All about presence

Column: 'Unnatural Selection': On Half-Life 2 - Build It And They Will Come

- 14 hours and 37 minutes ago

[In his latest column for GameSetWatch, UK writer and journalist Fraser McMillan discusses Valve's seminal first-person action title Half-Life 2, examining and revisiting the smart design decisions behind the classic game.]

I've just finished Half-Life 2 for the first time. It has taken me three attempts - once on Xbox 360 and twice on PC - to see Valve's defining game to its conclusion. That this relatively minor feat took so long is entirely my fault, ironically a product of the impatient wish to blast through as quickly as possible.

Two and a half years after I initially booted it up, the end credits rolled. The final, completed playthrough attempt lasted less than a week, and I'm glad I bit the bullet and experienced it this way.

Not that it was anything like a chore; by taking things at my own, or, more accurately, Valve's pace, I had time to absorb the world and explore its nooks and crannies, my eyeline expertly guided by the seemingly omnipotent hand of City 17's creators.

I finally understand why everyone has waxed lyrical about Gordon Freeman's second adventure for the last half-decade or more. Conducive to this is the fact that my tastes have matured, and my thoughts on games delved into deeper, more analytical territory. Articulating why I liked X and disliked Y is no longer particularly hard in most cases.

When I can't explain these, it's usually because I was baffled by just how terrible each element of the design was. On a handful of occasions, though, it's a sign that what I played was so confoundingly fantastic that my critical brain didn't even attempt to kick in. This is the position I'm in now. Deconstructing Half-Life 2 feels wrong in a way, like teasing a dog with some food only to scoff it yourself. It shouldn't really be done because it's against the nature of the beast and could cheapen the experiences of all involved. It's not even entertaining; just perversely, cruelly compelling.

Half-Life 2 is designed so as to not appear designed. That's ostensibly odd, but makes a surprising amount of sense. A lot of effort has been poured in to create the impression of effortlessness. Most of what we do, see or hear in Half-Life 2 feels distinctly of our own volition. If not in the act itself, the mere observation of incidental detail off the critical path is a component of the illusion of presence and agency, even though each individual's journey will, in the end, be effectively identical to other players'.

This facet of its design makes itself known from the instant the G-Man's face fades out to reveal an unexceptional train car. As well as evoking the timeless introduction to its predecessor, this scene serves to create the illusion of reality; of an ambient world that exists beyond just our interfacing with it.

Airborne robots which we'll later come to despise fly by the carriage, inspiring curiosity. A fairly normal looking landscape passes increasingly slowly as the vehicle comes to a halt. Our two co-passengers occupy themselves, one waiting eagerly for the doors to open as the other sits opposite, dejectedly staring into nothingness. We can talk to the latter or leave him be. As we're let off, the former sighs; "Well, end of the line."

With this sequence, Valve instantly and very tangibly contend that though this remains a Half-Life game, it's one of an evolved character. They turned the first-person-shooter on its head with that first title, Citizen Kane-ing the genre to an extreme degree, but the setting allowed the team to concentrate on a specific goal without concerning themselves much with the outside world.

Forced to emerge from the secluded comfort zone of Black Mesa, the sequel establishes itself as both successor and pioneer from the off, and continues in this mould for much of its duration. It should be noted at this point that it's not perfect but - Freeman's basking in the adulation of every NPC notwithstanding - Half-Life 2's universe is absolutely convincing.

Not through the kind of emergent systems that make Far Cry 2's war-torn state so wonderfully plausible, but in an entirely different and equally valid manner, one that single-handedly authored a rigorous and, ultimately, highly successful template for linear video games that is still being ignored to this day.

It's all in creating an illusion of substance and openness and propelling the player through it at whatever pace is required. A lot of elements of Half-Life 2 feel dynamic in nature despite being at least somewhat intended or even heavily scripted.

The odd set-piece is obnoxiously predictable, but in a franchise that lives and breathes on these cues it's astounding how sparse these are. Allow yourself to be engulfed in the sly deception and these fade into such insignificance it's laughable. Many modern releases remain patronisingly transparent without anything close to such a sustained barrage of both subtle and overwhelming instances.

It's equally incredible when you realise just how paper thin the mirage is. Hang around too long in one spot or put on the blinkers and dash through and it's all too easy to break, but even when compelled to do so it's tough not to be rapidly, subconsciously re-immersed. We're the hapless cobras rising from the basket as Valve expertly play their tune, transitioning from staccato to legato when appropriate.

The reminders that this is a fully realised world continuously flow towards us, and by alternately sticking to convention and craftily subverting our expectations of what video games are, Half-Life 2 capitalises on our gullibility to this effect. How clever I thought I was by navigating over to the beach hut using painstakingly arranged miscellany and my trusty old gravity gun. Empty, besides some assorted junk and a small item crate. The ammunition it contained was already maxed out in my inventory.

At first I was scandalized; how dare you, Valve, how dare you so gratuitously undermine my efforts? Then I realized that my impression of this place as a cohesive, unified land that simply exists had been augmented. My irritation morphed into unabated admiration. Why does there have to be an explicit reward for venturing into a hidden or ostensibly unreachable spot? My prize was much more interesting.

