A web-writer is dead

Tron Øgrim, internet enthusiast and eager contributor to the Norwegian Wikipedia, died 23rd of May 2007. It was very sudden, most likely a stroke.

Tron Øgrim was a politically controversial person, ideologist of the communist movement through the seventies, and important to many better known Norwegian authors, politicians and visible contributors to the Norwegian public debate. He himself wrote what he talked of as the first Norwegian weblogg: Under en stein i skogen (under a rock in the woods).

Tron Øgrim did not grow old, but compared to the teenagers who today feel they have just discovered this terra incognita, the unknown land their parents know nothing about, he was of another generation. Perhaps almost two generations apart. But he was an active user, one of those where the border line between user and developer blurs, one who understood the net and its structure, not just its immediate use.

Time is always, in the end, measured by the individuals in relation to human lives; the length of a lifetime, the age of a child, the length of a human cycle. And now the internet culture in Norway has reached a point of no return: one of the early, the active and the visible is gone. It's time to realise that the net is larger and longer lasting than a single human life.

Culture of the information Age

There is a conference in Budapest in October. It looks interesting both because of the topic and as a place to go (Hungary! Very interesting place!). Culture of the Information Age concerns itself with cultural change due to new information technology, a topic which tends to be ignored when it's not treated like a dystopia. It had to be somebody outside the "Ameropean" cultural dominance to rise the question analytically and perhaps even without fear.¨

Deadline for abstracts is June 4th.

From the mail bringing this conference to my attention:

János Kodolányi University College as promoter of FreesideEurope Online Academic Journal is organizing an international conference with the theme of The Culture of the Information Age to be held in Székesfehérvár, Hungary from October 10 to 11 2007.

We invite abstracts (consisting of 200 words and a short CV) that focus on the themes listed in the attached conference outline. The abstracts sent in will be reviewed and chosen by the Editorial Board. Participants will be asked to present a paper and provide a copy of their talks in MS Word format for possible publication.

Prepare for a mess

I am testing out the new blogger interface tools, and have discovered that although there are several annoying features it can do much of what I want to. This should get rid of the broken frame the heading has in certain browsers, and it can also give me more flexibility in general. I am not entirely happy with the pre-set options, but as I have found ways to work around them/override them, the blog will be redone in the not-too-far future. When the time comes, many things I really like may disappear for a while, as they are being worked into the new template. Don't panic, that's my privilege.

ORLY?

It's been a while since I complained here about the "quality reform" in Norwegian education. The Norwegian education system was altered: 3 year bachelor degree instead of 4 year cand mag, master degree after 5 years instead of hovedfag after 6-7 years, more teaching and supervision, less time for reflection and independent research for the student and also less time for research for the faculty.

Imagine the surprise when it turns out that less time to study, more pressure towards keeping the schedule, less qualified and updated teachers and less resources for testing and assessing the students led to less knowledgeable students.
*insert sharp tone of voice, desillusioned sarcasm shining through*

Thankfully we still have people who remember how to do research in this country, and at the University of Oslo some of them did exactly that, they checked if students learned the same in three years as they used to do in four. The answer was no, they don't.

The paper "Morgenbladet", one of the few papers where they still read research reports and 100 page evaluations (or at least the press releases about them), calls the syndrome "kunnskapsfallet" - the fall of knowledge. The evaluation of students at the University of Oslo confirms what people in colleges and universities have been saying from the beginning. There is very, very little in the "quality reform" that makes for better students.

It is a quality reform though. That much is true.

Thanks to Jon for the links and the reminder.

---
For non-MMORPG addicts: ORLY is short for "Oh, really?" Often seen when n00bs state the obvious.

Virtually present

Why am I, who know so much about online communication, so reluctant to use them for lecturing? Tomorrow I am going to talk at a meeting organised by biblioteksentralen, what they call Web 2.0 skolen (web 2.0 School), and I will be in Volda while they are in Oslo. I am going to talk about weblogs and modern media, and I should be able to do this blindly and left handed... but I am really uncomfortable, and use too much energy on it.

I think the clue to why is in the way I have learned to teach. It has happened through my own trial and error in the meetings with students - face to face. Whether it's five or 150 - or just one, crying in my office - I have always faced them. Even when they email me, I know we have met or will meet. The body, the reading of subtle signals, the eye contact, the touch of a flirt with the audience - it's all about presence, mine and theirs.

Tomorrow it will be all about presence too, but so much limites, such narrow bandwidth presence. Ironic that it takes broadband for it.

Staying put

I am green with envy as I read Jill's conference notes from the Personal Democracy Forum. I wish I had been there, I wish I was experiencing something new and exiting, I wish I was in New York in spring and that the magnolias were still blooming.

I am not though.
Aaaannnnd, it's hard to admit it, but it's good.

Last year was a breathless race about the planet, exhaustion, guilt and worry combined with adrenalin and stimulation is an oddly exhilarating drug, and it makes me feel driven to perform perhaps at times beyond what I can defend. This year I can lean back and learn, find substance for my performace. And in reading Jill's notes - and the reports of others who are there, who are present where things happen, I find that my absence triggers my curiosity, and I start imagining what could happen.

And that, my dears, is where I tend to find my real motivation. Preferably bored, often frustrated, and wanting for something to happen, anything, really... and so I have to think it up. "What if..." in a grand or small scale, is all research is really about, isn't it?

Crowdsourcing

Sticking your head in the virtual quick-sand which is World of Warcraft is a good way of not really catching up with the latest in other trends, or at least the vocabulary, like Crowdsourcing. The wikipedia entrance I linked to there is an interesting example of the concept: first, wikipedia is a result of crowdsourcing: large amounts of people cooperating openly and individually to improve information and make more available. The entry is also obviously under revision, it's flagged as too short, too many references, not reliable, needs rework, needs more references, poor quality - it's obvious that a lot of people have been at work picking the original entry(ies) apart.

Personally, I have always believed in Crowdsourcing, and I believe in it in the way the cooperative power of self-organised interest groups is described in the Swedish book Samverkansspiralen. Here it offers voluntair work and cooperative action as a way to gain more knowledge and empower the participants towards more action - like for instance political activism.
I believe opportunities for open participation and contribution can go somewhere good, if you get caught up in a good circle, a positive spiral.

I found the concept itself, Crowdsourcing, in a paper which was surprisingly good. Dagbladet, one of the larger tabloids in Norway, has been going downhill for years. It used to be a very good magazine with interesting reportage, knowledgeable critical journalism and ambitions to cover Norwegian and international culture in depth, not just through sensation reporting. Saturday was an all time low for the paper, as the front page was all about who have which well-known figure on their "friends" list on facebook. It was about 10 minutes research and perhaps 30 minutes of getting the pictures "just right" behind that classic piece of journalism. The first time a Norwegian newspaper used all of the front page on just one case was in 1980-81, I think in February 1981, if I remember correctly. Of course, I can google it. Yep, February 22, 1981.

This event was a shocking piece of news in Norway at the time. Two members of a neo-nazi group, "Norges Germanske Armé", were executed by their leaders, as they were considered to be a danger for the organisation after a weapons theft. One of them had however already talked to the police, and the police was on to that something was going on. They couldn't prevent the double murder, but they did get the ones guilty immediately. This event had everything: drama, deep historical roots, controversy and important political consequences for a country forever deeply branded by Hitler's plans for a master race. Today Norwegian banners and national symbols are used as a substitution for forbidden nazi symbols. It's a past which is always with us.

Fastforward from a front page (not even in this paper, but their main competitor, this paper was still full format and filled with words, not pictures in 1981) dramatically displaying this tragic and stunning event, to pictures of Norwegian "stars" and speculation about who knows who on facebook. Yes, I keep losing illusions about the progress of journalism on paper.

So what did I learn. I learned that there is a word for the viral spread of knowledge, the anthill of collaboration which creates rhizomic growths with the virtual function of anything from tumors to castles online. I had to check zero.newassignment.net, a journalistic experiment for crowds.

For years, I have been telling journalists they don't need to be worried about their jobs, because the individual personal publishers of blogs, wikis and other direct publishing systems are not journalists. Now, considering what looks like a steady decline of print and television journalism, organised, cooperative journalism may be a good reason to start worrying.

(BTW: From the front page of this not-worst-case paper: "Abused online", with a picture of a well known Norwegian actress. Turns out somebody have made TWO fake profiles in her name on facebook. The horror, the horror!)

