Call for Papers: Well-being in Contemporary Society International Conference on the Philosophy and Science of Well-being and their Practical Importance Location: University of Twente, Enschede, Netherlands Date: July 26-27, 2012 Program Chair: Philip Brey (University of Twente) Organising committee: Johnny Hartz Søraker (University of Twente) Pak-Hang Wong (University of Twente) Jan-Willem van der Rijt [...]
I delivered this rant as part of a panel entitled “New Directions for Information Ethics Scholarship” at the CEPE (Computer Ethics Philosophical Enquiry) conference 2011. It was given as the last of four rants, in the early morning of the last day of the conference so I’m not sure many attendents really got the main [...]
An outline of a computer ethics course I designed from scratch
I’ve written before about creativity online and the failure of companies trying to stifle this creativity, but felt encouraged to do so again after having looked into the elegant events in the wake of a Stephen Colbert interview with well-known blogger and Stanford professor of law Lawrence Lessig – which quickly evolved into one of [...]
I’m not one of those Microsoft bashers, and I’m generally happy with my Vista, Outlook, Windows Mobile setup. Part of the reason why I’ve been happy with it is because of a splendid initiative called xda-developers. In short, xda-developers is a forum where bright minds spend their creative energy on optimizing Windows Mobile for HTC [...]
No, not that kind of music tagging, the kind where you add tags/labels to your mp3 collection. What I want to discuss is a phenomenon that I’ve tried to be conscious about for quite some time: the act of deliberately forming strong associations between certain pieces of music and a particular place.
Well, some headlines just lie there dormant, waiting for the right opportunity to become overused. That opportunity is here. The phenomenon that prompted the headline is called “Take-Away shows” and is being done to perfection at La Blogotheque. The concept is easy; pick up a camera and a cheap microphone, convince a band that this [...]
So, I came across this listing the other day (can’t find the link right now) about the top ten comedy sketches of all time. It covered pretty much only US comedy (a lof of Saturday Night Live), and missed some of the best sketches ever — the ones that literally made me roll on the [...]
I went to a conference the other day, about intellectual property in cyberspace and all that. The experience turned out to be quite surreal. When I entered the building, there were only three people standing around. One of them were shouting commands, seemingly to a technician that I couldn’t see; as with all conferences, Murphy’s [...]
In various email lists etc. there have been a lot of discussion about the future of paper journals and the superiority of open access on-line journals. Although I agree that information should be widely accessible and that many (especially independent) researchers are left out of the loop due to the cost of subscribing to journals, [...]
Researchers have appearantly found that reward regions in the brain are more active in men than women when playing computer games and, the researchers conclude that this is why men are more prone to be hooked on computer games. The video game they used in the experiment was “a vertical line (the “wall”) in the [...]
One of the modern works of philosophy that has influenced me the most is John Searle’s Rationality in Action — but probably not for the right reasons. I do not agree with all of Searle’s hypotheses (if they can even be referred to as such), but I do find the book incredibly thought-provoking. One of [...]
There’s a misconception in the department where I work that I spend all my time “playing” Second Life and that my PhD is dedicated to SL alone. This is far from the truth, and Second Life is but one instance of how virtuality might have a profound effect on the quality of our lives, which [...]
In starting my PhD dissertation I had to make a difficult choice on what word processor to use. I’ve heard bad things about Microsoft Word’s ability to handle large documents, and I have always disliked it because of the limited ways in which you can format paragraphs. The importance of tweaking different paragraph parameters and [...]
I recently wrote about Radiohead’s release of their new album in digital form, downloadable from their Website with a price-tag that you decide yourself — ingenious. One of the interesting consequences of this way of releasing their album is that it make piracy unethical — beyond reasonabe doubt. One of the common arguments pro piracy [...]
Radiohead has always been one of my favourite bands. What I find fascinating is that every single album has been great, ranging from their mainstream, slightly juvenile Pablo Honey to their innovative experimentation on Amnesiac and Kid A. Their upcoming album, entitled In Rainbows, is only available through their Website. What is interesting is that [...]
As some of my (very few) readers might know, I’m doing research on the Philosophy of virtual reality. In crawling the Web for others who are trying to define the term, I came across a Chinese posting which looked interesting. I do not know any Chinese, so I tried Google’s translate function. As expected, the [...]
I’m not going to say much about this, since it has already been covered in great detail elsewhere. However, in case you haven’t come across it yet, I’d like to bring to your attention a somewhat shocking insight into the workings of anti-piracy companies. The company in question is Mediadefender, a company which offers services [...]
I think that one of the reasons why many newspapers love reporting from virtual environments etc. is that it allows them to come up with fantastic headlines. Disappointment often follows, though. So, allow me to offer my apologies for not really having crashed an F-16 into my building… only virtually. I hope I can make [...]
I just came across this graph today, showing a correlation between crime victims per 1000 citizens and the release of some of the most criticized computer games (numbers taken from the US Bureau of Justice Statistics). I have been an avid critic of dubious correlations myself, but I thought this graph illustrates a nice point [...]
I’ve had a sorry Second Life since the beginning. My days usually consisted in sitting in a chair or dancing around a pole for money. The pole dancing didn’t seem very popular with the surrounding people given that I look like a 70-year old geezer with grey hear, grey beard and wrinkly tattoos. As long [...]
What is it about starting blogs from scratch? I’ve done a dozen of them now, and I have always done the same thing. First, say a little something about what I intend to do and second, make an empty promise that I will keep it updated. Then, after checking the statistics for a couple of [...]
