By Paul Ford
After I wrote the piece one level up, on SimCity and Narrative, I did some keyword searches on Google and found the following
essays, which I will read when I have a bit of time, learning as I go how my ideas are unoriginal, lame, and long-ago-disproven.
The fun of weak scholarship!
Jorn Barger on Simulation
Chris Crawford on Narrative Synthesis.
Ted Friedman, in "Making Sense of Software: Computer Games and Interactive Textuality".
Jerome McGann (a true hero of criticism!) and Johanna Drucker (who's a very well-known expert in artist's books), now teamed
up like a super-hero academic crime-fighting team, in THE IVANHOE GAME, which must be read to be believed, as it is so cool, so cool, it is tearfulmaking cool, and it has a title like an episode
of Columbo, which makes it even cooler, and makes me sad I didn't go to grad school...terror strikes at the University of Virginia when 3 co-eds are found dead with carefully typeset and hand-printed notes pinned
to their jackets - and the only answer to the killer's identity comes from playing The Ivanhoe Game. Jerome McGann and Johanna Drucker team up for the first time since their appearance in The Cage of Ezra Pound, working together as textual critics who must battle endless departmental meetings, fight with suspicious deans, and race
time to apply their uncanny typographic-analysis skills to decode the final mysteries of The Ivanhoe Game...before another murder can occur.
Julian Kücklich's In Search of the Lost Text: Literary Theory and Computer Games.
David Glassborow and Masoud Yazdani's A Methodology for Producing Simulation-type Computer Games.
Brad Cox's Social Construction of Reality .
Michele Knobel's CRITICAL LITERACY AND NEW TECHNOLOGIES.
PEEK
Ftrain.com is the website of Paul Ford and his pseudonyms. It is showing its age. I'm rewriting the code but it's taking some
time.
FACEBOOK
There is a Facebook group.
TWITTER
You will regret following me on Twitter here.
EMAIL
About the author: I've been running this website from 1997. For a living I write stories and essays, program computers, edit
things, and help people launch online publications. (LinkedIn). I wrote a novel. I was an editor at Harper's Magazine for five years; then I was a Contributing Editor; now I am a free agent. I was also on NPR's All Things Considered for a while. I still write for The Morning News, and some other places.
If you have any questions for me, I am very accessible by email. You can email me at ford@ftrain.com and ask me things and I will try to answer. Especially if you want to clarify something or write something critical. I am
glad to clarify things so that you can disagree more effectively.
People I appear, unintentionally, to be ripping off
POKE
Syndicate: RSS1.0, RSS2.0
Links: RSS1.0, RSS2.0
Contact
© 1974-2011 Paul Ford
Recent
@20, by Paul Ford.
Not any kind of eulogy, thanks. And no header image, either.
(October 15)
Recent Offsite Work: Code and Prose.
As a hobby I write.
(January 14)
Rotary Dial.
(August 21)
10 Timeframes.
(June 20)
Facebook and Instagram: When Your Favorite App Sells Out.
(April 10)
Why I Am Leaving the People of the Red Valley.
(April 7)
Welcome to the Company.
(September 21)
“Facebook and the Epiphanator: An End to Endings?”.
Forgot to tell you about this.
(July 20)
“The Age of Mechanical Reproduction”.
An essay for TheMorningNews.org.
(July 11)
Woods+.
People call me a lot and say: What is this new thing? You're a nerd. Explain it immediately.
(July 10)
Reading Tonight.
Reading!
(May 25)
Recorded Entertainment #2, by Paul Ford.
(May 18)
Recorded Entertainment #1, by Paul Ford.
(May 17)
Nanolaw with Daughter.
Why privacy mattered.
(May 16)
0h30m w/Photoshop, by Paul Ford.
It's immediately clear to me now that I'm writing again that I need to come up with some new forms in order to have fun here—so
that I can get a rhythm and know what I'm doing. One thing that works for me are time limits; pencils up, pencils down. So:
Fridays, write for 30 minutes; edit for 20 minutes max; and go whip up some images if necessary, like the big crappy hand
below that's all meaningful and evocative because it's retro and zoomed-in. Post it, and leave it alone. Can I do that every
Friday? Yes! Will I? Maybe! But I crave that simple continuity. For today, for absolutely no reason other than that it came
unbidden into my brain, the subject will be Photoshop. (Do we have a process? We have a process. It is 11:39 and...)
(May 13)
That Shaggy Feeling.
Soon, orphans.
(May 12)
Antilunchism, by Paul Ford.
Snack trams.
(May 11)
Tickler File Forever, by Paul Ford.
I'll have no one to blame but future me.
(May 10)
Time's Inverted Index, by Paul Ford.
(1) When robots write history we can get in trouble with our past selves. (2) Search-generated, "false" chrestomathies and
the historical fallacy.
(May 9)
Bantha Tracks.
(May 5)
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