F A L L E V E N T S c alen d a r I N S I D E , p a g e 2 4

In Medias Res
cmsw.mit.edu fall 2013

Comparative Media Studies|Writing

The Best of Times: A New Age for Science Readers

Jing Wang on NGO 2.0
Interview with New Associate Head Edward Schiappa Ethan Zuckerman and Diversifying Your Online World

Comparative Media Studies|Writing

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TO OUR READERS

The Mind and Hand of CMS/W

James Paradis

4 F E A T U R E S 8 F E A T U R E S

This Years New Graduate Students The Best of Times: A New Age for Science Readers
Tom Levenson on the present and future, good or bad, of science writingand reading

All of which is to belabor the obvious: this is a Gutenberg moment, a handful of years decades at most when the range of ideas about science and its connections to human experience can reach audiences that have never had such a wealth of information and interpretation so immediately available to them. Tom Levenson, p. 8 Do you really want to use Facebook to help you track down every elementary school friend you ever had? Or can we push you in new directions and introduce you to, say, people from other parts of the world who have things in common with you? Ethan Zuckerman, p. 11 When we designed the curriculum, from the very beginning, we found that teaching [Chinese NGOs] how to use the tools is probably less important than teaching them how to position themselves, how to brand themselves, how to utilize digital communication to deal with stakeholders, the public, and volunteers. Jing Wang, p. 12 I think of rhetoric as engineering with words, or, in Lloyd Bitzers terms, as a mode of altering reality, not by the direct application of energy to objects, but by the creation of discourse which changes reality through the mediation of thought and action. Suzanne Lane, p. 18

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Research Managers
Federico Casalegno, Mobile Experience Lab Sasha Costanza-Chock, Center for Civic Media Kurt Fendt, HyperStudio Fox Harrell, ICE Lab Nick Montfort, The Trope Tank Scot Osterweil, The Education Arcade Philip Tan, MIT Game Lab Sarah Wolozin, Open Documentary Lab

11 F eatures

Diversifying Your Online World

Peter Dizikes on the new book from Ethan Zuckerman

12 interv iews

Jing Wang on NGO 2.0 Edward Schiappa Suzanne Lane & Andreas Karatsolis
I n the N ews

16 I nterv iews

Staff
Ashley Caval Administrative Assistant, Writing Across the Curriculum Jessica Dennis Financial Assistant Jill Janows Grants Developer and Administrator Shannon Larkin Graduate Administrator Karinthia Louis Administrative Assistant Michael Rapa Technology Support Specialist Becky Shepardson Academic Coordinator Sarah Smith Administrative Officer Jessica Tatlock Events Coordinator Andrew Whitacre Communications Director

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Even If You Dont Recognize the Characters, You Want to Find Out Who They Are
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Fall 2013 Talks

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TO OUR READERS

The Mind and Hand of CMS/W

By James Paradis

James Paradis

his issue of In Medias Res features some exciting CMS/W initiatives and offers some extra coverage to the W-side of the CMS/W

In this issue of In Medias Res, Tom Levensons reflections on the new journalism of science reading, Ethan Zuckermans new book Rewire on digital civic engagement, and Jing Wangs NGO 2.0 digital organizing in China all offer exemplary blends of mind and hand in the culture of engagement and innovation at the heart of CMS/W. And the rhetoricians Ed Schiappa, Suzanne Lane, and Andreas Karatsolis remind us of the media literacy that lies at the heart of contemporary civic engagement with technology, the humanities, and the arts.

section. One of the gains of the recent merger of CMS and Writing at MIT is the further integration of two units that have been collaborating closely for more than a decade. Some years ago, back in the mists of time, CMS founder Henry Jenkins and I sat next to one another at dinner at an MIT Humanities retreat on Cape Cod. We had just finished a day of presentations by the unit heads of their research and education. At the time, Henry was co-directing (with William Uricchio) Comparative Media Studies, and I was head of Writing and Humanistic Studies, and, as we talked about the days research directions and commiserated on the challenge of finding resources to support our developing course offerings and graduate programs, something fairly obvious emerged. CMS had developed a vibrant critical, historical, and creative curriculum around legacy and new media, and WHS had long since become a program oriented around contemporary fiction, journalism, documentary film, and digital media, with talents like Joe Haldeman, Alan Lightman, Helen Lee, Junot Diaz, Nick Montfort, Tom Levenson, and others. I leaned over to Henry, I recall, and said something like Why dont we just merge? Without missing a beat, Henry looked me intensely in the eye and said something like I havent seen any proposals yet. Wellit wasnt all that easy to make happen, but the logic was pretty clear a long long time ago.

