http://www.digitalhumanities.org/dhq/vol/6/2/000128/000128.html

But if you are a clever and sophisticated
person who wants to know the real story
of how the computer world works, you
may enjoy some of the insights I present
in this brief series.

• Computers for Cynics 0  - The Myth of Technology
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KdnGPQaICjk

• Computers for Cynics 1 – The Nightmare of Files and Directories
http://youtu.be/Qfai5reVrck

• Computers for Cynics 2 – It All Went Wrong at Xerox PARC
http://youtu.be/c6SUOeAqOjU

• Computers for Cynics 3 – The Database Mess
http://youtu.be/bhzD2FKEEds

• Computers for Cynics 4 – The Dance of Apple and Microsoft
http://youtu.be/_xL19f48m9U

• Computers for Cynics 5 – Hyperhistory
http://youtu.be/_9PmIkAYhI0

• Computers for Cynics 6 – The Real Story of the World Wide Web
http://youtu.be/gWDPhEvKuRY

• Computers for Cynics N – CLOSURE: Pay Attention to the Man Behind the Curtain
http://youtu.be/w950GgRzbJk

Best,Ted

Make a Better Door: Or, How Does Digital Humanism Humanize?

An interesting image for 2011.
A player/character in the most recent Portal game is literally locked out of her workplace and replaced by a pair of robots. From this resonant image of the human-computer interface a discussion will emerge to do with broader understandings of the digital humanities, media scholarship, and electronic literature. The focus for this approach will be the question famously posed by Richard Lanham’s: “how do the humanities humanize?” Professor Darren Tofts (Swinburne University of Technology) will moderate a conversation with Professor Moulthrop following his presentation.

Date: Monday 10th October, 2011
Time: 6.30-8.30 pm.
Venue: Village Roadshow Theatrette
State Library of Victoria
179 La Trobe Street Melbourne (Conference Centre, Entry 3)
Cost: FREE

Stuart Moulthrop is Professor of English at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. He is an electronic literature pioneer, both as a theoretician and as a writer, and has published many of articles on the topic of games, network literature and digital media theory. From 1995-99 he was co-editor of the online journal Postmodern Culture and he is a founding board member of the Electronic Literature Organization (ELO). His hypertext Victory Garden (1992) was featured on the front page of the New York Times Book Review in a (now famous) review by American literary critic Robert Coover. Moulthrop is also the author of the hypertext fiction works Reagan Library (1999), and Hegirascope (1995), amongst many others. His recent work engages with digital games and its interface with media theory, electronic writing and scandal. His current work in progress is “Sc4nda1 in New Media,” an Arcade Essay that converges philosophical meditation with an actual video game. It can be accessed at http://pantherfile.uwm.edu/moulthro/index.htm.

Professor Moulthrop is a Visiting Research Fellow in the Faculty of Life & Social Sciences, Swinburne University of Technology, in association with the School of Media and Communication, RMIT.

Please repost wherever you think people might be interested!

What a waste of time. Have to update everything and change all the passwords again.

This is what happens if you put a baby in the study. She pulls every book off the shelf in turn, looks at it, then throws it away. Barthes? Nah. Derrida? Nah.

Can’t shovel it in fast enough. Think she likes chocolate.

Went to see Xanadu: the Musical with Ted Nelson, his partner Marlene and Andrew Pam (Nelson’s friend and longtime collaborator) last night. The performance was about a greek muse called Kira who inspires a young man to build an 80′s themed rollerskating rink that “contains all the arts”. This big disco skatepark would house singing, dancing, music and all the “inspiration that left the arts in the 80′s”. The big business bloke who is meant to fund the skating rink hesitates though as it wouldn’t make money. Then Kira the Greek muse appears and he decides to realise the dream. It’s like they wrote this play specifically for Nelson – it even had a recitation of Coleridge’s Kubla Khan at the end. I think Nelson got a bit teary at the end but it could have just been the light.