We’ve got a busy start to the semester here at Humanistic Informatics. Jan Rune Holmevik, MOO guru and wonderful person in general, is defending his PhD. Here’s the press release, with a nice photo of Jan, and a brief description in Norwegian. His title is Traceback: MOO, Open Source, and the Humanities, and it’s an exploration of how the humanities can engage with information technologies more directly. The dissertation is half practical, half theoretical, including both theoretical discussions of hacker ethics and methods and of the open source movement, and the source code to the enCore MOO platform Jan’s developed, using these approaches. Jan and his partner Cynthia Haynes‘s work on MOOs is inestimable. They published two books, run LinguaMOO and their work has led to thousands of other educational MOOs being set up using the enCore code. Jan certainly deserves this degree.
A Norwegian PhD defence, as you know, involves ritual and lectures. Jay David Bolter is Jan’s first opponent, and he’s giving a lecture too. And Scott Rettberg‘s coming for a visit, much to my pleasure, and he’ll be giving a talk next Wednesday. All these people have made significant contributions to the field of new media, and if you’re in Bergen I’d recommend attending all of this!
- Thursday 8/1, 2.15 pm: Jay Bolter’s giving a guest lecture on The New and the Old in New Media. Room 264, HF building.
- Thursday 8/1, 4.15 pm: Jan Rune Holmevik’s trial lecture. Auditorium B, Sydneshaugen skole.
- Friday 9/1, 10.15 am: Jan Rune Holmevik’s defence. Auditorium B, Sydneshaugen skole.
- Wednesday 14/1, 10.15 am: Scott Rettberg’s guest lecture on Collaborations in Electronic Writing. Auditorium R, Sydneshaugen skole.
Sigurd Olivier
Interactive books …….. to my mind this might be the way to go with internet publishing.
I listened to the BBC programme The Word interviewing you, and would like to share my views with you.
I have had two books published by established publishers, and two books I published myself. One of the latter turned over about 200-thousand Euro. So I am becoming something of a veteran….
Now I have an adventure story on my website http://www.magicmirror.nl and click on which is interactive. It is written in the form of a film script, but when visitors click on an illustration, it becomes an animation, and when they click on a song title, they can listen to the song.
I do not think readers will be satisfied with a book text simply plonked on the web. Internet offers more, and I feel one should give the public more. And the beauty of the Internet is that you can keep improving your presentation, and adding more.
Should you be interested in using any of this and want to contact me, my phone number is The Netherlands 575 – 524.346.
Kind regards
Sigurd Olivier