Aesthetics of Play

The conference was in 2005, but since I am now reading and writing about - yeah, exactly, aesthetics of play - the link is fresh and bright and new for me! Great content from interesting writers, and I am delighted to revisit this topic.

So hip, so cool!

I was in Bergen and talked (the links) to the student community of Bergen, with VamPus, also known as Heidi Nordby Lunde. The student paper StudVest proudly proclaims that blogging will remain. "Bestå" (remain) in Norwegian means something which will last forever - that's not exactly what I said. I tried to indicate that I think it will be altered and absorbed in other technologies, but that some kind of easy written personal publishing with a similar form to current blogs will remain. But hey, doesn't sound as good, does it?

It was fun, I have, after 15 years of lecturing, finally lost my panic for talking in public, and VamPus is a pretty quick and clever lady. But I have to admit that the high point for me was to come home and check facebook and see that my daughter's friends think I am hip and cool, just like her. I mean, when students think some crazy woman old enough to be their mother is cool, either it's time for me to put on a pinstriped suit and stop dying my hair, or they are trying to impress my daughter.

Hmmm.

Anyway, message of the day: Vote smart, Vote Erla

Blogging, en medieboble?

Bergen tomorrow, and I'll be talking about blogs, and whether or not its a media bubble. I'll leave the conclusion for the ones who are actually there, tomorrow, in Bergen.

I'll tell the rest of the world later, if you REALLY want to know my authorized version.

Fixed!

I mentioned the rather weird short version of "forhåndsvisning" (preview) in the Norwegian version of blogger some days ago. I have probably not been the only one to react, because today it was changed!

Snubbed on Facebook

So, I did the deed and made a facebook profile. Not all that active, I log in once in a while to accept requests, play around a little to see how it works, and invite a few people I know to be my friends.

And then one of them doesn't approve me.

Who'd have thought.

Not that it matters, and of course it's no reason to accept everybody, but still, it's not like I invite all kind of people I never met. It felt weird to see others in the same group of people linked, and me left out. The visual lack of a connection was a stark declaration, a public rejection.

I suspect a large part of the power of facebook lies here, in the power to include and exclude, and make both the links and the lack obvious to the insiders, but still unvoiced, unspoken. Luckily I am no longer 10 years old and desperately unhappy when somebody doesn't pick me, or write in my book of memories. But it makes me wonder... what will I do the day somebody I am really uncomfortable about want to be my friend?

There is no way to aknowledge a link which is less than friendly, no such thing as "casual aquaintance" or "neighbour I never spoke to the 20 years we lived close" or "yeah, I know who that is, but that's all." The neutral, unemotional, that which is less than friendship but still more than strangers - there is no category for that. And that leaves an odd sensation of unease, as the world is split into friends and not-friends. It is just too simple.

Be nice - it's good for you

From the journal Human Communication Research, vol 33, number2, April 2007, "Affectionate Writing Reduces Total Cholesterol: Two Randomized Controlled Trials" by Kory Floyd, Alan C. Mikkelson, Colin Hesse and Perry M. Pauley.

In two 5-week trials, healthy college students were randomly assigned either to experimental or control groups. Participants in the experimental groups wrote about their affection for significant friends, relatives, and/or romantic partners for 20 minutes on three separate occasions; on the same schedule, those in the control groups wrote about innocuous topics. Total cholesterol was assessed via capillary blood at the beginning of the trials and again at the end. Participants in the experimental groups experienced statistically significant reductions in total cholesterol. Control participants in the first study experienced a significant increase during the same period, whereas those in the second study did not. Cholesterol changes were largely unmoderated by linguistic features of the writing produced in the intervention. Potential therapeutic implications are discussed.

Imagine the implications. In the risk group for high cholesterol? Sit down and write about somebody you love and care for. Consider the good things in human relationships. Look for the things that, literally, heals your heart. It also gives a new meaning to the idea that a broken relationship can mean a broken heart. It can, really.

Now excuse me, I am off to spend 20 minutes writing about my favourite people, and why they are so special.

Meta post - safe topics

No, I haven't gone crazy and changed the content here to overdone melodramatic fantasy writing. No worries. I just don't want to think or write or blog about what's up in my reality right now - too many potential traps there for lurking readers of evil (or just petty) intent. So instead, a list of safe topics.

Conference papers. They are already partly in the public sphere, and we all do it and we all have to work on it. Mine for the DAC conference in Perth, Australia, just got accepted, now I have to start working on it, to make it presentable.

Weather. Weather is firmly in the public sphere, and the last days have been wonderful! Spring has finally reached us, and the nature I live right in the middle of looks like it's been designed after a post card. And don't get me started on how the waterfalls looked this weekend. Notice the unfolding leaves on that birch.

Books published by others, as long as I say nice things. And that's the plan. I focus a lot on computers for the medium of gaming, but that's just a tiny slice of a big field. A lot of the gaming, particularly fantasy gaming, happens offline. Patrick Williams, Sean Q Hendricks and W. Keith Winkler have edited Gaming as culture, where they discuss a lot of other types of gaming, table-top, magic and other fantasy game topics. One article is on computer games, the other 9 are not. I have always been aware of the connections between computer games and the larger fantasy culture universe. This book is a very nice link between worlds which should be much closer.

Blogging is a way to direct my thought process, as well as release topics which keep distracting me. Today is a day for direction.

The Icefalcon

She had another name once, another life, but she never suited the expectations connected with it. She wasn't overly smart or delicate, despite her dainty appearance, but she had qualities which put her up front. She was fiercely protective, unafraid and brave, and would rush into conflict head first. The goal would be to keep hurt from those who were hers, as dangerously fierce a den-mother as her little tribe of humans had ever seen. And so she was made part of the guard and given the title "Icefalcon", named for the small but fierce birds hunting prey twice their size in the clean air of the mountains. Soon she was nothing but The Icefalcon, her childhood name lost in the pride of her position, the passion of her responsibility. She lived with that until she died.

Her death was painful and without honour. She had failed to protect the other guards with her, she failed to obtain the information her tribe needed about the curse, the scourge, she failed even to die cleanly at the blades of her attackers. She crawled, like a beast, into the shadows of a once-proud stronghold. The Icefalcon's last living breath brought the bitter taste of shame and failure to her tongue. Then she died, in the ruins of Lordaeron, alone among rotting debris.



It should have ended there. But even the dignity of death was taken from her. The curse of her enemies had embraced her, and made her one of them. Her broken body got up and walked, carried by a will to life which fed the stubborn passion which had made her The Icefalcon. Dead, she was undead.

In this undeath, she found company. Despair and a common enemy creates strange alliances. Her fear and disgust of the rabid orcs, the sly trolls and even the strange animals, the tauren, was no longer important. The only emotion left in The Icefalcon was her own hatred of the scourge and its source. The demonic energies and the putrid pollution which ruined her land and made her what she now was became the main reason for her unlife. Somewhere in her world an icefalcon soared in clean air over white mountain peaks. She had to protect that. It was the last spark in her decayed heart.



And so she passed through the dark portal of demon energy. A slight warrior, too fragile for her blade, too delicate for her shield, but with a total disrespect of these limitations. She made her way towards the source of her curse. This is where we can find her now, scouring the Outlands, driving for the frontier where the pollution can be stopped, the demons driven out of her life forever. There is no way back for The Icefalcon. Such as her have no space in the world she protects. In every battle she faces her own decay, her own rejection of the course of nature. But The Icefalcon never stops to consider this. For her the only direction is a charge into the face of her enemies, until she wins peace for the memory she protects, or until she is, finally and forever, free to soar.

Get ready for the end!

Today's lecture was on semiotics, with Roland Barthes' rhetoric of the image as the main topic. So of course I needed some examples for analysis. I haven't been watching advertising and working with that for several years, but I think I probably should. There is so much going on out there on the web, all in the name of consumption.


Diesel's summer campaign is cleverly taking advantage of the whole global warming issue. With a name as heavily loaded with negative connotations in these fossile fuel crisis, they had to spin it in a daring direction - something diesel has never been afraid to do.

This year the slogan is "Global Warming Ready", and that they are!

WoW - an anthology!

Jill Walker and Hilde Corneliussen, our hard-working and eminent editors, have just sent off to MIT press a big fat stack of paper with the articles grown from our contacts and network in World of Warcraft. They have done a great job, and so have we all! I am just going to lean back and wait for the release party now!

