Block 2

No Class (1 November):

• The ‘My Take-aways from the Course’-test is online on Brightspace from 23 to 30 October. 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 lay out a strategy for the remainder of your content production. It is also a good moment to get back and improve your previous blogs with your growing understanding of how WordPress works.
• Fun: Spend a day offline!

Week 8 (8 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.

• 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)

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 (15 November): 

The Metaverse

Resources

• A PDF of the lecture can be found here.

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 10 (22 November):

We Are Cyborgs

Resources

• A PDF of the lecture can be found here.

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 11 (29 November):

Are Computers smart having fun?

Resources

• A PDF of the lecture is available here.

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 12 & 13 (6 and 13 December):

Digital Futurology

Your presentations predicting the future of a digital phenomenon! Make sure to hand your presentation in via Brightspace!