Merely paying attention also pays dividends both in terms of the strength of the universe and the narrative. Peering through the view-box in the door you'll see something that often leads to far more questions than answers, but which also fleshes out the core experience. Keeping your eyes peeled means you can witness things that have the capacity to alter your perception of the City and its inhabitants or prepare you for a challenge ahead.

It's unlikely that many players have seen all of these, but both static and active environmental incidentals can frighten, inform, bait or warn. Some allow us to begin filling in the gaps ourselves in imagined ways. We begin to construct an image of who lived in this cell by its contents, what prompted that piece of graffiti or what unspeakable things must have befallen that rotting corpse in the viaduct. It happens infrequently enough to make the player feel special, as if they're the only one to have observed such details. Again, these can prompt the same reaction as a totally unscripted emergent event, but within a much more solid framing than any games of that particular propensity are likely to achieve any time soon.

I've noticed that actual examples of the virtues I've cited are somewhat lacking from this article. Perhaps, though, this stems from the broader effect of believability that Half-Life 2 so decisively realises. It already presents the most attractive science fiction setting yet seen in our medium, but the manner in which it shapes our experiences in such gentle and minor ways is its crowning achievement.

My failure to cherry pick the most impressive of these idiosyncrasies is indicative only of its intransigent formula. Memories of my time with the game are not necessarily of these individual pieces, but of the great chunks of the puzzle they gelled into. Firm authorial control in games, Valve have proven, can also relax when properly timed. The most important lesson we can extrapolate from Half-Life 2 is that if you're going to force us down a linear path, you should do your utmost to make it feel as far away from this reality as possible. Maybe it's obvious advice, but it's one that far too few have taken onboard over the years.

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Kindle for Mac Has Arrived

Analysis of the Open and Closed Conformations of the beta Subunits in Thermophilic F(1)-ATPase by Solution NMR.

How the Backchannel Has Changed the Game for Conference Panelists

PressThink

- 18 hours and 19 minutes ago

If you follow me on Twitter, you’ll occasionally hear me talk about “audience atomization overcome.” I’ve been using this phrase to describe something that has changed in our word because of the internet.

Audience Atomization Overcome

The people formerly known as the audience, once connected up to big institutions and centers of power, but not across to one another, have overcome their own atomization, which was a normal condition during the age of mass media. With the rise of social media they are now connected horizontally, peer to peer, at the same time as they connect vertically: to the news, the program, the speaker, the spectacle. Simple example: Tweeting during the Academy Awards. More intricate example: Pet lovers find each other on affinity sites when the major media isn’t attentive to their concerns.

The horizontal flow changes the situation for speakers and producers in any communication setting that retains the trappings of one-to-many. The change is especially dramatic in an arena I know well: the professional conference where I might sit on a panel or attend a presentation. The popularity of the backchannel—years ago it was IRC, today it’s Twitter—has empowered those in the audience to compare notes and pool their dissatisfaction during a performance that misfires. Audience atomization has been definitively overcome, raising the bar and increasing the risk for speakers who walk in unprepared.

Especially at risk are “big name” speakers whose online or offline status is such that they may complacently assume their presence alone completes the assignment and guarantees success. Organizers may be so delighted to have landed the CEO of the hot company or the thought leader in a particular space that they fail to ask for much in the way of new material or a carefully thought-out ideas. This was always a problem at conferences; what’s different is the audience is able to do something about it, and they will savage you on Twitter if you falter.

These facts were clearly in view for me and my colleagues as we prepared for our recent panel at South by Southwest: The future of context. We were acutely aware that the bar had been raised, especially at a conference like SXSW where everyone is wired. When Twitter CEO Evan Williams appeared at South by Southwest for a keynote interview, the answers felt so thin to so many that he had to post this after.

Here are ten things we did in recognition that audience atomization has been overcome. I must say: our plan worked. The Future of Context was the most well-received panel I have ever been on. (A good live blog of it is here, a reaction post here, a sample tweet here. The room—Hilton H, a big one—was full and people were turned away.)

How to avoid getting killed in the backchannel

1. Unfamiliar to them, super familiar to you. First, you need a subject that hasn’t been picked to death at conferences. But it’s got to be something you grok. I wrote my first post on background narratives vs. newsy updates in 2008; I’ve been thinking about it since then. Co-panelist Matt Thompson introduced the phrase “the future of context” in 08, as well. He spent a year on the problem as a fellow at the University of Missouri. In a sense, we had two years prep time.

2. Go for intellectual diversity. We had a mainstream journalist (Matt Thompson of NPR) an academic (me) a software developer and entrepreneur (Tristan Harris of Apture.com) and a tech writer and reporter (Staci Kramer of paidcontent.org.) The youngest panelist was less than half the age of the oldest. We had an African-American and three whites, a woman and three men. People notice.