Forhån

Blogger is suddenly speaking Norwegian to me. I love it, but I also see some weird results. For instance when I want to publish a comment, and the window isn't wide enough to show the buttons "publiser kommentaren din" and "forhåndsvisning" (preview). So the first shows, but the second is shortened to "forhån". "Hån" in Norwegian means - I don't really have the words in English, but I think something like "spite" or "harassment". "Forhån" is one form of the word as a verb. So, I get the options "publish" or "spite". Weird.

The Restaurant Game

Want to be part of creating a game? The MIT media Lab is working on The Restaurant Game, a multi (two) player game where the game is supposed to learn from the players, with the goal of developing a single user game. As they say: Play early, play often, please spread the word.

Health and games

Journalists are great. Good journalists find a whole lot of stuff, and they can only use a tiny portion of it, because they think people really don't want to lnow all the interesting stuff they find. Or their editors do. This means that journalists are really generous when it comes to sharing information, not at all worried when you ask for a link to that research report they are quoting and trying to get you to comment on.

Now, The Truants are great too. Despite being researchers, they share interesting information even more generously than journalists, and they know how to find it fast. So when I got a hint from a journalist about some interesting research, and asked The Truants if they could help me with some search words for the right type of institution, I got it right away! And so I can offer the Scandinavian language readers of this blog a link to an interesting Swedish review of research on health and games.

Enjoy, and think nice thoughts about gift economy networks while you do.

What's nice?

I found the below report by way of a journalist from NRK P3, who asked for a couple of quotable words on the phone. So, I have now (Tuesday april 10th, 13.00) said that multi user games make cooperation, grouping, generousity and sharing an absolute necessity in order to succeed - all qualities which we associate with kindness. In journalist language, that means I have said games make people nicer, no qualifiers, and no matter that "nice" is relative. I don't think gankers are nice AT ALL. The mates of gankers, the people who get more honourkills by chasing down and repeatedly killing some defenseless horde character, I am pretty sure they think ganking is a really nice activity!

Life online: The Web in 2020

Somebody have brought out their crystal balls, and said something about the future of online activities. It's a sober and interesting piece of writing, and it makes me look forwards to 2020, to see just how well the study fits.

Player's Realm

Another anthology is on the market: The Player's Realm with Jonas Heide-Smith and Patrick Williams as editors. It's published by McFarland, and should make an interesting addition to current game literature. It's been a while coming, but it's on topics which should be able to survive the time lag. My article is on the player's situation and connection, placing gaming in a wider cultural field, connecting to a wide range of literature.

I have no idea what the picture on the front page is supposed to relate to though - unless it's that same literary connection: Fantasy and science fiction.

Spring, stuff, sick leave

I keep forming blogposts in my mind, about the beauty and the melankoly of really early spring, the light on trash revealed after the winter, dirty flecks of melting snow and the scent of new growth. But I never get around to post those or the pictures, as life rushes on.

I have just operated one of my eyes, an operation I have mentioned before. This means I am on sick leave this week, and I really don't feel like straining my eyesight much for a while now. It will take weeks to heal and longer to adjust and settle. Good news is: I love my new glasses, and it seems like this will get coordinated.

Yesterday I got a phone call from my mother, and she was at the hospital. So my period of sick leave and destressing is suddenly filled with hospital visits, figuring out a way to care for two fat, spoiled tomcats and how to have some easter fun with the family although there will be very little skiing and cabin life. Lucky I have a wonderful family who don't panic at the thought of spending their vacation between Volda, Ålesund and visits to the hospital.

I have to put a lot aside to deal with my mother's weakened condition and my own momentarily slacking health, but it's just one of those things. I have been complaining I didn't know how to say "no" to interesting propositions. This spring is a forceful lesson in priorities and letting go. I still don't know how to do it gracefully though.

Finally done

Among the tasks I have struggled with this year is the article for the WoW anthology we are writing with Jill and Hilde as editors. First I didn't manage to get into the flow of writing, then it all exploded and it grew to twice the size. Today I managed to slice it down to an acceptable format, and I almost understood what I am writing too. Not bad, really.

This article has been haunted with problems. I started with an idea which turned out to be really hard to confirm. People do way too much more stuff ingame compared to what I thought they did, and they all wanted to talk about it. I got a lot of great information from a wonderful bunch of people, when I went to Holland to interview the guild I played with. Not much of that was about the topics I wanted them to talk about though. Oh well, it's what I get for interviewing real life people, I guess!

When I finally got time to have the interviews transcribed (and here I again had the pleasure of getting help from the guild: a member did the transcriptions, and I am not sure if he ever contacted the college to get paid for it. I hope he did! He deserved every krone, because it turned out that the quality of the interviews was really lousy. And as if that's not enough:) all the interviews were cut short. I cried when I discovered what had happened. The recorder I had borrowed at the college after many negotiations (I wanted to buy, they wanted to save - familiar story) had some weird malfunction, so not only was it a poor recorder, it also made me lose the end of every single interview.

So, patching this optimistically together, I kind of lost sight of what I was writing about. The first draft of the full article was more about "all kind of human experiences in WoW." Fun stuff, but babies had to die. 1/3 of the babies, really.

That's what I have been up to the last week: killing innocent idea babies. The blood was seeping into the keyboard, so I had to get it replaced. Also the touchpad and the main card of my brand new Dell XPS M1210 - the cutest and most powerful laptop I have ever had. I am absolutely certain it was the cruel attacks on the text with axe, spells and swords that shook everything lose inside.

Today I got the text down to less than 8000 words. I feel like a human being again. Tomorrow, after a final proofreading, I'll send it off.

Nordic Media Days

Bergen hosts a very nice and interesting event, an annual series of lectures and presentations which manages to mix the media professions and the media scholars in a very interesting exploration of the field. It's fairly well established, I remember being offered a job as a coordinator way back when I was finishing my masters. It's one of those jobs I regret I never took - instead I finished my University degree. Oh well.

Anyway. This year I will be in Bergen the day before it starts, talking about weblogs at the Bergent Student Union. I am quite exited about that, as the students have managed to find an interesting person for me to meet: VamPus, the Norwegian blogger who dropped her anonymity when she got into a conflict with her then-blog-client-owner (bah, bad word) over the infamous Mohammed caricatures.

So, I tried to figure out what's going on with the media days on the 9th. I check program. Nothing. I check if i can get a day pass, because the prices are stiff and I can't just shake down the department for any whim I want to have satisfied - nope, it's the whole thing or nothing.

There are some lectures there which are worth catching if I can. Arnt Maasø talks about new sound conventions in the age of YouTube. I'd really like to catch that one. Irshad Manji talks about Jihad: holy media strategies, defiitely a hot issue, particularly with the little reminder of the Mohammed Caricatures in the back of my head.

Oh well - I'll gamble that it's possible to buy a day pass at the door - or something. If not I'll look up some friends and hang out in a coffee shop in the area and look intellectually arrogant and talk about how utterly bored I'd be if I had to attend the Nordic Media Days...

Understanding criticism

One of the things we do is to teach our students to be critical, perform criticism. Particularly journalism students are constantly being told they should perform critical journalism.

But what does this mean? From Princeton.edu:
Noun
S: (n) criticism, unfavorable judgment (disapproval expressed by pointing out faults or shortcomings) "the senator received severe criticism from his opponent"
S: (n) criticism, critique (a serious examination and judgment of something) "constructive criticism is always appreciated"
S: (n) criticism, literary criticism (a written evaluation of a work of literature)

Most of the time "criticism" is taken to mean the first thing: unfavourable judgement, pointing out faults.

I think this is one of the greatest mistakes of modern journalism: The understanding of "critical" to mean you have to find something wrong with whatever you are writing about. To be a critical journalist should be to employ the second meaning of the noun: a serious examination.

Today negativity seems to be the main criteria for a good story (unless it's the obligatory feel-good story). If journalists can't warn us of disaster, corruption, lies, danger to our health or what ever, it's not a story. What does this do to our perception of what is important?

First of all it scrambles the big picture. As long as we are only presented with the errors and the flaws, the public has no way to learn about possible strategies for improvement and growth. Only being introduced to options we should not choose makes choice almost impossible, and the result is that rather than searching for the better choice we settle with the lesser of several evils. The better choice is not interesting, as it doesn't offer the option of unfavourable judgement.

At the same time the warnings are important. We should not go without them. But my other problem with modern journalism is the mechanism which makes all news media report on exactly the same issues. This way you don't only get nothing but warnings, you get warned about the exact same thing everywhere. So the options for the public are diminished by the flawed perception of good competitive strategies: beating others at the same game is more important than looking around for some other and more interesting game.

