John Sharp, “Works of Game: On the Aesthetics of Games and Art” (MIT Press, 2015)
That games, particularly video games, could be viewed as art should come as no surprise. And yet, a debate exists over what is and should be considered art with respect to games. In his new book, Work...
1 Juni 201537min
Colin McGinn, “Philosophy of Language: the Classics Explained” (MIT Press, 2015)
I must admit that my relationship to philosophy of language is a bit like my relationship to classic literature: I tend to admire it from afar, and rely on the opinions of people who have read it. The...
28 Maj 20151h 2min
Myles W. Jackson, “The Genealogy of a Gene: Patents, HIV/AIDS, and Race” (MIT Press, 2015)
What happens when you allow human materials to become property? More specifically, how does granting monopoly rights over genetic material affect the potential for innovation and research on treatment...
18 Maj 201537min
Christine L. Borgman, “Big Data, Little Data, No Data: Scholarship in the Networked World” (MIT Press, 2015)
Social media and digital technology now allow researchers to collect vast amounts of a variety data quickly. This so-called “big data,” and the practices that surround its collection, is all the rage ...
20 Apr 201535min
Casey O’Donnell, “Developer’s Dilemma: The Secret World of Videogame Creators” (MIT Press, 2014)
In his new book, Developer’s Dilemma: The Secret World of Videogame Creators (MIT Press, 2014), Casey O’Donnell, an assistant professor in the department of Media and Information in the College of Com...
6 Apr 201539min
Yasmin B. Kafai and Quinn Burke, “Connected Code: Why Children Need to Learn Programming” (MIT, 2014)
Although the push to persuade everyone to learn to code is quite the current rage, the coding movement has roots that extend back for more than a few decades. In 1980 Seymour Papert published his book...
7 Mars 201540min
Gohar Homayounpour, “Doing Psychoanalysis in Tehran” (MIT Press, 2012)
In Doing Psychoanalysis in Tehran (MIT Press, 2012) — part memoir, part elegy, and part collection of clinical vignettes — Gohar Homayounpour takes a defiant position against the Orientalizing gaze of...
19 Dec 201455min
Clapperton Chakanetsa Mavhunga, “Transient Workspaces: Technologies of Everyday Innovation in Zimbabwe” (MIT Press, 2014)
Words have meaning. More specifically, the definitions attached to words shape our perspective on, and how we categorize, the things that we encounter. The words of “technology” and “innovation” are e...
14 Dec 201439min