4. Get serious about advance planning. One conference call (“So Sally…what do you want to talk about?”) is not what I mean by serious. We had five calls over four months. We worked out a beginning, middle and end that made sense to all of us: Frame the problem, drill down on a few specifics, float possible fixes, then go to the crowd.

5. Blog it first. Eight days before the SXSW panel I posted News Without the Narrative Needed to Make Sense of the News: What I Will Say at South by Southwest. A few days later Matt Thompson posted The Case for Context: My Opening Statement for SXSW and Tristan Harris came in with Context: The Future of the Web. By blogging it first we could promote the event with something juicier than “come to my panel!” We could use early reactions to hone later presentations. We had three comment threads active before the panel started. Here’s how I curated the discussion my pre-post engendered. This pre-tweet told me to underline a key distinction between informative and informable.

6. Create a dedicated site for the panel. Welcome your crowd to it. See futureofcontext.com, which Matt Thompson pulled together. Anyone can post at it or comment. And it says to the audience: welcome, we set a place for you.

7. The title you pick should be “write once, run anywhere.” (Why that phrase?) Thus: the future of context is simultaneously the name of the SXSW panel, the domain name of the site, the hashtag on twitter and the search term we wanted to claim.

8. Watch the backchannel like a hawk during the event. This chart shows that the hashtagged tweets were coming in at a rate of almost 300 an hour. It’s your moderator’s job to monitor that flow, sense where it’s going and react when necessary by talking directly to the backchannel. This takes someone who can scan posts and type quickly. Staci Kramer did that. After the five phone calls and the three blog posts and the dinner the night before to go over the plan, she already knew what we were going to say, which allowed her to focus on the incoming.

9. Leave at least 40 percent of the time for Q and A. Anything less than that and people start resenting you for hogging the mic. It’s amazing to me how many panels cannot manage this simply feat of timing.

10.Arrange a meet-up directly after for those who want to continue the discussion and interact with the participants face-to-face. This was something I wish we had thought of. (It was suggested to me by Jeremy Zilar of the New York Times, who attended.) That way no one walks away wishing there was more time.

Now if you’re thinking that none of these ideas is particularly original or ingenious— well, I agree. My point is you need a complete approach to avoid getting killed in the backchannel and give demanding conference-goers what they have come to expect.

Of course there’s another alternative: the unconference, where the room is the panel.

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Time-Dependent Changes in Side Chain Solvent Accessibility During Cytochrome c Folding Probed By Pulsed Oxidative Labeling and Mass Spectrometry.

Journal of Molecular Biology

- 18 hours and 41 minutes ago

Publication Date: 2010 Mar 12 PMID: 20230834Authors: Stocks, B. B. - Konermann, L.Journal: J Mol BiolThe current work employs a novel approach for characterizing structural changes during the refolding of acid-denatured cytochrome c (cyt c). At various time points (ranging from 10 ms to 5 min) after a pH jump from 2 to 7 the protein is exposed to a microsecond hydroxyl radical (.OH) pulse that induces oxidative labeling of solvent-exposed side chains. Most of the covalent modifications appear as+16 Da adducts that are readily detectable by mass spectrometry (MS). The overall extent of labeling decreases as folding proceeds, reflecting dramatic changes in the accessibility of numerous residues. Peptide mapping and MS/MS reveal that the side chains of C14, C17, H33, F46, Y48, W59, M65, Y67, Y74, M80, I81, and Y97 are among the dominant sites of oxidation. Temporal changes in the accessibility of these residues are consistent with docking of the N-and C-terminal helices as early as 10 ms. However, structural reorganization at the helix interface takes place up to at least 1 s. Initial misligation of the heme iron by H33 leads to distal crowding, giving rise to low solvent accessibility of the displaced (native) M80 ligand and the adjacent I81. W59 retains a surprisingly high accessibility long into the folding process, indicating the presence of packing defects in the hydrophobically collapsed core. Overall, the results of this work are consistent with previous hydrogen/deuterium exchange (HDX) studies that proposed a foldon-mediated mechanism. The structural data obtained by .OH labeling monitor the packing and burial of side chains, whereas HDX primarily monitors the formation of secondary structure elements. Hence, the two approaches yield complementary information. Considering the very short time scale of pulsed oxidative labeling, a future extension of the approach used here to sub-millisecond folding studies should be feasible.post to: CiteULike

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Crystal Structure Determination and Functional Characterization of the Metallochaperone SlyD from Thermus thermophilus.

Would more church women cut abuse?

Would more women in Church reduce abuse?

Interview: What Drove Yahoo's Purchase Of Citizen Sports

Generation I: Middle Children of the Information Age

CrunchGear

- 23 hours and 37 minutes ago

Every generation thinks that they are the first. The first to feel this way or that, the first to make this or that revelation, the first to do and make things that we find later have been done and made since before we could record their doing and making. But while these illusory and fleeting firsts are common to every generation, there are true firsts being achieved constantly, though they are often subtle enough that they are not noticed even by those in their midst. My generation has been lucky enough to be part of a very important first.

