A core course at the Parsons New School for Design focused on Toy Design, Tactile Interface, Wireless Experience, and Online Socially-Driven Media Sharing
Here’s some links to articles on topics related to my Major Studio course that I found interesting, from the informational:
“Toy companies turn to the web to make toys come alive” www.theage.com.au/news/technology/toy-companies-turn-to-the-web-to-make-toys-come-alive
(which includes a reference to web-Pups, a toy my niece and nephew love that I mentioned in class)
to the cutting edge:
“Carmakers adding high-tech perks” news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070304/ap_on_hi_te/pimp_my_ride
(claiming young guys are more interested in “pimping their ride” than
what’s under the hood - in no small part because the prices have come
down)
March 7, 2007
Jean Baudrillard (1929-2007)
On Tuesday, March 6, French theorist Jean Baudrillard passed away. Trained as a sociologist, Baudrillard put his knack for observing society and its engagement with mass media to work as a philosopher. His writings on television, video, and electronic mediation placed him among the earliest writers to have been called 'media theorists,' and after publishing approximately thirty books and many more essays, he is certainly one of the field's most prolific. Baudrillard pioneered the notion of 'hyperreality,' and his theories on simulation and simulacra are often employed in contemporary analyses of new media art. Baudrillard was also an active photographer whose art career was overshadowed by his academic celebrity, but whose creativity was nevertheless reflected in his writings on the 'ecstacy' and 'seduction' of the media. While his writing on the 'political economy' at play in semiotic exchange leaned slightly toward abstraction, he was steadfastly attentive to the real. He authored outspoken essays on AIDS, the Gulf War, the Rushdie affair, cloning, and other politicized issues. Baudrillard's more recent, albeit controversial writings about the nature of terrorism plumbed at contemporary western morality and boldly scrutinized the fear manufactured and perpetuated within networked society. He died in Paris, at the age of 77. - Marisa Olson Link: Jean Baudrillard - Professor of Philosophy of Culture and Media Criticism - Biography.
The Web is People!: Michael Wesch, Assistant
Professor of Anthropology at Kansas State University, has assembled a
terrific four-and-a-half-minute video called "The Machine is Us/ing Us" that explains what "Web 2.0" means -- not with a cold lecture or a pseudo-powerpoint, but by showing us the new world.
It's hard to describe, really -- there are no voices, just a musical
score, and a remarkably clever presentation of words on the screen. If
you don't know what people mean by Web 2.0, watch it; if you think that
Web 2.0 is just marketing hype, watch it; if you think you know exactly
what Web 2.0 is, watch it.
Say Everything
As younger people reveal their private lives on the Internet, the older generation looks on with alarm and misapprehension not seen since the early days of rock and roll. The future belongs to the uninhibited.
Brewster Kahle started and sold companies for big bucks, his true love
is capturing the whole Internet at the Internet Archive, which he
founded and runs today. Link: ntv004.mp4 (video/mp4 Object).
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