Obama Administration Asks Ballmer About Gaming the Budget

Via Kotaku (via USATo­day), word that Ersk­ine Bowles has con­tacted Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer to chat about a game built around bal­anc­ing the U.S. bud­get. It’s an inter­est­ing idea that’s actu­ally been done (and done well) already. In 2008, Mar­ket­Place, from Amer­i­can Pub­lic Media, launched Bud­get Hero:

Budget Hero screenshotBud­get Hero tries to bring a level of clar­ity and sim­plic­ity to the fed­eral bud­get. It is bound to be con­tro­ver­sial since the game puts num­bers against issues like bring­ing home troops from Iraq soon or grad­u­ally or not at all and pro­vid­ing options on taxes, Social Secu­rity and Medicare. Amer­i­can Pub­lic Media worked closely with the Con­gres­sional Bud­get Office, GAO and oth­ers on the data and devoted months of reporter and researcher time to cre­at­ing the game. (via Boing­Bo­ing)

The “seri­ous games” advo­cates will want to believe that Pres. Obama has decided to solve our bud­get woes by crowd­sourc­ing them. But sim­u­la­tions are sim­pli­fi­ca­tions, so an effec­tive — and broadly approach­able — budget-balancing sim­u­la­tion is not going to cre­ate real “bud­get heroes.” So it’s worth won­der­ing: Given that most of the coun­try believes that the Gov­ern­ment is now tax­ing them more heav­ily than ever — despite the fact that taxes are actu­ally lower this year for most of us — is the Admin­is­tra­tion hop­ing to lever­age game tech­nol­ogy in order to demon­strate pol­icy pro­ce­du­rally?

Just remem­ber, guys, if you’re hop­ing to reach the nation’s early-adopters: iPads won’t do Flash.

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For Your Consideration

For your con­sid­er­a­tion, I com­mend to you — with­out com­ment– the fol­low­ing arti­cle, from the closely-followed Opin­ions page of the Wichita Eagle. “Are Video Games Caus­ing Achieve­ment Gap?” by John Richard Schrock, “trainer of biol­ogy teachers.”

Advanced read­ers will want to be sure and iden­tify by name each log­i­cal fal­lacy that appears in the op-ed.

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New Course: CCTP628 Arcade Theory

I have started to build an infor­ma­tion web­site to accom­pany the new course I’ll teach this fall at George­town, CCTP628: Arcade The­ory. As of now, only the course descrip­tion is avail­able, but I will add more in the com­ing weeks.

Visit arcadetheory.org

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Boing Boing: Games To Get

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I’ve just dis­cov­ered Boing Boing’s ongo­ing “Games to Get” series, a great col­lec­tion of (mostly) indie stu­dio games for var­i­ous plat­forms. Many of my lat­est obses­sions are there: Plants vs. Zom­bies, Chime, Clash of Heroes, Drop 7. Def­i­nitely worth reviewing.

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CFP: Digital Game Play as Sociotechnical Practice | HASTAC

HASTAC (The Human­i­ties, Arts, Sci­ence, and Tech­nol­ogy Advanced Col­lab­o­ra­tory) is def­i­nitely worth get­ting to know: I’ve been to two of their con­fer­ences, and they are ter­rific. Today, their blog calls atten­tion to a new Call For Papers (Trento, Italy, Sept 2010) that is inter­est­ing chiefly for its desire to blend game stud­ies with STS:

CFP: Dig­i­tal Game Play as Sociotech­ni­cal Prac­tice … What STS the­o­ries can be used to under­stand Dig­i­tal Games as sociotech­ni­cal phe­nom­e­non? Is the con­cept of prac­tice and the practice-based approach use­ful to inves­ti­gate Dig­i­tal Games? Is there a rela­tion­ship between power as inscribed and imposed by arte­facts and the tech­ni­cal dimen­sions of Dig­i­tal Games? What rules are inscribed into Dig­i­tal Games tech­nolo­gies and what social worlds do these rules describe? What con­tri­bu­tion can the study of Dig­i­tal Games make to the STS dis­ci­pline at large? And what con­tri­bu­tion can an STS approach make to game stud­ies? Can we fore­see an after-method approach for Dig­i­tal Games?

