Interactivity - Hypertextuality - Transversality. A media-philosophical analysis of the Internet

My considerations are organized into three parts. In the first part I expand upon the influence of the Internet on our experience of space and time as well as our concept of personal identity. This takes place, on the one hand, in the example of text-based Internet services (IRC, MUDs, MOOs), and through the World Wide Web’s (WWW) graphical user-interface on the other. Interactivity, the constitution characteristic for the Internet, stands at the centre of this. In the second part I will show how the World Wide Web in particular sets in motion those semiotic demarcations customary until now. To this end I recapitulate, first of all, the way in which image, language and writing have been set in rela-tion to one another in the philosophical tradition. The multimedia hypertext-uality which characterizes the World Wide Web is then revealed against this background. In the third, and final, part I interpret the World Wide Web’s hypertextual structure as a mediative form of realization of a contemporary type of reason. This takes place on the basis of the philosophical concept of tranversality developed by the German philosopher Wolfgang Welsch

Developing serious games for cultural heritage: a state-of-the-art review

Although the widespread use of gaming for leisure purposes has been well documented, the use of games to support cultural heritage purposes, such as historical teaching and learning, or for enhancing museum visits, has been less well considered. The state-of-the-art in serious game technology is identical to that of the state-of-the-art in entertainment games technology. As a result, the field of serious heritage games concerns itself with recent advances in computer games, real-time computer graphics, virtual and augmented reality and artificial intelligence. On the other hand, the main strengths of serious gaming applications may be generalised as being in the areas of communication, visual expression of information, collaboration mechanisms, interactivity and entertainment. In this report, we will focus on the state-of-the-art with respect to the theories, methods and technologies used in serious heritage games. We provide an overview of existing literature of relevance to the domain, discuss the strengths and weaknesses of the described methods and point out unsolved problems and challenges. In addition, several case studies illustrating the application of methods and technologies used in cultural heritage are presented

Serious Games in Cultural Heritage

Although the widespread use of gaming for leisure purposes has been well documented, the use of games to support cultural heritage purposes, such as historical teaching and learning, or for enhancing museum visits, has been less well considered. The state-of-the-art in serious game technology is identical to that of the state-of-the-art in entertainment games technology. As a result the field of serious heritage games concerns itself with recent advances in computer games, real-time computer graphics, virtual and augmented reality and artificial intelligence. On the other hand, the main strengths of serious gaming applications may be generalised as being in the areas of communication, visual expression of information, collaboration mechanisms, interactivity and entertainment. In this report, we will focus on the state-of-the-art with respect to the theories, methods and technologies used in serious heritage games. We provide an overview of existing literature of relevance to the domain, discuss the strengths and weaknesses of the described methods and point out unsolved problems and challenges. In addition, several case studies illustrating the application of methods and technologies used in cultural heritage are presented

ECOLE: a pedagogical environment for non procedural languages

The work described in this paper is related to three areas in the programming world : logic, functional and object programming. The main objective is essentially pedagogical since it is question here to make a synthesis on non procedural languages. To achieve this, we have considered many construction types, each one represents the one of evoked programming. Many fully-documented environments have been developed for writing constructions of any type, transforming them in order to evaluate them by showing the work really accomplished in the least detail.Facultad de Informátic

ECOLE: a pedagogical environment for non procedural languages

The work described in this paper is related to three areas in the programming world : logic, functional and object programming. The main objective is essentially pedagogical since it is question here to make a synthesis on non procedural languages. To achieve this, we have considered many construction types, each one represents the one of evoked programming. Many fully-documented environments have been developed for writing constructions of any type, transforming them in order to evaluate them by showing the work really accomplished in the least detail.Facultad de Informátic

Computational Sociolinguistics: A Survey

Language is a social phenomenon and variation is inherent to its social nature. Recently, there has been a surge of interest within the computational linguistics (CL) community in the social dimension of language. In this article we present a survey of the emerging field of "Computational Sociolinguistics" that reflects this increased interest. We aim to provide a comprehensive overview of CL research on sociolinguistic themes, featuring topics such as the relation between language and social identity, language use in social interaction and multilingual communication. Moreover, we demonstrate the potential for synergy between the research communities involved, by showing how the large-scale data-driven methods that are widely used in CL can complement existing sociolinguistic studies, and how sociolinguistics can inform and challenge the methods and assumptions employed in CL studies. We hope to convey the possible benefits of a closer collaboration between the two communities and conclude with a discussion of open challenges.Comment: To appear in Computational Linguistics. Accepted for publication: 18th February, 201

Designing to facilitate browsing: A look back at the Hyperties workstation browser

Since browsing hypertext can present a formidable cognitive challenge, user interface design plays a major role in determining acceptability. In the Unix workstation version of Hyperties, a research-oriented prototype, we focussed on design features that facilitate browsing. We first give a general overview of Hyperties and its markup language. Customizable documents can be generated by the conditional text feature that enables dynamic and selective display of text and graphics. In addition we present: - an innovative solution to link identification: pop-out graphical buttons of arbitrary shape. - application of pie menus to permit low cognitive load actions that reduce the distraction of common actions, such as page turning or window selection. - multiple window selection strategies that reduce clutter and housekeeping effort. We preferred piles-of-tiles, in which standard-sized windows were arranged in a consistent pattern on the display and actions could be done rapidly, allowing users to concentrate on the contents. (Also cross-referenced as CAR-TR-494