Human XP: Using Virtual Worlds to Capture Common Sense

A long-standing goal of Artificial Intelligence is to program computers with common sense. Virtual worlds could be especially valuable in this endeavor because they represent people and objects in 3-D space interacting with a world similar in many ways to our own. I propose the Human Experience Project, a new type of annotated corpus for collecting common sense, based on scenes in a virtual world. The proposal calls for volunteer contributors over the internet to create 3-D scenes about everyday life. The contributors\u27 annotations will describe the objects in the scenes, the actions, and the hidden mental states of the actors. The goal is to amass a collection of scenes and annotations that researchers can use to model common sense. I present a sample scene and outline the broad requirements of this ambitious project

Avatars Going Mainstream: Typology of Tropes in Avatar-Based Storytelling Practices

Due to the growing popularity of video games, gaming itself has become a shared experience among media audiences worldwide. The phenomenon of avatar-based games has led to the emergence of new storytelling practices. The paper proposes a typology of tropes in these avatar-based narratives focusing on non-game case studies. Suggested tropes are also confronted with the latest research on avatars in the area of game studies and current knowledge of the issues concerning the player-avatar relationship. Some of the most popular misconceptions regarding the gameplay experience and its representation in non-game media are exposed as a result of this analysis. The research confirms that popular culture perceives gaming experience as closely related to the player identity, as the latter inspires new genres of non-game narratives

User Experience as a Rhetorical Medium: User at the Intersection of Audience, Reader and Actor

The goal of this project is to demonstrate how digital interfaces are bodies of visual language that can be “close-read” and interpreted critically, just like any other traditional text; digital user interfaces, like poetry and novels, have form and content that complement and shape the meaning and interpretation of the other. It is meant to encourage academic discussions about digital interfaces to go beyond whether social media is “good” or “bad” to how digital interfaces are structured, why they are structured the way they are, and what effects these structures have on the way they communicate information and content to the user. Digital interfaces are just extensions of written texts—they employ more visual language to be interpreted by the user, but language nonetheless. This project examines how the user resembles a traditional audience-member, a reader, and an actor in order to deliver a better understanding and picture of who and what the user of a digital interface is and why user interface and user experience design is a mode of rhetorical communication. Tapping into a wide range of academic disciplines and sources—from Philosophy to Computer Science, from Plato’s Phaedrus to contemporary studies on search engines for elementary school children and interviews with UX developers and designers from Google—the chapters demonstrate how the user embodies these characteristics and how the critical study of user interfaces is not only practical and relevant to the current time, but also complements the long tradition of studying texts through a literary and rhetorical lens

Player agency in interactive narrative: audience, actor & author

The question motivating this review paper is, how can computer-based interactive narrative be used as a constructivist learn- ing activity? The paper proposes that player agency can be used to link interactive narrative to learner agency in constructivist theory, and to classify approaches to interactive narrative. The traditional question driving research in interactive narrative is, ‘how can an in- teractive narrative deal with a high degree of player agency, while maintaining a coherent and well-formed narrative?’ This question derives from an Aristotelian approach to interactive narrative that, as the question shows, is inherently antagonistic to player agency. Within this approach, player agency must be restricted and manip- ulated to maintain the narrative. Two alternative approaches based on Brecht’s Epic Theatre and Boal’s Theatre of the Oppressed are reviewed. If a Boalian approach to interactive narrative is taken the conflict between narrative and player agency dissolves. The question that emerges from this approach is quite different from the traditional question above, and presents a more useful approach to applying in- teractive narrative as a constructivist learning activity

Cultural tourism and mobile digital devices: an analysis of tourists in Lisbon through sociological comics and video paper

