Mark Deuze is a charming person, but his message to journalists is not exactly ego-boosting: don’t take yourself too seriously, he told us during the neo-journalism conference in Brussels, Belgium. Deuze has been an Associate Professor at the Indiana University’s Department of Telecommunications in Bloomington (United States) since 2006. Until… Continue reading
“No doubt, it’s going to be an important tool for hobbyists and designers, and for assorted applications here and there, but Wired wants to convince us it’s going to be more than that. ” There, Wagner James Au, the virtual worlds expert and New World Notes blogger, said it: he’s… Continue reading
“Bloomfield is working on a platform, called the Synthetic Economy Research Environment, that could enable economists to produce games that simulate large-scale economic phenomenon like a central bank.” I often wondered whether professor Robert Bloomfield (Johnson School of Management at Cornell University) was still involved in virtual worlds research. He… Continue reading
Another book by Cory Doctorow – and I’m still busy reading Makers! Stefan Raets discusses the Doctorow’s Youthful Techno-Defiance Trilogy: ‘From Little Brother (tech-savvy teenagers take on a government-run surveillance system) to For the Win (tech-savvy teenagers take on unfair working conditions for MMORPG gold farmers) to now Pirate Cinema… Continue reading
I just learned a new concept, ‘neo-journalism’. There’s a conference about the theme in Brussels, Belgium, organized by the University of Louvain (UCL) and the University of Namur (FUNDP). So what is neo-journalism (there is also neo-television. Well, it’s about time – we could talk already about neo-online journalism and… Continue reading
“What do self-piloting helicopters have to do with the growing movement to transform education online? A day spent with Mr. Ng here at Coursera’s offices, with the aim of getting a sense of the company’s culture and the ideas that make up its DNA, helped answer that question. It turns… Continue reading
While working at the Peeragogy Handbook I’m having some discussions about the business models of xMOOCs, the Massive Open Online Courses on platforms such as Coursera, Udacity and edX. The xMOOCs are, for now, free. The building of the courses is rather expensive – so what’s the return? Also, just… Continue reading
” “Commons-Based Peer Productionâ€. It’s a revolution in how things are made, by whom, and in what quantities. In some ways, the future looks a lot like the past. These blacksmiths are making a local solution to a local problem. And we’re going to be seeing a lot more of… Continue reading
On November 30 and December 1 the conference “MetaMeets 2012. The Art of Creation : Virtuality meets Reality†takes place (‘s-Hertogenbosch,The Netherlands). MetaMeets is a seminar/meeting about virtual worlds, augmented reality and 3D internet, this year’s topic will be The Art of Creation : Virtuality meets Reality. Virtual worlds and… Continue reading
In an open ended, user-generated virtual environment, you get that exciting feeling that you can build your own world. You just start creating objects and scripting them, following the tutorials and getting help from community members. It’s a kind of ‘makers ethos’ which increasingly permeates the ‘real world’. Of course,… Continue reading