Infocult: Uncanny Informatics

Fine gaming concept map

Steven Kaye points out this concept map of gaming. It's too big and not of the right resolution to copy in full or squish here, but this is a taste:

Hitchhiker's Guide game is back

The BBC has rereleased the breathtakingly historical Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy game (1984), and added graphic functions:

Guerrillas play the global market: Robb

Update on information war in Iraq: John Robb notes insurgent opportunities to generate revenue by combining terror operations with playing the global market.  "Guerrilla entrepreneurs will use prior knowledge of attacks to generate revenue from global financial markets."

(thanks to Jesse)

Social login: collaborating to hack Web content gateways

Lessig points us to an article on users sharing their Web content login information. This practice is easier than remembering as many logins as there are sites requiring them, and takes advantage of network effects to amplify access. Naturally this weirds out those sites' marketing efforts.

Do we have a better phrase than "sharing playlists" yet? This is referring to social networking of descriptive or other secondary information, rather than the primary objects themselves.

Textual Instruments: text mixing tools

Turbulence Textual Instruments offers two interesting text hacking/visualization applications for free downloading.

News Reader grabs a stream from Yahoo news stories, then embeds keyword hyperlinks to increasingly surreal mixes. Regime Change does something similar to war reports.

(thanks to Hugh!)

Another surprise horror video

Infocult is alerted to another one of that highly regarded genre of Web art, where a pleasant or calming image is interrupted by a horrific blast. Good-sized download. Play with sound up, of course, and preferably in a dark space.

DRM and the da Vinci Code

From a Voice essay on the da Vinci Code, this brilliant, off-the-cuff metaphor compares the book's effect to DRM technology:

The Da Vinci Code makes political and spiritual notions of great potential power broadly available but only with the tacit assurance that these theses will not be made real. They will never be nailed to a church door. It's like the Mission: Impossible message that self-destructs after a first reading. It's the cultural equivalent of computer code on a CD that makes it possible to play the CD but not to reproduce it. Cultural meaning is created but only on the condition that its impact will be carefully limited.

(emphasis added)

Webnote, new collaborative writing tool

Webnote is a new experiment in Web-based collaborative writing. It uses post-its as the organizing theme, and (so far) lets multiple users write blocks to the same page. Try mine - go ahead, think wiki, and write on it.

The creator explains that this is primarily a note-taking tool. It's like a wiki, but has the added graphic functionality.

Danah Boyd, who points us to the thing, is also one of the few people besides me who is reminded of the great, lost EQuill.

Today's puzzle-space game

Treasure Box is a pleasant, strange game that mixes puzzles with inventive, whimsical design.  It feels a bit like Terry Gilliam's animations.  Rules are usually implicit, and, like many games now, are learned by exploring the image- and sound-scape.  Despite the opening text, there isn't really any unfolding narrative, and the ending disappoints, but the entire play is well worth the game.

(via Heresiarch's feed at del.icio.us)

Kerry on IP: some hints emerge

Despite Kerry's steady silence on copyright issues, we can surface a few outlines. Ed Felten argues:

The fact is that the record of Kerry, and the Democrats in general, on the copyright/innovation issue is not good at all. Consider, for instance, the 2002 Senate hearing on the Hollings CBDTPA, in which Intel's Les Vadasz faced a phalanx of entertainment-industry witnesses. According to Declan McCullagh's Wired News story, the committee's Democrats, including Kerry, spoke in favor of the dangerous CBDTPA bill, while Republicans were more skeptical. (I attended the hearing, and my memory is consistent with Declan's story.)

A discussant on Lessig's blog quotes from an old, cached page on Kerry's sit :

Copyright-Based Industries Are Critical to Economic Growth: Products of the mind from
America’s scientists, engineers, computer programmers have little value without
intellectual property protections. Copyright based industries alone now account for
nearly 6% of all jobs in America and 7.75 % of GDP. These industries are in jeopardy
because of the Bush Administration’s failure to enforce international treaties to protect
America’s creative community from piracy.
Stop Intellectual Piracy: The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative estimates that
losses theft of U.S. intellectual property in 51 foreign countries total $9.7 billion. In
China alone we lose $1.8 billion to piracy. Yet even where we have strong agreements,
piracy remains a major problem due to a failure to fully implement the TRIPS
agreement and an unwillingness or inability to crack down on the problem. A Kerry
Administration will take theft of the jobs of America’s creative workforce a trade and
foreign policy priority.

Looks like his established approaches to jobs and prosecution could drive a thick copyright policy. Back to the Clinton years, which gave us DMCA and copyright term extensions? Good for some business models, but bad for librarians, students, teachers, some business, and chunks of culture.