The personal computer (in all its forms) has grown to be, I would say, the single greatest potential source of prosperity in history. It has enabled the internet and a consequent democratization of all sorts of arts and information, as well as the ongoing destabilization of financial institutions via distributed money transfers. The revolution, and it really is one, is ongoing. How unlike the world of 2000, of 1990, is the present day? And 2020 will be doubly, triply removed. As technology further enables itself, the positive feedback creates a greater rate of advance, and thus our acceleration; if this interests you, you should probably go talk to Mr. Kurzweil, since he’s done a bit more work on the idea. I’m not concerned with the singularity, however: my object is the generation to which I belong. I propose that this generation, which I am going to call Generation I for a number of reasons, is the only one to which the rate of advancement of technology was exactly fitted. At no other time in history, and perhaps never in the future, will there be a group of people whose own growth and maturation is so perfectly reflected in the principal technological and cultural advancement of the age.

It’s a serious claim, but I hope to show that it’s founded in observation and not egomania. And let me remark further before I begin, that I am not claiming any special merit for this generation, only a special situation. Lastly: I will speak of “advancement” or “progress” as if they were objectively measurable, when clearly there is much to be said on what those concepts actually consist of. But for the purposes of this article, let us consider them to be, say, the progressively sophisticated bending of the natural world to our needs and wants.

As even a casual student of history (read: a grade-schooler) can see, the rate of technological and cultural advancement has ever accelerated, of course with some interruptions due to warfare and subjugation. This is first observable in the length of “ages” — the stone age, 40,000 years. The bronze age, 2000 years. The iron age, 1000 years. There are too many books written on this topic for me to spend many words on this, and at any rate this acceleration is palpable to those of us living in the modern first world. Moore’s Law was once a simple prediction; now it’s practically a force of nature.

Let us look at recent history, to prime our minds for the idea of what I would call a “generational technology.” The car is a perfect example. Prototyped in the late 19th century, manufactured widely in 1915, increasingly affordable and common over the next 30 years, then producing a “car culture” in the 50s and 60s, followed by an increasingly consumerized nature as the automobile was integrated completely into civilization, and cities and lives began to be designed around it. Today the integration is complete, and perhaps we are on the verge of another change, to a post-car world. I don’t know. But the divisions in the car’s history, you see, are a lot like generational periods. The specific dates and years aren’t important, as generations are a sort of rolling concept, and the lines are wherever the historian finds them convenient to be. So let us look at the stages of the car, which I have also given names (I’m a coining machine today):

Hammer stage: During this time, the concept and platform of the automobile were being determined by the founders and inventors. Things like setting down how many wheels a car will have, which method of propulsion it will use, the materials it will be built from, and so on. There was surely some bickering here, as there was between AC and DC when prototyping electrical devices, but one fundamental form is almost always selected, and for the car it was four wheels, front engine, and internal combustion. This stage is performed entirely by an older generation of inventors, investors, and engineers.

Paper stage: This is the period where the creators turned the design over to the marketers, who made it into a product. Extra features were created within the confines of the pre-established framework, manufacturing methods were improved, the whole process made faster, and other steps taken to make the technology affordable and attractive. For the car this was of course improvement in reliability, luxury, and speed, among other things. It is a stage of intense competition among marketers, who must both inform and sell to the public, to whom the idea of the car (in, say, 1925-1940) is still new and barely affordable. They are largely ignorant on the subject and are likely skeptical.

Tinker stage: Once the car was adopted by consumers at large, as cars were by the close of World War II, the next (very numerous) generation grew up with the “new” technology taken — I don’t want to say for granted but perhaps as granted. The car culture of the 50s and 60s was a result of a generation of people in tune with an important and exciting technology, a generation as familiar with the car as they were with the clock. There was an expansion of the purposes of the car during this time, as well as a great improvement in their quality, since this generation, having grown up with cars, would work to provide the advancements that were not possible under the auspices of either their parents or the inventors, whose ideas were likely no longer applicable. This positive feedback loop, as in other technologies, leads to a second push and prepares the way for the fourth stage.

Mirror stage: Once the car had been proposed, adopted, and grown up alongside of, in the three previous ages respectively, it was ready to become fully integrated. Not just because it had gotten to a certain level of affordability or reliability, but because it was an integral part of the modern person’s life already, and now the task was to shape civilization around it. While the highway creation act in 1956 obviously wasn’t driven by 10-year-old baby boomers, the obligation of government and industry to acknowledge the growing importance of the automobile was clear enough once it was recognized at large as foundational. In this stage nearly everyone is part of the process; the automobile has impressed itself on civilization, and civilization must now reflect it more fundamentally. The term Mirror Stage is actually an existing psychological one (as well as an excellent game), and refers to the period at which a child becomes captivated with its own image. I thought it loosely appropriate.Essentially: invention, introduction, internalization, integration.

But is there another stage? I don’t think so. The cycle is complete: the changing world births a new technology, the technology is popularized, refined, and eventually fuels the next change. I chose the car as a representative because it is familiar and its effects clear, but with a little work I think that the model I’ve just suggested can be applied to pretty much any technology, from aqueducts to longbows. But this isn’t a longbow blog — so let’s move on.

