many questions, and in particular this one: ”What is a game once the virtual invades
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USC professor Manuel Castells’ new book Communication Power theorized how the media is the place where power is decided at large (especially in democratic countries). According to Castells political framing is one of the major weapons in the political process.
In his third chapter Networks of Mind and Power, Castells summarized about political framing with the…
Google Wave is an online communication tool for real-time communication and collaboration. A wave can be both a conversation and a document where people can discuss and work together using richly formatted text, photos, videos, maps, and more [1]. In detail a wave means that:
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The video game Grand Theft Auto IV (1) breathes violence. Not only does the title, which is the police term for motor vehicle theft, indicate this matter of unlawfully conduct. Also the story line and goals that need to be fulfilled in order to complete the game are dripping with blood. Now this violent character holds a connotation. That being…
“Gamer is a high-concept action thriller set in a near future when gaming and entertainment have evolved into a terrifying new hybrid. Humans control other humans in mass-scale, multi-player online games: people play people.. for keeps. Mind-control technology is widespread, and at the heart of the controversial games is its creator, reclusive billionaire Ken Castle. His latest brainchild, the first-person…
In the movie War Games (1983) Matthew Broderick wanted to hack a new computer game, in the process he accidently hacked the actual American defensive system. He engaged in global thermonuclear war in the process. While he’s playing a game the world suffers the real consequences of his actions. The connection between playing games and real war was far fetched…
It’s a little overdue, but I hereby officially want to post my MA thesis for everyone to read (and/or use under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 license). This thesis was written in a total period of about five months under the supervision of Richard Rogers, with Geert Lovink as the second reader. This thesis deals with the relation between social networking sites (SNSs) and its underlying software, as well as the influence this might have on the user.
In the last couple of weeks I got some responses to my post concerning the revisitation of my Wikipedia article about Richard A. Rogers – in which I told that I was stupefied by the speed with which I was blamed for ‘self-promotion’ and ‘bias’ and about the fact that the original article was…