So, I just delivered an unfavourable judgement. A common piece of criticism. How to make this constructive?

I think critical journalism is extremely important, and there's some really good work done out there. We need good gatekeepers and professionals to sort through the masses of information and ask questions about it on our behalf. It's an expremely important profession. I just wish they would put a bit more emphasis on the serious examination part, and a bit less on the unfavourable judgement part. And that they would stop hunting in such huge packs, victims to the blood fog of the deadline and the scoop.

Data mining and marketing

Sara Grimes wrote an excellent piece on this topic in The Escapist: Mining the game.

While I definitely see both the temptation of datamining and it's immediate application value for game design and game research, I can also see the ethical problems with analysing data not originally designed to be analysed in this manner. It's disconnected from the context of whoever submitted it, it is heavily dependent on the skill and mindframe of the analyst (yes, everything is, I think this is just more so), and it is, in some cases, plainly illegal.

I am not saying it is wrong, but it is definitely a way of gathering information which needs to be questioned, discussed and explored methodologically and ethically.

Abuse, media and fame

A controversial issue was raised by the Norwegian artist Marianne Aulie, when she, on the air, named two well known Norwegian males who attempted to drug and rape her 14 years ago.

The men in question can not be charged with anything today, it's too long ago. Marianne Aulie still felt she needed to name them in public. This has met some very aggressive reactions, but the men in question do not wish to press charges.

One of the interesting side issues of this was how the newspapers made a big deal out of the fact that some feminists do not choose to support Aulie's claim that she as a feminist needed to come forwards with her experience. What does that have to do with it? Is being a feminist being part of a club where I have accepted that some people have the right to speak for me? And I mean both sides of the issue in this case: I want to speak for myself, both when it's about sexual abuse, and when it's about what other people should say about sexual abuse. Neither Aulie or "certain feminist editors" have that right.

When that's said - this is a complicated issue. Should she speak or should she not? A Norwegian editor who initially supported Aulie's openness had her name blown up all over Norwegian media to the point that it became too problematic for her to maintain the support. Martine Aurdal had to publically recall her support of the act, and say she regretted saying it was "tøft" or "cool" to speak out.

Marianne Aulie is a hypersexualised artist. She knows her very good looks sells, so she uses it for all it's worth. More power to her. I am sure she can deal with her fan letters admirably, no matter what they contain. But we all have a limit, and too many have a story that was never told.

Aulie's story is about a party where she was too drunk or too drugged. Suddenly she was alone with two men. When she tried to leave by jumping from the fourth floor balcony, they stopped her and got a taxi. The taxi didn't take her home, but to the apartment of one of the men. When he left her alone there for a while, she managed to escape. She was just past 20 years old at the time.

Who wouldn't be troubled after an experience like that, no matter if she was drunk or drugged? Why shouldn't she talk about it now? OK, so she might have chosen the wrong moment, slander is illegal, but so was what she perceived had happened to her. And this kind of thing festers. It may appear to be unproblematic, but suddenly something happens, and everything you think you had supressed blow up in your face. It's a classic pattern.

Marianne Aulie might manipulate the media heavily with her good looks and her dramatic appearance. She might count on the shock value of revealing what happened to her, and she might expect the news to make her work sell better with the publicity. But I don't think these things make her stupid. I think she knew what she did when she named names, I think she knows what she experienced that night, and I don't think it's my (or anyone else's) job to take the decision of pointing fingers away from her.

Perhaps she'll get in worse trouble for it. Perhaps she'll find herself shut out of the artist communities and denied access to the media for having used her fame and access in order to spread slander. Perhaps she'll find that she is now old enough and strong enough to tell, and live with the consequences of what she has experienced and what she has done. I think Marianne Aulie may not be a brilliant tactician, but she has the right to commit her own errors. She is a grown woman, and has the right of her voice.

Blogging in Norwegian

For a while most of my blogging will happen in Norwegian, and it will be at the Women's Day Blog, 0803. It's an initiative by a group of Norwegian female bloggers, and it's a seasonal blogg - only around march 8th, the international women's day. I wouldn't have signed up, as I am shy about forcing my voice into other peoples' spaces, but they asked and I said yes.

I am also a little at loss about women's day blogging. I mean - feminism is still important, more so now than ever, perhaps, as borders open and cultures clash - but I can't get the hang on that straight forwards "female = good, male = bad" thing. I can't help but feel sorry for them. The guys that is. Society isn't really letting them play with a full deck either. OK, so they are consistently dealt more powerful cards, but there's a lot of fun ones they lack. Or have to steal at great cost.

So, anyway, if you want to know what's going on in my head some of the time until march 8th, check 0803.

Lagged - again

Exhausted, jet-lagged and writing.
I have no idea what this will be like. Somebody will read it and wonder what the author was thinking. I can't answer, sorry. It is just happening. Much of my best writing happens like this, when I stop trying to be clever and just dig deep into the forgotten resources of my mind. I am not sure that this is one of those occasions, though. Only the reviewers will know.

Deadline tomorrow. I'll get up at 6 am and finish. Part of me wishes I'd have stayed home. The other part knows I can never work as intensely and intently if I don't go away.
-----------
Done. And I am done. And it is done. Tomorrow I will definitely not write.

New positions for Ph D candidates

The University of Oslo announces up to 20 new positions for Ph D stuents! These are open and not yet tied to any particular topic or part of the University. This means that if you have a great project, you are invited to apply along with everybody else. Some strategic considerations will be made when the projects come up for the final acceptance.

Dance to the music

It's my birthday today, and I am old enough that I really don't care to tell you the exact number. But I know I don't look any younger than I am, I am a woman at my own age, looking it. I have long been forbidden entrance to the stores where women my age can buy clothes more suitable for 14 year olds but in my size, the prohibition enforced by a strict "No, mom!" from kids no longer kids and much taller than me.

But I can still have wonderful birthdays, so this morning I was up real early and cleaned the bathroom and had a shower and did my hair nice and hurried back into bed to pretend to be asleep before the family came to wake me up. They pretended not to notice that I snuck past on the way back from the bathroom, and woke me up with a song. As lovely now as when they were 5 and 3.

Then we had breakfast, and they had set the table and made an omelet and collected a heap of presents. I got lots of silly stuff from my many loving family members, but the one that almost made me cry was a CD I had wanted to buy, but forgotten, and then my husband remembered, my daughter bought it and her girl friend packed it.

It was a memento mori. It was "Dans til musikken", written by a friend from our student days, and performed by different Norwegian artists as a homage - published the same day he died from cancer.

So, on the day celebrating my own my birth and life I danced the morning away with my husband and children, to the music of a dead friend, his music insisting on the dance.

And in China today is the festival of lanterns, a day celebrating freedom from strict regulations, love, matchmaking and, of course, a day with lanterns everywhere. Here in the darkness of February, while the winter holds us firmly in it's cold, dark grip, I like that thought. At the other side of the planet they celebrate my birthday with lights, lanterns, everywhere.

I hope they dance too.

Women in Games

Hilde Corneliussen and I were at this conference in 2005. I suspect it's the event that broke my voice, but that has nothing to do with the topic - unless you count the passion of many of the participants as part of the conference theme.

If you are interested in a different and quite good game conference, I recommend this one, independent of gender.
*********************

Women in Games Conference to be held at the University of Wales, Newport on
19th-21st April 2007

This spring sees the annual Women in Games conference take up residency at
the University of Wales, Newport. You are invited to register for this
unique opportunity to see some of the best voices in the industry talk of
new platforms, players and perspectives in the advent of third generation
hardware releases.

Currently in its fourth year, Women in Games is an annual conference with
the distinct aim of highlighting the most recent, groundbreaking work in
computer game research and development to both academic and industrial
worlds. It has consistently addressed the empowerment and professional
development for women working in, and researching into, games and the games
industry.

Aims of Women in Games
1. Give a voice to women in the games industry.
2. Analyse and monitor the role of women in the games industry.
3. Provide networking opportunities, especially for women developing and
researching games.
4. Support and encourage students, researchers and developers to explore and
redress the game industry's gender imbalance.
5. Disseminate research into games (past, present and future), especially
(but not exclusively) with reference to the experience of women playing,
developing and responding to games and game culture.
6. Disseminate information on the latest technologies and the best design
and development practices.

