BASIC THESIS: Goffman’s theory of front stage and backstage is being blurred by technology, more specifically YouTube. Behaviors that Goffman saw as backstage are being moved to the front stage because of the availability of this new technology. People are posting videos of themselves on YouTube, behavior Goffman would consider backstage, to a very large…
Read more My argument for final paper (YouTube and Goffman).
I meant to mention this in class, but I wanted to share a few thoughts on how to structure (or sequence, or arrange into a syntagm yayy!) a critical essay. A scientific paper in our field typically has the following structure (and you are welcome to use it in this class, if it makes sense…
I’ve heard enough from a sufficient number of people to worry about tomorrow’s deadline for the paper. I am therefore granting an extension on the paper until Sunday at midnight. Please bring all of your materials to class today, and we can have an emergency how-to-develop-an-argument lecture (if needed), or we can do whatever. Also,…
Came across this pretty recently. It kind of reminded me of when Jeff showed us examples of unintended forms of play within games. Yes, wii remotes were intended to be used how this guy is using them physically, but I don’t believe the creators intended them to be reprogrammed to interact with a software program…
I just remembered that I wanted to post the link to that book Among the Thugs I mentioned in the lecture about complex systems. It’s an interesting read of first-hand experience with crowds and violence and mob mentality kind of stuff. Plus, it’s all about hooligans, and who doesn’t love that cuddly bunch?
Hi folks, I think it would be fantastic to make the final papers available to each other. Not sure how we’d do it (i think i will be submitting mine to a conference later on, so i won’t be posting it on the web), but please add a comment here if you would assent to…
Hey Chief- This is a friendly reminder to post your lecture notes (such as they are) to oncourse so we may profit from your hours of preparation and hard work. Excluding any blood sweat and tears is appreciated.
This is a repost from my blog. On a personal note I would like to thank Jeff for the amount of himself that he poured into this class, and the seriousness with which you, my classmates, treated all of our work, while still having fun (at least I did). I don’t have any logical or…
I read an interesting article on Slashdot today: Academic Games Are No Fun. Apparently, well into a $250K MacArthur grant, the IU Telecommunications Department-based creators of the MMO “serious game” Arden, The World of Shakespeare, have learned that (1) a game needs to be a game, and (2) games need to be fun. I can’t…
Interaction Culture 