Block 2

No Class (30 October):

• The ‘My Take-aways from the Course’-test is online on Brightspace from the 30^th October to the 6^th of November. Don’t forget to complete it, as it is part of your final grade for this course. You will not get a separate grade or feedback for this ‘Take Aways’ test.
• This is a good time to work on your podcast or video essay. It is also a good moment to finish up any remaining blogs or get back and improve your previous blogs with your growing understanding of how blogging and WordPress works.
• Fun: Spend a day offline!

Week 8 (6 November): 

Amazing Economies

Resources

• A PDF of the lecture can be found here.

Read

NB here and below, “read” means before the next class. In addition, unless hyperlinked, the texts can be found on Brighstpace.

Choose one of the three:

• Pittman and Sheehan’s Amazon’s Mechanical Turk a Digital Sweatshop? Transparency and Accountability in Crowdsourced Online Research
• McGurl’s Everything and Less: Fiction in the Age of Amazon.
• Nieborg’s Crushing Candy: The Free-to-Play Game in Its Connective Commodity Form

Play

NB Here and below, “Play” means spending at least half an hour with the referenced game. Yes, you have to play games!

• Adventure Capitalist (free to play, available via Steam, Google Play, and the App Store).
• The Amazon Race (a news game, free to play) (currently down)

Things to do

NB Here and below, “Fun” means it is an optional thing to do.

• Fun: Re-watch the New Yorker’s Turking for a Living
• Fun as well as a challenge: scroll all the way through Wealth, shown to scale (it’s especially hard on a smartphone). Also, if you feel like sharing anything on social media, I personally think this absolutely effective and stunning interactive visualization deserves to be seen more widely.

Week 9 (13 November): 

The Metaverse

Resources

• Lecture slides can be found here, after class.

Read

• Matthew Ball’s Framework for the Metaverse.
• Chapters 1 and 2 from Nick Yee (2014)’s The Proteus Paradox.

Play

• The ancestor of all virtual worlds: Colossal Cave Adventure (more info here)
• Or Visit LambdaMoo as a guest (please, be respectful of its citizens).

Things To Do

• Fun: Learn how Ultima Online‘s Ecology was designed and destroyed in this video.

Week 11 (20 November):

Are Computers smart having fun?

Resources

• Lecture slides can be found here, after class.

Read

• Chapter 3 of Julian Togelius’ Playing Smart.

Play

• AI Dungeon
• or play, create, or talk with any of the other AI out there online, such as at Chess.com,, or the NEAT algorithm that plays Flappy Bird

Things To Do

• Fun: Re-watch the Open AI Hide and Seek Video

Week 11 (27 November):

We Are Cyborgs

Resources

• Lecture slides can be found here, after class.

Read

• Donna Haraway (1985)’s A Cyborg Manifesto
• Chapter 6 of Brendan Keogh (2018)’s A Play of Bodies: How We Perceive Video Games.

Play

• Either:
  • Zoe Quinn’s Depression Quest. ♥ NB This game deals directly with the topic of clinical depression, so take care if you choose to play it. ♥
• Or:
  • Robert Yang’s Hard Lads.
  • Robert Yang’s artist statement and the video to which this refers. The video features performative physical violence (men hitting each other with a chair) and nude male torsos, which is probably why YouTube locked it behind a content warning.

Week 12 & 13 (4 and 11 December):

Digital Futurology

Your presentations predicting the future of a digital phenomenon! Make sure to hand your presentation in via Brightspace! The deadline is the 25^th of November.