Open Transcripts

Fan is a Tool-Using Animal

presented by Maciej Cegłowski

I’m here by way of atonement, because I used to be a real jerk about fandom, and I used to make fun of them, and think they were wasting their time. And then I had this kinda life-changing come-to-Jesus moment that I want to talk to you about and this really weird artifact that got produced partly because of me, and it’s completely changed my thinking. And as I’ve gotten to know fandom and really like them, I’ve come to believe that they kind of represent a future and a model for what communities are like on the Internet when you have actual people using machines to talk to one another rather than this kind of invented sense of what social life and social networks are supposed to be like, the way we’ve engineered them.

Strange Bedfellows: Digital Humanities, Internet Art, and the Weird Internet

presented by Darius Kazemi

I’m here at MITH today, and I wanted to talk a little bit about digital humanities from my position as an interested outsider. I’ve always kept a finger in academia, at first through game studies and people studying video games, and more recently through electronic literature and those fields. I’m not going to go into a “what is it?” debate because I know everyone who’s in digital humanities is very tired of those, but we know when we see it, right?

Seeing Eternity in a Daffodil: Making Robots, Making Life

presented by Genevieve Bell

In this talk I want to suggest that it’s never quite as simple as to say there is technology and there is art. That there is technology and there is culture. Clearly these things have always been in dialogue and are still. So this means this is a story about art and technology.

Anthropocene, Capitalocene, Chthulucene: Staying with the Trouble

presented by Donna Haraway

I’m going to propose to us that the Cthulucene might be a way to collect up the questions for naming the epoch, for naming what is happening in the airs, waters, and places, in the rocks, and oceans, and atmospheres. Perhaps needing both the Anthropocene and the Capitalocene, but perhaps offering something else, something just maybe more livable.

Rise of the Diary Game

presented by Caelyn Sandel

Diary games aren’t generally fun. This is part of why in a commercial market, you’re not necessarily going to see them. In fact, they’re very rarely fun at all. Some are. But usually that’s because of a person getting into it, getting into the mechanics, etc. But many are actively unpleasant to play, even some of the more fun ones.

The Neil Gaiman 2008 Julius Schwartz Lecture at MIT

presented by Henry Jenkins, Neil Gaiman

What is genre? I think it’s probably a set of assumptions, and it’s a loose contract between a creator and an audience. But for most of you, genre is something that tells you where to look in a book shop or a video store.

Slow Rebellion

presented by Erin McKean

If we think that the rebellion changes the world, does it really matter what the time scale is? It doesn’t have to be an overnight overthrow. It can be the steady remaking of the world through pure force of conviction, like water wearing away stone. We have slow food, we have slow fashion, why can’t we have slow rebellion?

How to Social Engineer Your Child through Minecraft

presented by Marie Gilot

Today I want to talk to you about how you too can social engineer your child through Minecraft. First off, this is not a presentation for any kind of parents. There are some parents that are not going to be interested in this, for instance if you want your child to be happy and you’re fine with that.

The “Essence of Sandwichness,” Including the Official New York Definition of a Sandwich

presented by Noah Veltman

I love reading government memos because the world is an unclassifiable place, but the people that write these memos have to try to classify it anyway, and the results get weird. You get these classification oddities, these regulatory platypuses.

p5js Diversity & FLOSS Panel Q&A

presented by Casey Reas, Chandler McWilliams, Golan Levin, Johanna Hedva, Maya Man, Phoenix Perry, Sara Hendren, Stephanie Migdalia Pi Herrera, Taeyoon Choi

Sara Hendren: One proactive thing we do with students at Olin in their first year on team collaborative projects is we have them identify and separate the team’s goals from their individual learning goals.