15,468 research outputs found

    Where are all the climate change games? Locating digital games' response to climate change

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    The burgeoning genre of climate fiction, or ‘cli-fi’, in literature and the arts has begun to attract both scholarly and popular attention. It hasbeen described as ‘potentially [having] crucial contributions to make toward full understanding of the multiple, accelerating environmental challenges facing the world today.’ (Buell, 2014) Implicitly, these works confront the current orthodoxy about where exactly the issue of climate change sits in domains of knowledge. As Jordan (2014) notes: ‘climate change as ‘nature’ not culture is still largely perceived as a problem for the sciences alongside planning, policy, and geography.’ In this paper we ask where is, or alternatively what does or could climate fiction within the field of digital games look like? Even a passing familiarity with the cultural output of the mainstream game industry reveals the startling omission of the subject–with scant few games telling stories that engage with climate change and the unfolding ecological crisis. (Abraham, 2015) Finding a relative dearth of explicit engagement, this paper offers an alternative engagement with climate change in games by focussing on the underlying ideas, conceptions and narratives of human-environment relationships that have been a part of games since their earliest incarnations. We argue that it is possible to read games for particular conceptualisations of human relationships to nature, and offer a description of four highly prevalent ‘modes’ of human-environment engagement. We describe and analyse these relationships for their participation in or challenge to the same issues and problems that undergird the current ecological crisis, such as enlightenment narratives of human mastery and dominion over the earth

    Understanding and Improving the Culture of Hackathons: Think Global Hack Local

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    Hackathons bring developers, artists and designers together around a shared challenge: ideate, plan and create an application in a highly constrained time frame. A way to socialize, solve problems, and strengthen soft and hard skills, hackathons have grown tremendously in popularity in the last half decade. Despite this growth, it has been noted that females do not participate in hackathons with the same frequency as males. Some theorize that the hackathon culture is intimidating, does not appeal to women, or that it acts to amplify pre-existing cultural biases in computing. In this paper we introduce an alternative format for hackathons to address these issues. Think Global Hack Local (TGHL) is a non-competitive, community-based hackathon that connects non-profit organizations with student developers. Students donate a weekend to solve problems that these organizations otherwise lack the resources to solve. To date, there have been two TGHL hackathons, and we have observed many interesting divergences within the culture of TGHL in comparison to other hackathons. Response has been positive, and nearly all of them indicate that they would do it again. By adopting some of these ideas, we believe that hackathons can become an environment that is more inclusive and fun for all

    Recent United States Copyright Reforms: Congress Catches the Spirit of Berne

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    Structural Continuity and Transformations of the U.S. Copyright Law With Regard to Computer Programs: Actors\u27 Communicative Interactions through the Use of Structural Rules and Resources

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    This study analyzes the 115 U.S. federal cases regarding the copyright protection of computer programs, in order to examine how legal actors with different resources interact through their strategic communication activities, which influence the structuring of the information environment of the copyright system. The framework of authorship, work, and use helps us understand the stakeholders\u27 relationships and struggles that are manifested in their legal arguments. The structural rules mainly concerning the concept of authorship and work at first enabled the developers and copyright holders to make effective arguments to extend copyright protection on their behalf. When the cases began to have more actors who are developers but not copyright holders and the actors who are not developers but claim their rights in the programs, the struggle between the developers and non-developers were manifested in their arguments focusing on the concept of work and that of authorship. Through the legal actors\u27 constant efforts to legitimize their interests in computer programs, the construct of authorship has been mobilized yet remained central. Artistic creativity that had been emphasized in other areas of copyright, and independent creativity that had been emphasized in earlier cases of software copyright, is later transformed to scientific expertise, knowledge, and skills. The findings of this study demonstrate the importance of the role of communication in structuration, because the only way that the legal actors were able to legitimize their interests and possibly transform the existing structural rules was through their communicative activities. The nature of the actor, i.e., whether she was a developing entity, was found to be a single most important factor that influences the decisions made by the judges. However, only when the legal actor could successfully present herself as a party that involved with developing computer programs, the judges were more likely to make a decision in her favor. When the actor was a developer but she focused her arguments on the nature of the work rather than her developing activity, the actor tended not to have any advantage over the other party. Therefore, it was the legitimacy gained by communicating the nature of the actor, rather than the nature of the actor itself, that made the difference in the ways the judges made decisions

    Securities Regulation in Virtual Space

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