The University of Wales, Newport event will focus on the various issues
currently circulating in games development, in particular the changing face
of games design and the diversification of forms. Issues of game play;
players, performance and agency are circulating around the markedly
different platforms commercially available to the gamer. Women in Games 2007
seeks to capture this zeitgeist in a series of academic and industrial
panels that profile contemporary issues in development and criticism.

The Women in Games conference is the only conference of it¹s kind in Europe
focused at the issues around women and gaming. The keynotes in 2007 have
been selected to represent a new generation of thinkers working with the
issues at hand.

Further information can be found at http://www.womeningames.com; those
interested in the event should contact conference organiser Emma Westecott
at enquiries@womeningames.com.

http://synergy.newport.ac.uk/
http://artschool.newport.ac.uk

Understanding Digital Games

Jason Rutter's Amazon list is on Understanding Digital Games. His own book is right there on top of the list of course, but he has a nice selection of other books which are helpful tools for students of games. I love these lists made by other scholars, reading them is a little like fishing in WoW - most of the time it's just another fish, but once in a while it's something really special!

Me, the Other

Second Person is out now, and while I havent' seen the book and the pages and my name right there on them, I know it exists.

Somebody keeps trying

Somebody keeps trying to log into my blog. For about a year I have, at irregular intervals, had to change my blog password because "I" have requested a new one. The last week I have had three letters from blogger reminding me that I have now changed to new blogger.

I don't think it's anything special, I think it's somebody who thinks their blogg login name is the same as mine, and so they keep trying. Perhaps they are new to blogging, pick a name - mine is quite common - and try to log on with it. It's still a little uncomfortable. At least, with the new system, there's less of a chance that they get it randomly right, my login no longer has anything to do with my name, and the emails of reminder don't change the password.

Still, it's a little uncomfortable. As if somebody are constantly checking the door of my house, to see if it's locked.

Saying no

This is the season of saying no. Not because I don't want to. Not because I don't care about the things I am being asked to comment on, participate in or help out with. I just have to start protecting myself and my own time. There is too much going on, and I have found my ability to work 18 hour days is limited. Something slips, and I worry about what it may be next. Because I do care. And I keep telling myself that soon I will have things back on track, and I can start saying yes again.

But I find myself envious/angry/bitter as I see opportunities slide by. I have learned to say no, but I haven't learned to accept the neccessity. That is a more advanced class, I guess. Got to practice: being sensible, then being graceful about it.

Axes and consoles

In Trondheim a young man asked, with much righteous indignation, what use we have of 8 million gamers. Can't all that energy be spent in better ways? I didn't answer directly, because I saw it could lead into a lecture far too long for the already overflowing timeframes of the meeting. I just talked about how society is full of surplus activities, and gaming is just one of those.

This is, however, the point. Gaming is a surplus activity, a leisure activity. If you are cold and out in the rain, you want an axe. A carpenter can build a house with an axe, and this is a smart skill to have. But once you have the house, you have the car, you have the fridge filled from the store, you have clothing, you have safety and what you need to maintain this in a reasonable future - once you have this, what are you to do with your axe? Go build another house? This is what we are doing today, filling up the planet with more and more of what is considered "real values", objects originally needed to cover immediate needs are turning into objects of status and pawns in social games.

It is at this point that human society turns to other questions, other challenges and other past-times. We read and write fiction, we listen to music, we sit together and drink and exchange ideas, tell jokes and hang out. We watch movies, we go on vacations, we apply make-up and we knit pretty new gloves. What's the point? Why do we need the leisure time of billions? How many trees could we have cut down in the hours spent watching television? How many fields could we have planted? How many mountains could we have moved? How much medicine could we have produced if we could harness this wasted energy going into watching television and singing in choirs? Playing instruments badly, or growing orchids where they should never grow?

If we could harness this energy which goes into the leisure time, there would be no progress. While progress can be made through hardship and hard work, it also demands a certain level of slack. A society which has no slack may come up with some desperate measures for survival, but at the cost of other things we take for granted, like freedom, democracy, the right to make your own decisions. The moment everything must go into approved production, free choice is lost.

So, what are 8 million gamers good for? Nothing much. Just the same as writers, readers, philosophers, painters, gallery guests, dancers, athletes, sportsfans, filmmakers and cinemavisitors, chefs and gourmets or the fishermen patiently waiting for a fish to bite at the beach in Hudson River. They are here to spend some time doing something other than what is expected of them, to make room for new thoughts, ideas and opinions, to create diversity.

All we really need is an axe, and the skill to use it. The rest is luxury. I approve of such luxury.

Playful Identities

This is a blog I have visited once in a while, but which has developed in surprising (for me) directions. The writer, Michiel de Lange, has been visiting Africa, among other things tracking the movements of cattle herders by GPS - and having quite a few experiences on the way. Fascinating!

Games, movies and dollars

In the name of mythbusting, a little post today about the "games have passed movies" myth.

The exellent Aphra Kerr has written The Business and culture of Digital Games. On page 48 you find an estimate of the value of software and hardware sales in 2003. She estimates software sales to be 18 billion US $ in this year. In 2005 the box office of the American movie industry was 23 billion US $, according to the Motion Picture Association of America.

Now software sales may have gone up between 2003 and 2005, and we may argue that hardware should count, but if we do so, we have to consider other sources of revenue for the movie industry, such as television and video. And how about video/dvd recorders? Are they not hardware, which in that case should be counted?

I don't think this is a big deal, an 18 billion dollar industry is nothing to trifle with, and deserves to be taken seriously. But it's perhaps time to take note of this claim as a prophecy, strategy, or just plain wishful thinking, for a few more years, until we can decide on comparable variables and put the numbers on the table.

Of course, if somebody have better numbers than what I have found so far, I am happy to learn about it. Would be fun if it was true!

New Blogger

And I finally caved and shifted to New Blogger. I am biting my nails hoping it works out well. Really. But that means I have categories. I have been thinking that perhaps I'd like those, now I just have to put the tags in. Metadata. Very important.

Women and golf

An interesting detour on a day when I suddenly find myself free to write and I really enjoy writing and I am having a great time and I just need to check a reference and I didn't find it but I found an article about women in golf clubs and damn, that had nothing to do with it, but was interesting, because golf is a game too and women golfers are women gamers and what this study tells us sounds all too familiar.

Enjoy.

Boys will be boys...

In one of the large Norwegian newspapers there was recently an article about game addiction, and how Norwegian hospitals are now treating young people who can't deal with their game addiction. They describe gaming and the feeling of mastery that you get from games as a high, comparable with using drugs or alcohol.

Yes, games are designed to give a feeling of control and mastery. We all like it. It's what drives research, athletes, artists. It's what gives us reliable, competent people in all kind of positions. It's not a bad thing.

The problem appears when a game is the only place where a human being can feel like they do anything good, where they have any kind of self-worth and are important to others.

Recently (but long before WoW) the performance of boys has dropped dramatically in schools not only in Norway, but all over the western world. Girls outperform them in many ways, mastering the education system, taking control of their futures. The educational systems have been adjusted to foster this, and it has been successful. Girls get better grades, girls continue for higher education. So far the professors are still men, but if nothing happens the gender gap will soon go the other way, as girls master the system of education, and boys fall by the side.

Education is the most important thing a person does from they are 6 years old until they are 25. If they can't perform well in this field, they are failures. Failures in the eyes of family, friends and the society in general. They know they will never get the job they want, they know a million little decisions are taken away from them.

I think this is very, very wrong.

People are individuals. Not all are cut out for 19 years of school, and they shouldn't be. There are so many other types of tasks, tasks which ask for other skills than the ability to control your physical and mental urges for hours and hours, while paying attention and processing information you are being fed. The society needs to change, to aknowledge the importance of all tasks which keeps the world moving towards a balanced and sustainable future. While we need a big stack of researchers and we need them NOW, that doesn't mean we don't need the other potential in a population. Knowing things are going down the drain isn't enough, if nobody can actually do the work to get us out of that sewer.

As for the boys? They shouldn't need to play WoW to feel appreciated. They shouldn't need to be a brilliant warlock in order to feel they have something they can actually be good at. Being young is hard, and society doesn't make it easier through rewarding only some types of expertize, while severely punishing the pursuit of many different interests. When I was in high-school, these boys skipped class to work the boats (work farms, do other types of unskilled seasonal labour which still existed and was still available to youngsters), trumping their lack of success at school with the thick wad of cash in their pockets. What is there for the 16 year old who needs to feel he does something that matters? Robots stole his job. Then we designed mobs to keep him occupied and off the streets.