Note that, in the example of the car, each stage is relegated roughly to a generation. The inventing generation sells to the adopting generation, which brings up the integrative generation. Furthermore, the inventing generation cannot be the adopting generation, and the rate of progression in this case prohibited the adopting generation from being the integrative generation; for the car it took around 50 or 60 years, arguably more, for it to reach its Mirror stage. My belief is that Generation I (born roughly between 1975 and 1985) is the first generation, and possibly the last, to see and be a part of every stage: to be a part of the genesis, popularization, refinement, and counter-refinement of their age’s defining technology.

Now, I don’t claim we invented the personal computer; nor, I’m sure, would those who are cited as inventing the computer. Like the automobile, the computer was a long time coming and was enabled by advances in many other technologies and disciplines. Early computing was as an exercise in logic, mathematics, and electrical engineering, and its early advances academic. What defined the automobile, and what has defined both the computer and the age in which it has proliferated, was not in fact the creators (brilliant though they were), who were the implements of history, but the people who used them and guided their use. For the car, that definition was stretched out over long decades, and people grew old while automobile technology remained young. For the personal computer and the internet, the infancy of the technology coincided with the infancy of my generation, its adolescence with our adolescence, its growth with our growth, in such a pas-de-deux as has no precedent in history and, for all we know, may have no equal in futurity.

Generation I is the middle child of the information age. To be born a few years earlier would mean to see the personal computer and the internet as an new and exciting gadget, like the VCR or Walkman. A few years later would be to arrive late to the show: to grow up in the presence of computers, smartphones, and the internet, but not to grow up with them. Taken for granted, these things become black boxes; on the other hand, seen as just another set of devices and applications, they lose their transformational potential. I think the timing is very important, but of course as part of the generation, I am prone to that error.

Our readers will probably remember that computers around 1980 were ugly, limited, and expensive machines. They performed a few of the functions will still value today (word processing, calculating, games) but had no GUI and little connectivity. I don’t want to overstate the parallels, but just for clarity in what I am driving at, consider that an apt comparison might be to a young child, able to see and crawl, or walk totteringly — fundamentally intact, you see, but encumbered with limitations that can only be changed with time and effort.

I remember learning just enough of my dad’s old work computer to find tic-tac-toe and play it on the flickering amber screen. A few years later, primitive UIs are emerging, so primitive that the command line is still unarguably the more powerful tool. Just as Generation I begins to learn to read and to speak, the PC can be communicated to in what we understood as plain language. The first truly popular computers proliferate, running DOS, and a few of us were lucky enough to play with one of the later Apple II models.

In 1990 the GUI and the more complex tools it enables begin to flourish and become fundamental to the PC experience, as Windows 3.0 and the Mac Classic hit the market. Shortly after that, the first affordable modems. BBSes, AOL and its chatrooms and fake internet, and then the revelation of the true web with Mosaic, Internet Explorer, and so on. I won’t waste your time with further details you’re almost certainly familiar with (having lived through them), but you must see the way things are not moving at the rate of a stage per generation like the car. No – they moved more quickly, but not so quick that we lost track. This particular speed of maturation (from “infancy” to “adulthood,” which we may define as, say, Windows XP or OS X; after that I believe the core functionality of the PC OS has not been substantially altered), which is roughly the same as the speed of maturation for a human being, and Generation I has the privilege of being the computer’s twin sibling, if you will.

Though the virtue of being born at the right time is not ours to claim, nor is it simply a novelty that Generation I has grown up in tandem with a world-defining technology. As we grew up with it, we have seen and participated in all the stages of generational technology. We witnessed as children the squabbling between Atari, Microsoft, Amiga, and all the others as the beat the raw metal of computing technology into a shape the world could use. We knew it when it was young, and then we helped it become a household technology by simply being in the household, the way baby boomer kids grew up around cars and ended up knowing cars better than any generation before them. However, cars as a technology practically stood still for the car kids’ formative stages. Not so for us: every year the computer was changing its case, its OS, its capabilities, its interface — everything changed about it, but we still recognized it, the way we’d recognize an old playmate year after year who, though changing in size, aspect, and ability, we still know. That is how Generation I knows the computer, the internet, the smartphone, and whatever comes next. Not as a series of devices, but as the natural progression of a friend whom we know by sight in spite of the changes wrought by time and culture. Perhaps it is best expressed that we know the ghost in the machine, that which has informed and guided the progression of the technology from household appliance to a tool as fundamental as the wheel.

Captain Nemo took pride in the Nautilus “moving through a medium of movement.” He meant the ocean, of course, a place that is never the same one instant to the next, but which he nonetheless knew and navigated freely because… well, because he had a submarine. The metaphor doesn’t extend that far. But the idea of moving in a moving medium is a powerful one. To truly understand the way that the world changes around you, and to not only be able to survive in it but to thrive, to navigate, to direct that change, that is the privilege of a generation born into movement.