The W-side brings to CMS/W a workshop culture of creative experimentation in an exciting blend of traditional literary and media arts, as well as innovative curricula and research in contemporary journalism and a model program in communication education and media literacy. While the W-side arts curriculum moves across fiction, poetry, video, photography, and various interactive and avant garde practices, the journalistic and communication curriculum works across civics and media literacy. Many of these practices pair up naturally with CMS/W research centers like the Education Arcade, Trope Tank, ICE Lab, Mobile Experience Lab, Center for Civic Media, HyperStudio, Game Lab, and Open Documentary Lab. Mens et Manus, MITs motto, meaning Mind and Hand, actually works well for CMS/W, as many of its arts, social sciences, and humanities classes are practice-based and complement or draw on the research initiatives. CMS/W, as one part of our mission statement notes, is devoted to understanding the ways that media technologies can enrich the lives of individuals locally, across the U.S., and globally. CMS/W faculty, researchers, and students share a deep commitment to the development of pioneering new tools and strategies which serve the needs of diverse communities in the 21st century.

In this issue of In Medias Res, Tom Levensons reflections on the new journalism of science reading, Ethan Zuckermans new book Rewire on digital civic engagement, and Jing Wangs NGO 2.0 digital organizing in China all offer exemplary blends of mind and hand in the culture of engagement and innovation at the heart of CMS/W. And the rhetoricians Ed Schiappa, Suzanne Lane, and Andreas Karatsolis remind us of the media literacy that lies at the heart of contemporary civic engagement with technology, the humanities, and the arts. Ed will be taking over this fall as interim Head of CMS/W. In the last issue of In Medias Res, we began with an overview a number of the core faculty of CMS/W, so it is nice to start this issue with profiles of our new class of graduate students, whose remarkable track records have carved a pathway to our program of study. The Mind and Hand educational approach puts us all together in a world of collaboration and projects, where all can learn from each other and help set the agenda.

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This Years New Graduate Students