The irony is overwhelming.

Talking in Trondheim

Tomorrow I will be talking at Samfundet, one of the older student societies in Norway.

What else? I am still alive, things are happening, and The Burning Crusade is eating it's chunk of energy, energy which is hard to come by at this time of the year. In a few weeks I am going to New York for three weeks, hiding to write again, more desperate than ever, I am writing on the paper for DAC 2007 in Perth, but didn't manage to meet the deadline for the AOIR conference in Canada. Or at least I thought so until I just checked. heh, still have six days, and I have a stack of things I am working on which can be used. There's still hope...

Ph D Comics

By way of Anne Galloway's wonderful blog, I got a reminder of a site I used to read - until I finished my Ph D and didn't have that type of frustration any more. Going back was entertaining though, and looking at old archives I found this interesting field journal from a tour to meet other Ph D students. What can I say but: I'd like to meet James!

Unasked questions

After the launch of TBC, I am pretty done with answering the same questions for the nth time. That's why I am writing this post. It's a public service announcement for people who don't know what to ask about games.

List of questions: Will be updated when needed.

• Are all computer games the same?
  
• Are all gamers the same?
  
• What cultural genre is the most common reference for games?
  
• Why is that?
  
• Why is it so common to have a conflict in a game?
  
• How do games entertain?
  
• What skills are needed to create computer games?
  
• What industries are threatened by the growing game industry?
  
• What changes in the current media structure are games a part of?
  
• How does social interaction take place in games?
  
• How are games social objects?
  
• How can games challenge/confirm current social structures?
  
• What kind of people make games?
  
• Who do they make the games for?
  
• How can you argue that digital games is a new art form?
  
• Will games become more important than books?
  
• (One stolen from Mark Bernstein) What can games teach us about the human condition?

These are just some suggestions. If any readers have more suggestions, feel free to add in comments.
Warning: If you suggest anything to do with violence, addiction or in other ways related to the game media panic, I am not publishing your comment. Those questions most people manage to ask all on their own, and this is an attempt to think of something different. Doesn't have to be new, just not more of the same.

Research I'd like to see

Now there's a loooong list of this, but after a morning of "Will the Burning Crusade ruin our children and youths" I would love to see this project:

Find a group of 30 year olds. Random selection method of their choice. Interview them about their main interests between the age of 12-18. That will be from 1989 - 1995. What did they use the most time on? How much time did they use on their homework? How were their grades in this period?

Look at their position in society today, how are they doing?

The different types of media have been around for long enough that we can know if youth and children are ruined by their media consumption. Why not check from this end, rather than speculate from the other end?

And yes, lots of methodological traps here. Got to be a very good sociologist to pull this one off well.

Italy in January?

If so, here's a game conference for you (Yes, I really wish I could just pack up and go. I need a rich benefactor):

THE PHILOSOPHY OF COMPUTER GAMES
An Interdiciplinary Conference

The conference "The Philosophy of Computer Games" will be held in Reggio
Emilia, Italy 25-27 January 2007. The purpose of the conference is to
initiate an investigation into philosophical issues that is relevant to
current research on computer games.

Registration can be made by sending an e-mail to
olav.asheim@ifikk.uio.no. There is no conference fee.

game.unimore.it
www.hf.uio.no/ifikk/
fps.no/gameconference.html

They asked a new question!

NRK P2 kulturnytt (08.05 - 08.30) woke me up this morning to ask about World of Warcraft and The Burning Crusade - it's a sufficiently big event that the more serious channels have noticed it. and you know what? They asked a new question! Rather than the usual "do people get addicted, is it dangerous" (yes, I am taking the question seriously, but answering it well doesn't fit in any of the news formats I have been subjected to so far!) they asked about the cultural background of WoW, and it's connection to Tolkien.

Now, I could have said a lot about WoW and the fantasy and science fiction genre (there's a big fat thesis there), for instance C'thun telepathically sending prophecies of tragedy, betrayal and failure to individual players while playing in the Silithus raid instances - call of Cthulu, anyone? And if that wasn't a sufficiently clear link to Lovecraft, the Dranei are tentacled, huge and come from outer space. If you have read your Lovecraft, you'll assume they are not as friendly as the Alliance might think - but at least they won't be great pals with Cthun:

In At the Mountains of Madness, for example, the Old Ones are a species of extraterrestrials, also known as Elder Things, who were at war with Cthulhu and his relatives or allies. Human explorers in Antarctica discover an ancient city of the Elder Things and puzzle out a history from sculptural records.(wikipedia)

Anyway... no time to talk about this in 30 seconds on radio, but at least I got to make connections to the wider literary, cultural and mythic universe WoW draws in, and I am ridiculously happy about it.

Pathetic, isn't it, when the high-point of the day is when a journalist thinks of a new question?

Update: just remembered - this is where I learned that NRK has a gamedesk! Googling it and searching at NRK.no so far only gets me hits not related to their desk: a group of gamers congratulating one of their own, Roar Halten, with landing a job there, and an interview where the same man is among those interviewed.

Luca is done!

And I think he's happy! See him dance with joy in the video to thank the people who helped him.

More on what women should do

The same journalist who wrote about how women are responsible for not getting raped, is now overwhelmed by the responses to her article, the comment field to it is closed and she needs to explain what she really said.

Problem is - it's not really getting any better.

Rather than agreeing that yes, it might have been badly written, what she meant to say that was of course, you are not guilty of your own rape even if you happen to walk home from a party and be drunk and wear a short skirt and high heels, she keeps on talking about responsibility, and women's responsibility to be careful. As if we don't know we have to look out?

Statistics shows that women are not more often victims of violence than men. Actually, it's pretty much 50/50. The difference is that women are a lot more afraid of violence than men are. We are already scared into submission - the girl who happens to be walking home at night isn't a common sight.

Anyway, once she has done a pretty good job saying that of course women can't be blamed, I am just saying "be careful", the editor does something really interesting.

De som i feminismens navn fraråder kvinner å selv ta et ansvar for ikke å bli utsatt for voldtekt, gjør kvinner en bjørnetjeneste. Det er voldtektsmenns eksistens som fratar kvinner friheten, ikke restriksjonene kvinner legger på seg selv for å unngå å bli voldtatt.

She claims the feminists are telling women not to take responsibility.

Feminists have taught women self defence, been promoting comfortable shoes easy to run away in, made it clear that being a woman isn's something that needs to be advertised through make-up and provocating dress, built shelters for abused women, worked for the rights of rape victims - the list of what has been done in the name of feminism to support and promote responsible behaviour by women is long! The editor has the right to get education, hold a job, own property, wear pants and vote because of feminists and feminism. Attacking feminists by claiming they - we (I am a feminist in this!) - are telling women to act stupidly is just ridiculous. No feminist I know of has ever said a woman should refuse to take the responsibility for her own life. Perhaps some feminists have refused to judge when others have displayed "unacceptable" behaviour. Being non-judgemental is, I hope, not something special for feminists.

Women and rape

Checking in on one of my favourite angry Norwegian women blogs, I found a post I really want to support. It's about an article in a newspaper, and about women, rape and responsibility. Lots of citations and links in Norwegian here, sorry about that. I am pretty sure there are equivalents in all languages.

Drusilla is really upset that a female journalist says that women need to look out so they don't get raped:

Det største ansvaret for å unngå å bli voldtatt på gaten må dessverre kvinner selv ta. Det kan synes urettferdig og opprørende. Men de mest effektive forebyggende tiltak mot overfallsvoldtekter er det de potensielle ofrene selv som kan sørge for. For det handler om å la være å gå alene gjennom byen nattetid. Om å bruke penger på drosje hjem, om å sørge for å få følge med noen, eller om å gå hjem tidlig nok til at det ennå er folkeliv i gatene. Den som vil være mest mulig sikker på å unngå å bli voldtatt av en ukjent, rår selv over de mest effektive tiltakene.

It basically says: Don't be alone outdoors at night. Get somebody to walk you home, take a taxi or go home early.

The interesting thing about this statement in my opinion is what the journalist writes just before that statement:

Slike overfallsvoldtekter med helt ukjente gjerningsmenn er utypiske og sjeldne. Det er blant mannlige bekjente og festdeltagere de fleste potensielle voldtektsforbrytere befinner seg. De aller fleste voldtekter og voldtektsforsøk utføres av en mann kvinnen kjenner, eller som de på forhånd har vært sammen med på nachspiel eller et utested. Men statistikken er en fattig trøst når man hører mannsskritt nærme seg i en stille gate på sen kveldstid. Kvinner som har opplevd slike voldtekter eller voldtektsforsøk, merkes for livet. Og for svært mange kvinner er selve frykten for at de skal bli offer en stor plage.

