Culture is a keyword among keywords for Raymond Williams, who contributed to the founding of cultural studies in the 1960s and 1970s. It is among the most common ways to talk about how we talk. In the essay below, one of Williams’ most careful readers, Ted Striphas, offers a sensitive update to Williams and a wide-ranging intellectual […]
Last fall I began teaching the “Media, Technology & Culture” undergraduate course at UMass Amherst. I decided to run a “flipped classroom,” wherein students would listen to many (though not all) of the lectures outside of class and we’d spend our time in person discussing the material. In addition to opening up lots of class […]
[Cross Posted: CASTAC, Gamasutra and #CultD] I was going to write about the butterfly effect, ethnography and a key informant’s book on the development of the game Jagged Alliance 2. But then the portion of the Internet surrounding videogames and game development exploded. I’ve started posts previously with the line, “I teach game design…” I’ll […]
“It seems fair to say that a rapprochement between culture and technology has been achieved. Yet, this says little about what culture signifies today. How has the term’s growing proximity to technology, particularly digital computational tools, affected the range of meanings and practices with which it’s associated?” The following is a draft of an essay, eventually for publication as part of […]
“The internet didn’t get invented on its own. Government research created the internet so that all companies could make money off the internet.” US President Barack Obama, at a rally in Roanoke, Virginia, July 13, 2012 Suddenly, in the wake of President Obama’s untimely but ultimately non-fatal but non-optimal grammar, the question of who made […]