Who cares about research? Much research in the UK is publicly funded, through grants, university infrastructure and salaries. The latest research exercise (REF) foregrounds the issue of impact. How can research communities demonstrate the value of their research to society at large? There’s economic and social impact, where research leads to better products for the…More
Network notion
It seems that societies organise themselves as networks, an idea brought into sharp relief with the development of online social networks. People with online profiles are the nodes, hubs or cells, and there are linkages with other people through their personal directories of friends and followers, who are similarly linked.More
Amnesiac machines
Digital devices help me to forget in several ways. If I store my bank details in my electronic note pad then I don’t need to commit them to memory. So I can forget such details. Thanks to the immediacy of web acces and tools such as Wikipedia I can forget the capital of The Isle…More
3D passive unrealities
3D is moving in. Nintendo has released its 3DS hand-held game system: “no need for special glasses.” Titanic is being retro-fitted as a 3D movie. 3D cinema reminds me, if I ever needed reminding, of the symmetries of the human body, and hence of our whole perceptual apparatus (ie all the senses). Philosopher Mark Johnson emphasises…More
Accidental people
They show up everywhere. We’ve never met, and probably never will. These bodies don’t only appear in Google StreetView, but in my digital photo albums whether I want them there or not. They are most visible when I zoom in. They even get singled out by the “faces” feature of my photo browser, and I’m…More
De-generation
Occasionally when browsing the Internet I’m struck by the new and unexpected, ie by the sheer quantity of creative production. I’m perhaps of a generation that is still impressed by the volume of newness brought to light by postings on YouTube, Vimeo, TED, music channels, and architectural picture galleries, not to mention presentations of technology…More
Neuroscience eclipses AI
… at least in its ambition. The Blue Brain Project is a venture centred at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne in Switzerland in collaboration with IBM to create a synthetic brain in hardware and software. The project name references “Deep Blue,” the IBM chess computer that reputedly “beat” reigning champion Garry Kasparov in 1996.…More
Game noir
Limbo is a grim, award-winning video game in black, white and grey, involving a small boy’s dash through a lethal forest. At one stage the boy jumps across the corpses of similar little boys bobbing along in a river. Another game, The Path, has similar narrative connotations, described as a short horror game updating Little…More
Play anywhere
Computer games are undoubtedly big business. Currently 76% of children in Scotland (where I live) have a games console according to a recent Ofcom report, a figure that is surely on the increase. Does this trend constitute any kind of problem for health (DVT), domestic life or for society? In the early days of the…More
What are audiences for?
Publishers, games companies, broadcasters, performers and artists need audiences. Audiences as consumers function to provide a direct revenue stream: the bigger the audience the greater the income. In the publishing and the academic arena large audiences (big classes, lots of readers, many citations) equate to recognition, esteem, success, and high “impact” in some measure. Audiences feature in…More