A blog post at Boardgamegeek collects some recent links discussion changes in boardgames. Some of the points mentioned concern how the industry has changed because of crowd-funded games through the Kickstarter platform and reference an interesting article from Wired that discussed how the company behind the role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons is dealing with racial stereotypes in the game. From the article:
In its post, WotC detailed the changes it planned to make to Dungeons & Dragons. This included overhauling the way its books talked about orcs, drow, and other “evil” races, updating past books like Curse of Strahd with an eye to removing racially charged language and stereotypes, releasing new rules that deemphasize racial negatives during character construction, hiring sensitivity readers, and hiring a more diverse pool of freelance writers and artists.
A humorous article from The Economist explains how “Netflix is creating a common European culture” through their efforts of promoting shows from different European and translating/subtitling in all languages:
Umberto Eco, an Italian writer, was right when he said the language of Europe is translation. Netflix and other deep-pocketed global firms speak it well. Just as the eu employs a small army of translators and interpreters to turn intricate laws or impassioned speeches of Romanian meps into the eu’s 24 official languages, so do the likes of Netflix. It now offers dubbing in 34 languages and subtitling in a few more.
Read the full article here.
Some more interesting articles and quotes critical of the newly popular non-fungible tokens (NFT):
In a blog post on medium user everest pipkin claims that the “current ecological cost of cryptoart and cryptocurrency is very real and very large, and while steps can be taken to reign in some of that energy cost, the crypto- market is still based in a value system that fundamentally ties worth to spent physical resources.”
Author Seth Godin furthermore warns that NFTS are “a dangerous trap”:
The more time and passion that creators devote to chasing the NFT, the more time they’ll spend trying to create the appearance of scarcity and hustling people to believe that the tokens will go up in value. They’ll become promoters of digital tokens more than they are creators. Because that’s the only reason that someone is likely to buy one–like a stock, they hope it will go up in value. Unlike some stocks, it doesn’t pay dividends or come with any other rights. And unlike actual works of art, NFTs aren’t usually aesthetically beautiful on their own, they simply represent something that is.
Vox published an article about the recent deal between the financial services company Square and the steaming music service Tidal. They note that a possible outcome of the deal may involve using so-called NFTs (non-fungible tokens) to sell digital collectibles of musicians:
More intriguingly, given Dorsey’s love of All Things Blockchain, and the current mania over NFTs, it won’t be surprising to see Square + Tidal work on their own NFT scheme. NFTs (non-fungible tokens) are blockchain-enabled digital pieces of … anything that investors and speculators and collectors are hoovering up at a crazy rate. Even if none of this makes sense to you, you may have heard about people paying real money — a lot of money — for digital ephemera like cartoon cat GIFs or animated trading cards of NBA players dunking or blocking. It’s a thing, for now.
Read the full article here.
In het volgende interview met VPRO Tegenlicht vertelt de Duitse filosoof over het begrip vrijheid in onze hedendaagse samenleving. Erg interessant is zijn uitleg rond minuut 7 over hoe mensen zich niet zozeer persoonlijk geraakt voelen door een toename aan staatscontrole. Hij geeft een passend voorbeeld hoe de controle in luchthaven ordinair is geworden en we het accepetern omdat er nu eenmaal bijhoort. Volgens hem is dit voorbeeld passend voor hoe we dagelijks met zulke beperkingen in vrijheid omgaan.
With the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic I have spent most I my time at home, working and away from friends and family. I therefore have had to significantly make use of video chat for work meetings and meeting loved ones. In an article on Vox, Adam Clark Estes writes about the history of this technology and how these changes are shaping our lives and the technology itself:
(…) hosting a party with a video chat component certainly sounds less weird today than it would have six months ago. If it was already evident that videoconferencing had become a mainstay of many offices, that it could be a prominent part of our social lives is a new idea to me. That explains my initial surprise when the folks from Microsoft Teams started telling me how their workplace software had taken on new roles, like social networking, in many users’ lives. In other words, the pandemic has fundamentally changed our relationship with these tools and with digital spaces generally.
The article further delves in the changes made to the technology to make more pleasant to use. Read the full article here.
Matt Alt at The New Yorker wrote a great piece about the Walkman, “the gadget that taught the world to socially distance”:
Hosokawa noted how listeners used the devices to tame the unpredictability of urban spaces, with all of their unexpected intrusions and loud noises. Wearing headphones functioned both as a personal “Do Not Disturb” sign and an alternate soundtrack to the cacophony of the city. This was a new form of human experience, engaged disengagement, a technological shield from the world and an antidote to ennui. Whenever nerves frayed or boredom crept in, one could just hit Play and fast-forward life a little. One of the first Westerners to grasp the import of this new human capacity was the author William Gibson, a pioneer of the genre of science fiction called cyberpunk, who wrote years later that “the Sony Walkman has done more to change human perception than any virtual reality gadget.”
Read the full article here.
Ian Bogost and Alexis C. Madrigal wrote a fantastic piece at The Atlantic, “How Facebook Works for Trump”. In this article they explain how the systems developed by Facebook to optimise advertising campaigns based on machine learning and with little human interaction are effectively exploited by the Trump campaign. They are very right in their conclusion that in this way Facebook systems are taking over some of the work of the campaign.
The following video essay on the “The Late Capitalism of K-Pop” by a Youtube channel called “Cuck Philosophy” gives some interesting historical insights on the development of K-Pop. And links this development with related critiques on consumerism such as the work of Baudrillard.
I discovered this video through a recent podcast from “Pretty Much Pop” on “The Korean Wave”.
The current measures taken to contain the coronavirus pandemic have included the temporary closer of most offices around the world. An unprecedented event, with so many people working from home. It is interesting to think about the long term consequences for office. Catherine Nixey at The Economist 1843 magazine has published an article about the “Death of the office”.