The Language of Play

Reading this week’s papers from Pat Kane (2005) and Brian Sutton-Smith (1997) were a sheer joy and delight compared to the James Newman chapter the other week. I think the issue between these three writers is one of how an argument is being presented to the reader. We start with Sutton-Smith (1997) who sets that scene […]

The Hidden Rules of Pac-Man

Before I launch into my (recent and past) experiences with Pac-Man, the arcade game developed by Namco, I would like to say something about this week’s reading, Chapter 7: “Video Games” from Greenfield (1984). Greenfield (ibid, p. 88) makes an important statement by saying that “children with a television background develoop a preference for dynamic […]

Iconclasm in the Digital Age

Gee is such an absorbing read and lots of wonderfully quotable nuggets like: But all learning is … learning to play ‘the game’. For example, literary criticism and field biology are different ‘games’ played by different rules. (They are different sorts of activities requiring different values, tools, and ways of acting and thinking; they are […]