As a central objective, the present text aims to present a reflection on cultural tourism mediated by mobile digital devices e.g. mobile phones, within Lisbon. Such processes are reconfigured in multiple modes and types, through tourist practices seemingly neutral, but in truth controversial. The study is based on a sociological methodology that articulates the techniques of video paper and sociological comics strip, explained within the text. For this purpose, a starting question emerges: how to reflect and analyze empirically the practices of mobile cultural tourism, within the framework of urban social mobilities? One hypothesis, among others, is the following: new urban mobilities, and in particular cultural tourism, have been profoundly transformed by locative technologies such as mobile digital devices (mobile phones, etc.). With regard to the expected results, some are sociological archives and collections of hybrid sources, which articulate the most traditional textual messages with images, animations and sounds disseminated through digital videos, and via other mobile technologies, like virtual and augmented reality.Enquanto objetivo central, o presente texto visa apresentar uma reflexão sobre o turismo cultural mediado por dispositivos móveis digitais, por ex. telemóveis, em Lisboa. Tais processos encontram-se reconfigurados em múltiplos modos e tipos, por meio de práticas turísticas aparentemente neutras, mas na verdade polémicas. O estudo baseia-se numa metodologia sociológica que articula as técnicas do vídeo paper e da banda desenhada sociológica, explicadas no texto. Para tanto, surge uma questão de partida: como refletir e analisar empiricamente as práticas de turismo cultural móvel, no quadro das mobilidades sociais urbanas? Uma hipótese, entre outras, é a seguinte: as novas mobilidades urbanas, e em particular o turismo cultural, foram profundamente transformadas por tecnologias locativas como os dispositivos digitais móveis (telemóveis, etc.). No que se refere aos resultados esperados, alguns são arquivos sociológicos e coleções de fontes híbridas, que articulam as mensagens textuais mais tradicionais com imagens, animações e sons disseminados através de vídeos digitais, e por meio de outras tecnologias móveis, como a realidade virtual e aumentada

Four Festivals and a City: A critique of Actor-Network Theory as an approach to understanding the emergence and development of Flagship Festivals in Kilkenny from 1964 to 2004

This thesis is a critique of the suitability of Actor-Network Theory (ANT) as an approach to understanding the emergence and development of four flagship festivals in Kilkenny from 1964 to 2004. The thesis compares Kilkenny’s four catalyst festivals (The Kilkenny Beer Festival, Kilkenny Arts Week, The Confederation of Kilkenny Festival and the Cat Laughs Comedy Festival) and assesses the ability of the ANT approach to analyse the festival product, organisation, and power flow of each. It examines the ability of ANT to understand the socio-cultural impacts of the festivals on the city of Kilkenny, its tourism infrastructure and built heritage. Utilising two subtly different interpretations (Fox, 2000 and Porsander 2005) of Michael Callon’s phases of emergence (1986, 1991), ANT is used to trace the differences in the origins of these festival committees, their emergence or translation from, and into, other networks and the actor-networks that reach beyond Kilkenny. It highlights the multiple organisational variations in the festival committees that become visible through the selected approach and its suitability for interrogating the varying contexts and topologies of these city-changing festivals

Innovative Tokyo

This paper compares and contrasts Tokyo's innovation structure with the industrial districts model and the international hub model in the literature on urban and regional development. The Tokyo model embraces and yet transcends both industrial districts and international hub models. The paper details key elements making up the Tokyo model-organizational knowledge creation, integral and co-location systems of corporate R&D and new product development, test markets, industrial districts and clusters, participative consumer culture, continuous learning from abroad, local government policies, the national system of innovation, and the historical genesis of Tokyo in Japan's political economy. The paper finds that the Tokyo model of innovation will continue to evolve with the changing external environment, but fundamentally retains its main characteristics. The lessons from the Tokyo model is that openness, a diversified industrial base, the continuing development of new industries, and an emphasis on innovation, all contribute to the dynamism of a major metropolitan region.Labor Policies,Environmental Economics&Policies,Public Health Promotion,ICT Policy and Strategies,Agricultural Knowledge&Information Systems,ICT Policy and Strategies,Environmental Economics&Policies,Health Monitoring&Evaluation,Agricultural Knowledge&Information Systems,Innovation

“Brave New World”: The New Q, Masculinity, and the Craig Era Bond Films

This article examines the significance of the new Q in Skyfall (Dir. Sam Mendes, 2012) and Spectre (Dir. Sam Mendes, 2015). It explores some of the ways that the new take on Q in the Craig era has not only adapted the dynamic between Bond and the MI6 gadget-master by turning him into a young tech geek, but also speaks volumes about masculinity and the Bond franchise