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The Course of Empire

Update (7 Feb): For a sketch of the Hait­ian infor­ma­tion infra­struc­ture, check out Michael Deibert’s post from Slate, Hait­ian Radio Returns to the Air.


Orig­i­nal Post

I won­der how oth­ers feel about this newly-listed MIT Media Lab course (spring 2010). On the one hand, there’s a lot here to be admired: The course is clearly the prod­uct of agile thought. It is problem-based, socially-relevant, inter­dis­ci­pli­nary teach­ing with­out a net. Laudable.

MAS963 | KrikKrak
A project-based class to develop new tech­nolo­gies and edu­ca­tional tools to help rev­o­lu­tion­ize Hait­ian soci­ety. We will explore viable con­texts for pro­mot­ing self-expression, com­mu­ni­ca­tion, lit­er­acy and numer­acy, and dig­i­tal governance, given the chal­lenges within the soci­ety. Top­ics will include sensors, language, music, com­pu­ta­tional meth­ods of teach­ing and learn­ing, civic engage­ment and social media.  “

But then there’s that phrase: “tools to help rev­o­lu­tion­ize Hait­ian soci­ety.” What does that mean, pre­cisely? Rev­o­lu­tion­ize? For whom? At whose behest? I am no expert on Hait­ian his­tory, but I imag­ine that out­siders with a rev­o­lu­tion­ary agenda have always played a big role in Haiti.

Par­tic­i­pants will choose a soci­etal prob­lem, devise a solu­tion, then spend the last week of April in Haiti field test­ing and doc­u­ment­ing their solution.

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So maybe Haiti is doomed to have us help. Still, half a semester’s worth of earnest grad school con­ver­sa­tion about Haiti does not an expert make. I’ve no doubt that there will be all sorts of IRB over­sight and so forth, and yet: Maybe we should hold off on exper­i­men­tal tools for dig­i­tal gov­er­nance until we staunch the flow of slaves, intro­duce clean water, and oth­er­wise ease the direst poverty in the West­ern hemi­sphere. So far, we’ve been spec­tac­u­larly unsuc­cess­ful in rev­o­lu­tion­iz­ing Haiti.

NB: The course is part of a larger ini­tia­tive within the MIT Media Lab called Krik Krak.

As the world responds to this dis­as­ter, we pause to think about applic­a­ble roles of energy and com­mu­ni­ca­tion tech­nolo­gies in the long nation re-building efforts to come. What began as an IAP work­shop at the Media Lab focus­ing on the Jan­u­ary 12th cri­sis in Haiti will con­tinue as a lec­ture series, a string of projects and con­tin­ued dis­cus­sions on the his­tory, re-construction and nation-building of Haiti.

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Jürgen Habermas (JHabermas) on Twitter

Update: Accord­ing to @JohnathanStray, the Haber­mas account was a ruse. I’ll bet Rhein­gold is rolling his eyes.


So, this is fun.

Jür­gen Haber­mas (JHaber­mas) on Twit­ter.

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Kirschenbaum’s Simulations Course at UMD

Matthew Kirschen­baum, over at UMD, is an Asso­ciate Pro­fes­sor of Eng­lish and the Asso­ciate Direc­tor of MITH, the Mary­land Insti­tute for Tech­nol­ogy in the Human­i­ties. His blog is chock full of inter­est­ing stuff, and his tweets are prolific.

A year ago, he pub­lished a good lit­tle arti­cle in the Chron­i­cle on why human­i­ties stu­dents must be taught to code, an issue that is near to my heart (cf. Ulmer, “Aca­d­e­mic Dis­course in the Age of Tele­vi­sion,” and Moulthroup, “Rethink­ing Schol­ar­ship in the Days of Seri­ous Play.”)

Today, he’s pub­lished his syl­labus for a grad­u­ate course on sim­u­la­tion (PDF down­load). The read­ings are lit­er­ate, diverse, com­pre­hen­sive. It looks like a mar­velous class.

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