This is a reference to statistics that shows how rapes by strangers is uncommon, and that most rapes are normally committed by male friends, aquaintances, fellow party guests or others it would be natural to turn to to be walked home.

So according to this journalist, women's options are: be raped by somebody you know, or by a total stranger.

I want the nights back.

Games science

Here's one answer to my own question some days ago, a link into the world of German game studies. They call their journal nothing less than games science, and I am happy to see it and curious about what hides behind the title. Finally a good reason to work on my German skills, sorely neglected for years. They haven't published any articles yet, though, but they have some links to game research resources in Germany. They also have a game research navigator, where they have positioned gamestudy works according to how they interpret the connection to the wider field of critical analysis. Interesting, even if I know I could argue for a while why I don't like this map, and prefer to make my own. But that's what happens when new voices are added, and it's a good thing!

For those who prefer their reading in English, Anna sent me to Alexander Knorr's blog.

The headmaster's blog

Looking for something totally unrelated, I found that at Stockholm Institute of Education the headmaster has a blog. She uses it to discuss relevant issues of educational politics. Neat, huh?

Games, violence and faith

As promised, a look at the Journal of Adolescence, Volume 27, Issue 1, and the articles on games and adolescents.

This issue of the journal is dedicated to adolescent video game playing, special issue editors are Craig A. Anderson and Jeanne B. Funk. They have sent out a call for papers and had what looks like a very serious stack of responses. I can't fault the methodology of the researchers, they have all their variables and koeffisients in place. But I am still not convinced that video games are dangerous and make youths more aggressive. But let's look at an article.

"The effects of violent video game habits on adolescent hostility, aggressive behaviors and school performance." by Gentile, Lynch, Linder and Walsh (2004)

The clearest finding in this article was that if kids spend a lot of their free time playing computer games, and this free time is significantly larger than the time they spend doing homework, their grades suffer. Also, if the kids use the computers for homework, not playing, they get better grades. Further on, they discovered that kids who play a lot of computer games argue more with teachers and with their parents. They also found that kids, particularly boys, prefer violent content in the games. From this they concluded that violent games make kids argue with parents and teachers. This makes me ask: How about this hypothesis from this material: Children who play a lot of games don't do their homework. Children who don't do their homework argue with their teachers and their parents.

I think it's significant that the article does not even consider that the childrens' lack of homework might lead to confrontations without any computer games involved. I also think it's significant that they ask specifically for "violence" in the games (what do you prefer), and not for "action". In games the faster-paced, actionfilled games often have a high amount of hostile acts, as that is a good way to express danger, risk and winning or losing. There are however games which are not confrontational in the way of battles (racing and sports games), but are still action filled. But if you ask a 8-9th grader to rate a game from 1-7 on a scale (Likert) of violence, the pupil will not say: But I like a racing game, and that's action filled, not violent. The kid will remember the spectacular crashes and the fires and the speed and the competition, and will put it at a fairly high "violence" rating.

What they did find was the same as has been found in all studies of media violence: Parental control - as in parents actually checking to see what the kids are doing, taking an interest and assisting in the management of their time, leads to less confrontations in general, and better adjusted kids. In the days of video tapes it meant not to use the video as a baby sitter, in the days of computers it means not using the computer as a baby sitter. But the article does not consider that it confirms this decade-old truth - actually, probably older: If you care about what your children are up to, they adjust better and are happier and more functional.

An interesting piece of information came up in this article: Video games are officially dangerous.

Indeed, the American Psychological Association, the American Academy of Pedriatics, the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, and the American Medical Association recently issued a joint statement that there is a "causal connection" between media violence and aggressive behavior, but that it is a complex effect (AAP, APA, AACAP, & AMA, 2000).

The article uses this as an argument for saying that games are dangerous. If all these American associations with long and impressive names say media violence is dangerous, then it has to be dangerous.

What I always miss in these articles is a touch of sceptisism. If the connection is a complex effect, why are the studies so simplistic? Why have nobody explored WHAT the adolescents react so positively to, when adult limits and adult interest gives such a good response on violent behaviour? According to the simplistic logic of exposure to media, children in extremely poor neighbourhoods or less developed countries should be peaceful and friendly, and not express hostility of any kind. Can it be that lower aggression, less confrontations and better grades connect in a positive manner with the amount of interest the significant adults take in the children in question? I know it's daring, but look at the adults who are in touch with kids, be it their parents, relatives, neighbours, teachers, coaches - can it be that their interest, feedback and behaviour has a large impact on adolescents, no matter what the topic of interest is?

Well, that's one article out of 8. Some of the others are better, and connect better to other research and other discussions, some even exercize a critical view on their methodology. I'll be back.

Let's Play!

AOIR's conference in Vancouver is named "let's play", and is of course pretty irresistible to me! Deadline for submissions of abstracts is February 1st 2007, and I am almost in tears, trying to figure out how to get time for all the writing which has to happen NOW - and this too. But I would love to go here, and it would be a nice compliment to DAC 2007 in Perth - one at each side of Equator.

I'll just have to get going on the idea production.

New Year!

All the best wishes for the new year to you all.

This new year looks pretty much like the old one. It's raining, although there's a film of sleet on the lawn. Weather has been dreary this "winter". At least: we can't complain about not getting enough rain. Oddly enough, the prices on water-powered electricity keeps going up, and it's cheaper to heat the house with oil - which reached 60$ a barrel this morning. I remember when I thought it was a good thing for the Norwegian economy that the price passed 20$. That was before the invasion in Iraq.

This is going to be a year of changes for me, both physically and professionally. Also socially, as my son (my little one, who is about 25 cm taller than me) will most likely be leaving for more education/the military, and us old folks will be just a couple again. Time is catching up on us fast. Economic changes too: This is the last year of paying on my student loan! I can hardly believe it, in two more payments I am done paying for my time at the University. My brain will belong to myself once more!

I think it's going to be an interesting year, hopefully not in the chinese curse manner of interesting.

Tagged! - 5 things

I am not such a great fan of these chain-mail-type games (unless they involve sword and sorcery), but I am a great fan of Luca Rossi, so when he tagged me, I will play along.

Five things you didn't know about me
1) I used to be great at maths, physics, chemistry and biology. All straight A's, and I planned to become a veterinarian. At High school I picked the science classes, full load of all the hard sciences - and then I got a maths teacher who really didn't make things easier for the class. I managed to keep a fair grade in chemistry and biology, passed physics, but maths went really wrong. I went from A to fail in three years of intense struggle to understand what was going on up at that blackboard. I managed to pass a few months late after tuition from a great person I met at the next school. Petter Stigar, THANKS!

2) When I daydream, I am a dancer, or an acrobat. I can make my body leap and fly in my head.

3) I have a set of handpainted china plates that I painted myself.

4) I made a comic strip with a penguin who wanted to fly when I was 19. It was published in a school paper. (25 years later one of the students at our college made an animated movie over the same topic. Same topic, same kind of bird, very different way of getting there.)

5) I have written two books which I have never, and probably never will, publish. One it's pretty sure is gone for ever, because it was stolen with my laptop in 2005. The other is a joint project with my kids, and perhaps I'll revise it when the grandkids are the right age. I don't think it's a great loss to the world if I never become a literary author, though.

.........

OK, that was five things about me that nobody knows. Who to challenge next?

I think I go for Hilde, Jill and thomas

Go go go!

And yes, you all know I am evil enough to tag you, which is why I didn't count that into the five things you never knew...

German game studies?

I have this impression that German game studies is mainly hard-data sociology. This may be an error of mine, from a traumatic experience at a conference in New York a couple of years ago, but when I look for computer game studies in Germany I don't find it. This is probably due to my bad German skills, it's hard to find the right keyword in a language I write badly. So please, dear knowledgeable and skilled readers: what do you know about German game studies? Can you please tell me?

Game Studies for Christmas!

Just in time for your holiday reading: Game Studies 2006 is out! Rejoice, hark, the angels sing etc - we of the editors team are delighted, you have no idea how much. Now, enjoy!

"We were wrong"

That's not really what they said, the Norwegian television company TV2, but I just saw something I rarely see: a news provider spending valuable space on admitting to unethical behaviour.

