While moderating the SXSW panel on Women in the Video game industry on Tuesday, A.J. Glasser of Inside Network made a few basic points that are often overlooked by male gamers. Women play games. Women make games. Women write about games. A woman who does any of these things is not, in Glasser’s words “a […]
File sharing has long been a part of the internet discussion. The sharing of music, movies, books, and other forms of media are common place, although legally murky. Attracting a lot of attention recently is Cody Wilson, Director of Defense Distributed (DD), an organization committed to sharing weapons designs to be fabricated through 3D printers. […]
Richard Garriott’s Father, Owen, was an astronaut. The neighbors on either side of his childhood home, Joe Engle and Hoot Gibson, were astronauts. “Going to space,” Garriott said at SXSW on Monday, “seemed like something everybody just did.” Garriott has since made millions developing video games (famously inserting himself into the Ultima series of role-playing […]
As the SXSW behemoth slowly awakened, Bill Gates gave the final keynote at SXSWedu. The host introduced Gates as a “modern day Edison,” an apt comparison in more ways than one, but if philanthropy redeems, perhaps we should forgive him. Gates described the explosion in computing power and the implosion in cost, telling an anecdote […]
What is one to make of Al Gore? The former Vice President (introduced stumblingly by Austin Mayor Lee Leffingwell as “Former President”) spent his SXSW Interactive address exhibiting a fire in the belly that has only manifested itself during his post-election career. To the democratic faithful, Gore was the profoundest of disappointments 13 years ago, […]
It’s fair to say that America has, at best, a mixed record responding to natural disasters. The high profile failures of Hurricane Katrina still loom large, and while the response to Hurricane Sandy wasn’t the same unmitigated fiasco, such a statement is damning with faint praise. The government – some of it anyway – knows […]
There’s a new game in town. The Half The Sky Movement, which works to create opportunities for women around the world, has rolled out a new Facebook game with a charitable purpose. Half The Sky Movement: The Game allows players to follow an Indian woman named Radhika on her journey through her village and then around […]
Last week, Medellín, Colombia was voted Best City of 2012 in terms of innovation, besting the two other finalists, Tel Aviv and New York City. The beautiful city of Medellín deserves to be recognized for the drastic advancements it’s made since the brutal Escobar reign centered around cocaine. However, and I hate to say this, the […]
The Copyright Alert System (CAS) is here! Brainchild of such industries as the RIAA and MPAA, this new method to curtail illegal content sharing went live last week. An outline for the system began in July 2011, as the recording and movie businesses realized individual lawsuits weren’t accomplishing their goal of reducing or eliminating piracy. […]
Some of us wonder about the future. We wonder what the future would be like if written by our favorite authors: William Gibson, Iain Banks, Jules Verne. The more cautious and knowledgeable warn against living in the worlds of Clive Barker, Jeff Noon, and Stephen King. Others argue about the dangers of Aldous Huxley and […]