I see in my flight of fancy I’ve really built up Generation I into quite a ridiculously grand thing, and in doing so made the same mistake that I described in the first sentence of this article. I did not mean to do so, but the simple boon of being born alongside a world-changing technology is not minor: it matured with us and has shaped us as much as we have shaped it, and that means that we are on the front line for the Mirror Stage of the information age. Can you forgive me for being excited to be a part of a sea change in civilization, a change in infrastructure perhaps more fundamental than the integration of the automobile? Few events in history are the equal of this impending shift, if I’m not mistaken. I of course don’t claim it for myself or my generation; it is a glory we will share in, but which we may be able to uniquely enjoy. Imagine being the childhood friend of the first man to set foot on Mars. It’s no credit on yourself exactly, but you just may understand him more fundamentally than anybody else.

What’s that I hear you saying? That we haven’t actually contributed much to the progress of the personal computer and the internet? Very true! If I’ve claimed otherwise I’m very sorry, because Generation I, like the baby boomer generation in the 60s, isn’t quite ready to make our mark. The fact is we’re just starting out. What was the work of the baby boomers? Was it driving cars around fast and knowing how to clean a carburetor? Hell no. Their task wasn’t just to know the technology that would shape their world, but to shape their world. And that’s our job as well. What changes the world will know in the next 20 years are impossible to predict, but you better believe that Generation I are going to set their shoulders to it. The Mirror Stage awaits.

And why Generation I? Before us is Generation X, or so we are told. I’ve heard people my age, or my brother’s, as Generation Y. It’s no use naming a generation before their purpose is clear; otherwise the Greatest Generation would be called the Kaiser Kids or something horribly inappropriate. Generation I occurred to me as I was writing this piece, and as far as I can tell it’s the most evocative of that which truly defines us.

Generation I reflects the burst of technology which in the last decade (as we ourselves have made our real-world debut), has become commonplace, and the prefix “i-” has become a universal indicator of tech. Yes, it’s a bit of a capitulation to Apple, but let’s not fool ourselves: the iPod and iMac immediately became so synonymous with personal technology that i- became generic almost overnight. So we’ve got Generation i. To be honest, I’m not sure if I prefer i or I. I think that, like other instances of the letter, capitalization may vary.

Generation I is also Generation Me: the increasing independence and compartmentalization of the social order that is the result of the personal computer and the internet, our totem technologies. It’s the paradox of instant connection and constant isolation.

And Generation I is Generation One. This is the most important of all. The coincidence of timing that resulted in us being born with silicon in our mouths also charges us with a serious responsibility — though what it may be is yet unknown. No generation is warned of the tribulations ahead, though with luck our task will be suited to our unique position. But why the One? If, as I suspect, we are in fact the first wave of a new, tech-integrative sort of people, then surely the kids born after us, into a world already possessing high-speed internet, Wikipedia, and GPS smartphones, are Generation II. What better than to start giving version numbers to our offspring? Seems like something Generation I would do.

I’d like to conclude with an apology. If you’ve read this far, there’s a good chance you’re seething with anger at having been excluded from what I seem to think is the most awesome generation of all time, who invented everything worthwhile and will do everything important in the future. I want to correct that potential misconception, though I understand where it’s coming from. Obviously the pioneers of the information age are largely baby boomers, and of course Generation X is one of the great utilizers of technology. And for that matter, kids today fulfill many of the conditions that I think make Generation I so special. I can only say that I tend to get carried away, and that our special situation is really the main thing we have going for us. Am I reaching? Very likely. Am I romanticizing? Most certainly. Let’s chalk it up to youthful vigor.

It is probably true that every distinct generation is born into a confluence of circumstances that is consequential in its own way. Too often, though, I have felt that people my age have been maligned as a passive generation, one of consumption and luxury. That’s actually true as far as it goes, but there is much beneath the surface; who would have thought that the boomers, flower children and hot-rodders in the 60s, would be galvanized by the civil rights movement and Vietnam, emerging to become the most powerful demographic in the country, and perhaps the world, for decades running? It is toward such heights that Generation I must drive itself. We must show ourselves equal to the special favor we have been granted, and do our part to carry the world into the next age, whatever it asks of us.

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Cave Story includes playable Curly Brace

How Google Plans To Take Over The TV Business (GOOG, INTC, SNE)

Should My Town Get Goofy for Goo-Fiber?

GigaOM

- 1 days and 1 hours ago

The mayor of Sarasota, Fla., went swimming with the sharks today — yes, literally — in an extreme effort to woo Google and land that sweet fiber network the company plans to dole out to some lucky town. And he’s not alone. Cities across the country have Google fiber fever, pulling off stunts like renaming their city “Google” (formerly Topeka, Kan.) or having the mayor jump into a frozen lake (Duluth, Minn).

My city of Alameda, Calif.? We’re passing a city council resolution!

Heaven knows I want a 1 gigabit-per-second connection, too — so why isn’t my mayor wrestling an octopus (or sharktopus)? Is Sarasota (or Duluth, or Topeka) on to something?

