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I woke in the clarity of a dream. It’s such an amazing space of lucidity. In the dream an older and very respected friend visits, but since I’d seen him last, his capacity to care for himself has been greatly reduced by age etc. This frustrates him to tears: “I’m the person who always takes […]

Can this be too much logic for the faithful to encounter. This is the site I might have written if I had the time to address religious beliefs.
In grade school and high school, the answer was always: “Trust in the logic of God. It far exceeds ours.” But that only sufficed until I started to […]

This year we hosted a Death and Dismemberment Party at Happy Bunny’s Chamber of Horrors. It was quite fun. As befits such a violence-themed event, I went as Ghandi. It was, to my memory, the first time I’ve shaved my head, and quite a change from just over a year ago in my long-haired hippy […]

It seems like just a few days ago that I was pining for the near future, where we’d be able to walk down the street and have access to “official” and “unofficial” information about the buildings and businesses we passed via a handheld device running GeoAnnotation and Collaborative Cartography software. And I thought about it, […]

What kind of social software are you? (take the test here). So I do. It’s quick and dirty, and my expectations are low. But then I get this:
You are Game Neverending. You find yourself in the beta of some game where you can’t kill anything. You get sprinkled with pixie dust, and get scared at […]

I’ve been obsessing on this idea since Jim, Mingfong, and I talked about it at Indie Coffee a few weeks ago. I’ve finally “put pen to paper” (as the saying goes, although “pen” and “paper” are soooo archaic!) and finally fleshed out the idea using Keynote, which I’m beginning to realize may be my preferred […]

Here’s what I’d love to see in the near future: A wearable (or handheld) location-enabled (GPS or WiFi, or other) computer that you can access at any location to find out “official” and unofficial information and opinions about, and have the ability to add your own. In other words, take a project like LifeClipper (non-Flash […]

I was Wikipedia-izing away for better definitions of Augmented Reality (some say that it’s not AR unless computer graphics are digitally merged with surroundings. Obviously, for them “reality” is a visual phenomena), when I ran across ARQuake, which fits the more restrictive definition.
While unwilling to give up the AR term to a visually-dominant culture, I […]

I found a Dell Inspiron 1.2GHz Celeron M 40GB/256MB/DVD-CDRW for $528 shipped.
So, with my Augmented Reality Game using a Windows game engine, and being on a PocketPC, why not just swallow it all, and give up the pleasure that it Virtual PC, and PocketMac (piece of crap), and all the back doors and work-arounds […]

Although it’s far from perfect, I’ve finally figured out (at least a bunch of) how to get non-Mac-template pages up on my .Mac site. It’s not as easy as it should be, but I suppose that’s because they want their templates used, while my design doesn’t even mention that it’s a .Mac site (except in […]

I recently received a comment from a woman who’s doing some amazingly-fun stuff in performance gaming (Jane McGonigal at Avant Game). She responded to an entry on Pierre Levy on the ARGaming blog, and briefly explained that his idea of games “virtualizing” space and place was important in her PhD work. It was a brief […]

I’m trying to wrap my head around the importance of space and place in learning — an especially important thing in the Augmented Reality Gaming that I’m researching. But I’ve been having a difficult time understanding it, or maybe simply staying focused, while reading about it. Although I’ve got an MA degree in Writing/Litereature, I’m […]

I’m reading Henry Jenkins’ Tales of Manhattan and noticed, again, his emphasis on the importance of narrative in cultures to explain and situate themselves in space. I thought this might speak to our discussions on the immersive aspects of our respective GPS games.
“Spatial Stories. Cultures, Michel De Certeau tells us, construct stories to explain and […]

People who know me, even moderately well, sense the bitterness I feel toward the church I grew up with, and toward similar intolerances I hear echoed in larger fundamentalist institutions.
I fully admit that my feelings of bitterness and betrayal speak to my own issues of intolerance.
I am working on this. I constantly look for the […]

Yikes! I clearly don’t belong in the front of the line for braces, but still I am considering them. Seems that over the past few months my right siekacz boczny tooth (God, I love Google images!) has been shying behind my right siekacz srodkowy tooth, causing a slight cross bite, and contributing to an oft’ […]

All better now. A few niggling little errors in my CSS and Firefox falls apart. What kind of a world-class browser is that? Even Micro$oft’s IE (old Mac version!) was able to deal with it.
Clearly, my post-midnight edits have caused some problems to the format of this blog. It seems to look okay in MSIE […]

I’m slowly getting continuity between my four subsites: Live Love Learn Blog. Blog’s been the toughest so far, largely due to the constraints that the template forces, but also significantly due to my own learning curve, my insistence on a trial and error methodology.
Next up: Love.

Well, if this (LivePlasma) ain’t the fanciest piece of something or other that I’ve seen since the brain. Here’s a tool where you enter a band or movie that you like, and it maps out other bands or movies that you may be interested in. I don’t know who decides what bands are similar, or […]

To your right, you’ll notice that I added a link to the WebBoard login page.
Although it’s a bit of an inconvenience, I’d propose that we use both. The WB, with its login requirements, is great for posting files, “private” papers, etc. but it’s not accessible to others in the field who may be interested […]

I think I’m ready to move on beyond Cognition and Space after this…
Situated Action, Distributed Cognition, Activity Theory, and John go camping and meet a bear.
AT (subject) makes a plan (object) to go camping (activity). It gathers its camping gear, gets in the car (both mediating artifacts), and drives to the wilderness. When the bear […]

The Emergence of Distributed Cognition: a conceptual framework [PDF] by Francis HEYLIGHEN, Margeret HEATH and Frank VAN OVERWALLE from Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Pleinlaan 2, B-1050 Brussels, Belgium; {fheyligh, mheath, fjvoverw}@vub.ac.be
ABSTRACT: We propose a first step in the development of an integrated theory of the emergence of distributed cognition/extended mind. Distributed cognition is seen as the […]

The other day Dan White emails me requesting bio info “for the site” — but he didn’t say what site, and I didn’t know, so I stalled and requested more info from him. Then this weekend he emails and says “The GLS Minor website is up!” And I look, and sure enough, there’s a spot […]

What is the role of space and place in distributed cognition (DC)? Here are my thoughts:
DC places a lot of emphasis on the role of artifacts as they mediate our behavior and contribute to our cognition. I think I could easily argue that one such tool that mediates our behavior, and lessens the mental energy […]

There’s a good (1997) article on Distributed Cognition by Yvonne Rogers and Mike Scaife that touches on some general assumptions. I’ve quoted liberally here because I think it’s that good. (These two also have an article on Activity Theory (1997) that I think I should read, and one called “A conceptual framework for mixed reality […]

A Review of Bonnie A. Nardi’s (1995)”Studying Context: A Comparison of Activity Theory, Situated Action Models, and Distributed Cognition” [PDF] (Besides being available as a PDF, it’s a chapter in Nardi’s (1996) Context and Consciousness: Activity Theory and Human-Computer Interaction).
This article plugs Activity Theory (AT) and to a lesser extent Distributed Cognition (DC), while throwing […]

Tomorrow (done) I will post a picture of where I was this weekend. Then you will see a ridge of green deciduous trees, steadily changing to yellows and oranges, already speckled here and there with red. It is, after all, officially Fall here in Wisconsin. Christine did the Kickapoo Reserve’s Dam Challenge yesterday, and invited […]