Michael Wesch is an anthropology professor at Kansas State University and he has, over the last several years, with nothing but creativity and his student's efforts, put together some of the most thought provoking short videos on the web.
Many people are already familiar with Dr. Wesch's work but in case you aren't, you should start with the five minute video, "The Machine Is Us/ing Us" (seen below)...
There are at least two other videos that are worth watching. The first is Dr. Wesch's incredible collaborative effort with his students called "A Vision Of Students Today". This 4+ minute film is a real eye-opener for anyone who teaches college students or for anyone who is about to send a student off to college.
The final and most recent Wesch production is his hour long lecture at the Library of Congress titled "An Anthropological Introduction To YouTube" (I saw it first mentioned on the DataMining blog). Make sure you have a full hour to devote to it. Once you start it, you will not want to stop watching.
Dr. Wesch also has a good blog called Digital Ethnography.
Monday, August 11, 2008
"The Machine Is Us/ing Us" And Other Mind-blowing Videos From Michael Wesch
Wednesday, August 6, 2008
Timeline Of Virtual Worlds (Greenbush Labs)
A colleague just pointed out to me a very interesting product on the Greenbush Labs Blog -- a virtual worlds timeline. What makes this timeline (see below) enormously cool is the way in which multiple media products have been integrated into it. I could imagine uses for this type of product in law enforcement, business and national security; virtually any time sensitive document (Imagine a history book, for example, put together using Dipity's technology...). Even if you are not into virtual worlds, you have to be impressed with this specific example and the possibilities of this technology in general.
Tuesday, August 5, 2008
How Magicians Control Your Mind (Boston.com via AOC)
The always interesting Architectures Of Control blog points to an online Boston globe article on how magicians and cognitive psychologists "are getting at similar questions, but while neuroscientists have been looking at this for a few decades, magicians have been looking at this for centuries, millennia probably." Definitely worth reading. For a little bit of magic (just as an example) check out the video below from The Unpleasant World Of Penn And Teller.
Related Posts:
Jump Ropes And Magic
Thursday, July 31, 2008
2008 College Salary Report (PayScale.com)
PayScale.com has just published its 2008 College Salary report. It really only covers the most popular diplomas at some of the most popular schools (nothing on intel studies) but I thought it was worth passing on. The chart below shows an interesting relationship between intelligence analysis and political science, however.
 |  Methodology Jobs ranked by popularity among graduates. Annual pay for Bachelors graduates without higher degrees from all colleges. See full methodology for more. |
Tuesday, July 29, 2008
Virtual Worlds And Cyberwarfare (Link List)
There have been a number of interesting articles in the news recently about the national security implications of virtual worlds and cyberwarfare. Start your reading with a couple of Danger Room articles, one on "Virtual World For Future Army Training" and an earlier article on "Army Wants 'First-Person Thinker' Video Game".
Next, stop over at Intelfusion for Jeff Carr's thoughts on cyberwarfare and the game of "Go". I have long thought that you can inform your understanding of a particular culture's strategic thinking by understanding the games people in that culture play. Go is a particularly good example of this, in my estimation, and Jeff's association of the game with cyberwarfare helped me think about the cyberwarfare issue in new ways.
Finally, if you want to understand where the future of virtual worlds might be, take a look at this chart on the KZERO website (KZERO is a research firm that covers virtual worlds). It doesn't take long to see that the millennial generation is growing up with virtual worlds and will likely drive their development. Finally, for an example of an existing virtual world targeted to this generation take a look at Club Penguin or, if you are more interested in the next generation of virtual worlds targeted at the millennials, see Gizmodo's coverage of Lego World.