“We don’t have a burgeoning tech and creative industry,” explained Richard Swier (see disclosure below), who is spearheading Sarasota’s attempt to get Google fiber. And without such an industry, he felt his town had to do something “crazy” in order to get on Google’s radar. In addition to the shark tank, Sarasota declared one of its islands “Google Island,” and its I Want Google Fiber in Sarasota page on Facebook claims some 5,300 fans.

Alameda’s more sober approach certainly lacks flair, but that, too, is by design, according to Deputy City Manager Jennifer Ott. She believes the message Google sent out in its call for participation was that the company wanted speed, efficiency and regulatory assistance, which the city council’s resolution, with its task force and one point of contact for the entire project, was specifically designed to do.

Jim Meyer, who founded the non-profit WireAlameda.org, echoed Ott’s all-business approach. “We have a strong application,” he assured me.

Since an active community behind the project was another one of the criteria set by Google, I asked Meyer about our paltry number of Facebook fans and the dearth of big, showy community events. Meyer pointed out that Facebook is a competitor to Google, so the group didn’t want a big presence there, and in terms of big events, WireAlameda is organizing a community chalk-drawing event this weekend. Chalk drawing certainly won’t attract mainstream media attention (unless it’s laser chalk), but it’s not meant to — the point is to showcase townsfolk that come out in order to pitch in.

In the meantime, an unexpected benefit has emerged: The actions of Swier’s group, WireAlameda and others around the country have become a rallying point for towns beaten down by tough economic times. Amidst the constant news of layoffs and general bad times, Google’s gambit is giving people something they haven’t seen in awhile — hope.

**Disclosure: I went to high school with and played 9th grade basketball with Swier. We haven’t talked really at all since high school, but his relentless efforts and recruiting on Facebook clogged up my news feed and provided inspiration for this story.

Image courtesy of Flickr user RRaiderstyle

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A review a day: Crogan's March

Comics Should Be Good!

- 1 days and 3 hours ago

Why isn't there an ongoing about a person in the French Foreign Legion? That would rock. Dang, I hope no one steals that from me before I can pitch it to Vertigo!

The second volume of Chris Schweizer's Crogan Adventures is out! It's called Crogan's March, it's published by Oni Press, and it costs $14.95. That's fifteen bucks for over 200 pages of early twentieth-century Foreign Legion action! How can you resist???

Well, you shouldn't resist. Much like the first volume, Crogan's Vengeance, the latest is pretty danged excellent. It's a bit darker than the first, which is, as a pirate tale, more swashbuckling. In this book, Schweizer tackles some more pertinent issues to current events, as the debate throughout the book is whether the French are doing any actual good in north Africa. It's nice that in what is something that teenagers can read (the book is "rated" for people 13 and up), we get some interesting geopolitical debate. It's far more interesting than we usually get in comics, I'll tell you that much!

The set-up of the book is the same as the first, as will probably remain for the series. In the present, Dr. Crogan discovers his sons, Cory and Eric, doing something that requires a life lesson. In this case, Eric (the older brother) is trying to tell Cory what he can do with his money, because his parents told him he needed to "watch out for him." Cory claims he can make his own decisions, while Eric disagrees. Dr. Crogan tells them that this idea - whether someone can take away someone else's choices - has a long history, especially with regard to colonialism. Schweizer's conceit in this series is that the Crogan family has an impossibly impressive pedigree - we see the family tree at the beginning of each book, and it's full of stereotypical "action" heroes, from "Catfoot" Crogan the pirate to a Japanese ninja (yes, really) to a Wild West gunfighter to a diamond miner to a secret agent to Peter Crogan, the hero of this book. And they all live stories that help teach life lessons! Fancy that! Dr. Crogan explains to his sons that the French Foreign Legion was a group of soldiers from different countries (which isn't totally true, as many French natives fought in it) who fought for France, always in colonial adventures (Dr. Crogan uses the past tense, but the Foreign Legion still exists). In 1912, Peter Crogan was in the Legion, stationed in north Africa. And so the adventure begins!

Schweizer acknowledges the debt to Percival Christopher Wren, who wrote Beau Geste and set the standard for fiction about the Legion, and in many ways, this book is extremely old school (I've never read Beau Geste, so I can't say it's like that), with plenty of action and adventure and soldiers awaggering about the Algerian desert. There's a martinet sergeant, a dashing, heroic major, mysterious raiders who swarm out of the hills and besiege a fort, and a desperate trek through the mountains to safety. If you enjoy action, you'll love this. But Schweizer adds plenty of depth to the book, too. The martinet sergeant is certainly tough, but he also understands a great deal about what the Legion is doing in Africa. Captain Roitelet is a hero to the men, but when he first shows up, he has been demoted (from major to captain) for unknown reasons (but it's implied it's because he's too "heroic" for the stodgy officer corps). Peter Crogan is more thoughtful than the rest of the men, but even he admires Roitelet and doesn't understand why Sergeant Ludlow isn't besotted with him. Ludlow explains himself and his objections to Roitelet, and then Roitelet himself tells Crogan his philosophy. It's the principle that Dr. Crogan and his kids were debating at the beginning of the book: Ludlow believes that the rights of the French Revolution - "liberty, equality, fraternity" - shouldn't be exclusive to France, and the common people who live in slavery in north Africa deserve a chance for freedom. Roitelet, on the other hand, believes they're nothing but savages who should be thankful that France is paying them any attention. What's interesting about this argument is that while Ludlow is more enlightened than Roitelet, he still doesn't believe the natives are capable of gaining freedom on their own. Is he any better than Roitelet?