PFU is the Norwegian press (which means all news media) board for ethics and professional integrity in journalism. They have no real power, but their power is in the threat about what can happen if the Norwegian press stops listening to them. There is not a lot of legislation in Norway really regulating the content of the media, except what counts for everybody about slander. In order to keep this kind of legislation unnecessary, the press censors themselves, through such boards as PFU.

Recently TV2 and Nettavisen lost against a complaint to PFU. Perhaps not the kind of case I really worry about, producers of diet pills are not my idea of a sympathetic victim, but still... they deserve fair and honest coverage in the media as much as anybody else.

Putting in a news item in a net paper doesn't cost much, but TV2 had a poster (EXTREMELY dull looking) with the text stating that PFU is of the opinion that TV2 and the net paper did not follow good news procedures when they indicated that the death of the mother of an anonymous source was caused by the diet pill in question in best commercial time. That one must have cost them, even if the voice reading the statement from PFU and the poster was about as dull as it gets.

Things to count

Bjarte Arneson counts the men he has met since his birth. At the moment there are 1350 persons on his list.

Ginger Cookies

On request, my ginger cookie batter. Note: This is not a low-glycemic cookie, quite the contrary, and I don’t eat these any more. The family members who don’t have messed up metabolisms are happily chewing away, although we normally reduce this amount by at least 50%. This makes a LOT of cookies.

Christmas ginger cookies
About 250 cookies

300g butter
5 deciliters (400grams) sugar
1 dl syrup or molasses
2 tablespoons ginger
2 tablespoons cinnamon
2 tablespoons cloves
1 tablespoon cardamom
2 deciliters water
1 tablespoon “natron” (NaHCO3 ) also known as baking soda
1,6 liters (ca 800 grams) fine wheat flour

Stove temperature: 200 degrees Celcius
Baking time: 5 minutes

Mix butter, sugar and syrup intil it’s soft. Add water, spices and baking soda and work the flour in well. Let the batter rest somewhere cool at least 12 hours or 1-2 days under some kind of wrapping. Use a rolling pin and make the dough into thin sheets, use flour to keep it from sticking. With cookie cutters, make cookies of different sizes and shapes and transfer them carefully to baking sheets.

Bake the cookies for 5 minutes at 200 degrees Celsius, and cool them on the sheet. Decorate with icing.

Icing
2 deciliters powder sugar
½ eggwhite
Some drops of vinegar

Mix all ingredients until smooth and shiny. Make a cone out of paper and fill with icing, use this to decorate the cooled cookies. Have fun!

Touching the past

I started working at Volda College 15 years ago, when the study of public information and public relations was newly formed as a two-year study. To the green new employee was given the task of kicking it off - basically I was given the keys to my office, a room and a bunch of students. Nobody bothered to give me the carefully developed curriculum and reading list until I had been asking for it for three months... By then I had done all the work for the first semester from scratch, too inexperienced to realise that I should not have had to work like that, and that I should have asked more often, louder, and from more people for the information which was lacking.

Today I have been revisiting the one, great thing about those first years in Volda. I love all my students, but can there ever be another group like the first? A handbook with pictures and names, and google, and I have spent the afternoon tracking them slowly through publications and jobs, to send them emails with greetings in the hope that yes, that's the right person.

I am doing this for two reasons: I am generally curious about where they all are now, what do they do, how did they use the knowledge we tried to share with them? But I would also like to use their knowledge about the information profession and the education in order to create a better, stronger and more updated education. And a third reason, which is the one the PR department at the college loves - I want to show them off to new students: "Look, these were my students once! Now they are there - and there - and there."

An afternoon with Google shows me I can do this, safely. I am feeling all warm and fuzzy with pride. And I have only gotten through the first two years. I am going to enjoy this!

Henry Jenkins and the bloggers

He has gotten himself an official blog, so he doesn't need to ask Elin for help to talk to bloggers any more. But Henry Jenkins today uses the authorial power of an established and well-respected scholar to frame history correctly.

The article is no longer at the end of the link, but if you want to read it - well, you got to buy the book: Fans, Bloggers and Gamers. Here Jenkins repeats the story about the editor making an unfortunate analogy calling the bloggers "cockroaches", and how he had the editor do something to his article which has since been dubbed "Doing a Dave" - changing the content after it has been blogged, hence making a lot of very angry and outspoken bloggers look stupid.

In the introduction Henry Jenkins claims that the bloggers never got past the "cockroach" phrase to understand what he was saying. However, this is from his article: "Once this column appears, my authorial control ends and theirs begin." First - if it really was the editor who wrote that unfortunate intro (and editors can be blamed for any number of things , several which are true), Jenkins' control ended long before the column was online. Second - the bloggers understood that perfectly. No need to tell them - it's why they reacted. Third - by changing the column it was clear that Jenkins' authorial control DID NOT end once the article was online. "Doing a Dave" took authorial control away from the bloggers and placed it firmly in the hands of the man with the advantage.

And while we're talking about framing... Henry Jenkins may have asked the blogging community to "blog this", but that's not why they responded. The "pretentious ass" he claims he may be called by bloggers is not deserved for his more well-considered scholarly writing, but for sentences like this: '"Blog this" I said, and not unexpectedly, the blogging community followed the instructions.' What redeems his framing of the incident is the next sentence: 'I simply wasn't prepared for the consequences.'

Water under the bridge 5 years ago, old stuff, yada yada, but I am still happy there is a reprint of Jenkins' "Blog this" article now that the links are no longer correct. Sadly Jill and I can't change the reference in our article, as it's in print and not online, but it should be Jenkins, Henry (2006): "Blog This!", in Fans, Bloggers and gamers, Ecploring Participatory Culture, New York University Press, New York, p. 178-181.

Christmas?

I haven't even thought about it. But today I realised that I have gotten the plans for next semester off earlier than at any other time, I have a small stack only of papers to read still, and I have my daughter home to help with baking and cleaning. I can go home and make plans and expect to be able to follow them up!

Oh joy!

I may get into that Christmas thing for real this year!

Yahrrrrr!

I am one-eyed for three days, due to an upcoming eye check. A stylish white band-aid covers the left eye, and I am muddling through with one ye.

I had no idea how much I relied on that left eye. I also didn't know my right eye had become this nearsighted, as the left has compensated. After an hour I have a headache, and the right eye is tearing from the strain. 10 minutes online is more than enough already. I guess reading, writing, surfing and gaming is pretty much out of the question until Tuesday. See you all then!

Update: For those who were worried - eyes are fine, really, it was just an test in order to see how much they need to adjust my eyesight in order to make the eyes cooperate without prisms in the glasses. I am going to have an operation to adjust the muscles around the eye some time in March -07. After that I might be able to wear lenses! I am trying to imagine my face without glasses, and it's scary. But until then life goes on as usual, which is pretty good, although I found it was easier to read books and papers with only one eye! Everything else was pretty frustrating though. Suddenly getting a blind side was quite stressful.

Theory? Huh?

I am currently reading student papers, preparing for oral assessments tomorrow and Friday. Before I meet my students, I want to give them (and not just the ones who are to face me, but all students writing papers all over the world) a free tip which may make paper writing in academia easier.

Figure out what "Theory" means.

Here are some free definitions:
Worldreference.com
wordnet.princeton.edu

A bit more challenging:
Jonathan Culler, What is Theory, chapter one in his book Literary Theory, a very short introduction.

The Wikipedias don't entirely agree:
Wikipedia has a long and quite informative article about it, discussing the meaning of "theory" in different contexts.

This is opposed to the Norwegian Wikipedia article, where theory is presented as applicable to the natural sciences only.

Nick Yee on Addiction

Thank you Nick Yee, for this very thoughtful article on gaming addiction! There is still a lot more to the discussion and why it exists at all, but this is one of the most consistent treatments of this topic I have seen so far.

And thank you Jill, for emailing the link while I am up to my ears in reading student papers, unable to look out in the wide world without help!

Norwegian media statistics

Another couple of useful links, this mostly for Norwegian language users. The media use reports by the Norwegian statistical office, and a long list of European sites with an emphasis on Scandinavian by Nordicom/Norway.

And while we're at it: The Eurobarometer, a test which keeps being repeated - the quality of the questions has been discussed, but they are the same in all ov europe, and have been repeated at intervals for 20 years.

Machinima

Machinima is movie making through games, and if you want to see what that can look like, have a look at machinima.com, where you can pick your favourite game for a scene for all kinds of adventures.