Month: December 2014

Too much of our impres­sion of the world comes from a mis­lead­ing for­mu­la of jour­nal­is­tic nar­ra­tion. Reporters give lav­ish cov­er­age to gun bursts, explo­sions, and viral videos, obliv­i­ous to how rep­re­sen­ta­tive they are and appar­ent­ly inno­cent of the fact that many were con­trived as jour­nal­ist bait. Then come sound bites from “experts” with vest­ed inter­ests in max­i­miz­ing the impres­sion of may­hem: gen­er­als, politi­cians, secu­ri­ty offi­cials, moral activists. The talk­ing heads on cable news fil­i­buster about the event, des­per­ate­ly hop­ing to avoid dead air. News­pa­per colum­nists instruct their read­ers on what emo­tions to feel.

— The world is not falling apart: The trend lines reveal an increas­ing­ly peace­ful peri­od in history.

Head­ing back from Big Broth­er Awards. Hans and his team at Bits of Free­dom put on a good show. A few things of note: The lady from the pri­ma­ry edu­ca­tion coun­cil using “game” as a metaphor to explain adap­tive dig­i­tal learn­ing mate­ri­als. The ridicu­lous faux cable response from the min­istry of safe­ty and jus­tice to Opstel­ten win­ning an award, which I wish but don’t expect will back­fire on them hor­rif­i­cal­ly. Hans using the con­cept of “leg­i­bil­i­ty” to shift the focus of the dig­i­tal rights move­ment on to increased diver­si­ty. A high per­cent­age of female speak­ers on stage. Snow­den get­ting a stand­ing ova­tion. It was a good night, if only to ral­ly the troops.

Sources for my Creative Mornings Utrecht talk on education, games, and play

I was stand­ing on the shoul­ders of giants for this one. Here’s a (prob­a­bly incom­plete) list of sources I ref­er­enced through­out the talk.

All of these are high­ly recommended.

Update: the slides are now up on Speak­er Deck.

Come­di­ans kill them­selves. Talk to 100 come­di­ans this week, every­body knows some­body who killed them­selves. I mean, we always say igno­rance is bliss. Well, if so, what’s the oppo­site? Some form of mis­ery. Being a come­di­an, 80 per­cent of the job is just you notice shit, which is a trait of schiz­o­phren­ics too. You notice things peo­ple don’t notice.
Chris Rock on Fer­gu­son, Cos­by, and Oba­ma — Vulture