Later on, when Crogan gets separated from the rest of his unit, he ends up in the mountains helping a bunch of native refugees get to the main French fort. One of the natives, an old woman, argues with him constantly about the French presence in north Africa. It's a fascinating argument, and it keeps getting interrupted by events, where the two often find common ground. Schweizer never beats us over the head with it, and just because the old woman has her moments doesn't mean she's going to form a different opinion of Crogan or the French. It's impressive how Schweizer manages to bring up his points while the group moves through dark caves in which lurk dangerous things. The sequence remains tense even as the two characters argue political and cultural points.

Crogan's March is more downbeat than the first book, possibly because Schweizer is dealing with things that are still relevant today. Piracy might still be around, but the idea of colonialism remains a difficult point of contention among colonialists and the colonized. Schweizer does an excellent job of giving us rip-roaring action, but there's always an undercurrent of tragedy (mainly because it's often tragic) that leads us closer and closer to a conclusion that gives us no easy answers. Dr. Crogan ends his tale in a wonderful spot, explaining exactly why he do so but also making sure the readers understand the futility of war without being graphic about it. It's really a tremendous ending to a great book.

Schweizer's the kind of artist who, on the surface, looks a bit cartoony and therefore perhaps lacking in "realistic" details. However, he blends his exaggerated character features with wonderful attention to detail. Check out, for instance, our first glimpse of Tafizet:

02-27-2010 09;49;08AM

We get this throughout the book. The battle scenes are frantic, the scenes in the cave are claustrophobic, and the characters, while they are a bit exaggerated, are still memorably drawn. Each panel gives us plenty of visual information, even the ones that are all black (and there are a few). Schweizer is very good. You know it's true!

If you missed Crogan's Vengeance, you should probably rectify that right away. However, if pirating doesn't sound like your thing but legionairing does, you should definitely check this out. You don't need to have read the first volume, and it's quite excellent.

02-27-2010 09;51;01AM

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Our Social Media Obsession by the Numbers [STATS]

Mashable!

- 1 days and 3 hours ago

From the time we wake up in the morning to the moment we call it a day, and every moment in between (think bedroom, bathroom and dinner table), we’re checking in on our favorite social media sites.

This conclusion comes from data gathered by an independent study (commissioned by Retrevo), which surveyed 1,000 online individuals.

Per the report, our Facebook and Twitter activities continue even after we’ve hit the hay, with 48% of respondents checking in on activity when they wake up in the middle of the night or as soon as they wake up in the morning.Â Unsurprisingly, these night owl social media behaviors skew heavily toward those under the age of 25.

iPhone users are the most social of the respondent pool and were significantly more likely to check or update Twitter or Facebook from bed — many before turning on the TV in the morning. Several also use these sites to consume their morning news. The iPhone’s app and web experience is clearly making it even easier for the young socialites to maintain their Internet presence regardless of their physical station in life.

The study also found that 56% of social media users check Facebook once a day, 32% don’t mind being interrupted by an electronic message while eating and 24% of respondents under the age of the 25 have no problem with digital communication while on the pot.

A few other interesting data points from the study include:

- 12% of respondents check/use Facebook every couple of hours

- 62% of individuals over the age of 25 see electronic communications during a meeting, meal, sex or bathroom act as unwanted interruptions

- 23% of iPhone owners primarily get their morning news from Twitter and Facebook

While we can’t verify that the data is representative of the entire population, most of these stats — which might be surprising on first look — should be expected. Now that smartphones with apps are ubiquitous, it’s quite logical that these devices would accompany their owners even in the most private or intimate of scenarios.

[img credit: Markus Bollingmo]

Tags: facebook, social media, stats, twitter

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Mashable’s Weekly Guide to Social Media Job Opportunities

Mashable!

- 1 days and 4 hours ago

If you’re seeking a job in social media, we’d like to help out. For starters, Mashable’s Job Lists section gathers together all our resource lists, how-tos and expert guides to help you get hired. In particular, you might want to see our articles on How to Leverage Social Media for Career Success and How to Find a Job on Twitter.

But we’d like to help in a more direct way, too. Mashable’s job boards are a place for socially-savvy companies to find people like you. This week and every week, Mashable features its coveted job board listings for a variety of positions in the web, social media space, and beyond. Have a look at what’s good and new on our job boards:

Mashable Job Board ListingsSenior SEO Strategist at Infuse Creative in Santa Monica, CA

The Senior SEO Strategist and Provider develops and provides effective Search Engine Optimization strategies for client websites, with the goal of generating increased targeted Web traffic and higher lead generation.