As we have the pleasure of doing each fall, we welcome and introduce you to another class of graduate studentsand this year, following the merger, were thrilled to include the new members of the Graduate Program in Science Writing. And find out what our alums are up to later in this issue and online at cmsw.mit.edu/alumni. Liam Andrew (CMS) Yale University, B.A. Liam grew up in Iowa and Connecticut, where he made a racket with various musical instruments. In college he discovered he could study noises too; his senior thesis at Yale University explored the phonograph and the influence of recorded sound on literature and music. Since graduating, hats worn have included translator, book indexer, archivist, English teacher abroad, and most recently, software developer for Delve, a news reader and aggregator that helps organizations find and share important reads. Liam likes building and organizing collections, and his interest in information structure extends to mapping and technologys relationship with public space. He still makes noises as a sound designer and member of Dinowalrus. Chelsea Barabas (CMS) Stanford University, B.A. In 2009 Chelsea graduated from Stanford with a B.A. in Sociology and minors in Arabic and Feminist Studies. Over the last four years, she has worked with an international development start-up called Nuru International. With Nuru, Chelsea headed up the development of co-learning and design opportunities between Western development practitioners and local social entrepreneurs. Chelsea hopes to build from this experience during her time at MIT by exploring ways online platforms may be leveraged to foster communities of learning and practice, particularly in cross-cultural contexts. She is also interested in understanding how emerging technologies can be wielded to create stronger bridges between education and civic engagement by expanding learning from the classroom to other nodes of a learners life. As a thin-blooded Texas native, Chelsea hopes to thrive in her studies by hiding from the cold weather (a.k.a., anything below 80 degrees) in the library and labs on campus. Her desk will be the one with the vitamin D sun lamp nearby. Lindsay Brownell (Science Writing) Davidson College, B.S. and B.A. Lindsay is a native of Detroit and spent most of her childhood either digging for worms and collecting rocks or with her face buried in a book, often at the dinner table. She attended Davidson College in North Carolina, where she indulged in such nerdy activities as a twelve-hour reading/performance of John Miltons epic poem Paradise Lost and Dance Dance Revolution tournaments. She also studied abroad twice: in Costa Rica for tropical biology and in the UK for British literature and art history. She became fascinated with evolution, genetics, and Romantic writing (are you noticing a bit of a split-brain tendency?). After graduating with a dual degree in English and Biology, she taught Spanish in Switzerland, worked at Google in Ann Arbor for two years, and traveled extensively ( just hiked the Inca Trail in Peru and is about to leave for the Camino de Santiago in Spain). She is very excited to finally get to wrangle the literary and scientific parts of her brain into cooperation and will be focusing on the biological sciences. In her spare time, she likes anything having to do with Disney, dancing, ultimate frisbee, rock climbing, trying to learn how DSLR cameras work, roaming farmers markets, and watching thunderstorms from her window while listening to Beethoven sonatas. Heather Craig (CMS) Wesleyan University, B.A. Heather focuses her work on the interplay between interactive media and community engagement. She cofounded Media Action, a non-profit organization that produces educational interactive media and facilitates digital storytelling workshops. Prior to Media Action, Heather worked for production and communication companies on media for broadcast, interactive exhibitions, and online distribution. She has facilitated digital storytelling workshops in Alaska and East Africa, including working with NGOs and information and communication technologies for development organizations on collaborative documentaries and participatory media education workshops. Heathers entry into the field of community media began shortly after college when she worked as a Teaching Assistant at the Maine Media Workshops and the International Center of Photography. At MIT, she will continue to explore the intersections of education, digital storytelling, and civic engagement. She studied anthropology and archaeology at Wesleyan University.

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When shes not working on community-based technology projects, Heather enjoys climbing mountains and working on small-scale carpentry projects. Julie Duke (Science Writing) Harvard University, B.A. Julie first book told the story of an ugly dinosaur who, la The Ugly Duckling, had simply been hanging around with a dissimilar species. This story foreshadowed some of Julies life passions, including writing, studying evolutionary biology and history, and spending time with animals of the non-human variety. Julie grew up an aspiring veterinarian in St. Louis and entered Harvard College an aspiring writer. She exited college with a History of Science degree, having particularly in an honors thesis her senior year, in which she explored anthropomorphism and scientific story-telling in the age of Darwin. Julie then worked happily alongside scientists and animals in the Conservation and Science department of Chicagos Lincoln Park Zoo for two years. At MIT, Julie is excited to write about biological science, conservation, and animals (both ugly and cute). She can often be found volunteering at wildlife rehabilitation centers, petting strangers dogs, and searching for bits of wilderness in the city. Suruchi Dumpawar (CMS) National Institute of Technology, CERT Visvesvaraya National Institute of Technology, BTEC Suruchi Dumpawar was born and raised in central India, where she graduated with a B.Tech in Electronics and Communications Engineering from National Institute of Technology, Nagpur. She worked at Oracle SSI, Bangalore as a part of the Interfaces and Conversions team developing interfaces across various modules of Oracle applications. After receiving her photography education at the National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad, she co-founded Lucida an art, research and education-driven photographers collective. Her photography work exploits the idiom of documentary photography to wheedle out visual narratives by revealing subtle details, making connections apparent and informing insights into her subjects. At CMS, Suruchi hopes to utilize her background in visual communication and information technology to explore the notion of experientiality through multiple media platforms. A self-proclaimed film buff and a fledgling filmmaker, Suruchi has a keen interest in digital storytelling. She loves to travel, derives great pleasure from poring over books, and is continually fascinated by language, light, and the human brain.

Sean Flynn (CMS) University of Southern California, B.A. Sean is a documentary producer, cinematographer, and programmer. He is the Director of the Points North Documentary Forum at Camden International Film Festival and a cofounder of the DocYard screening series in Cambridge. Sean began his filmmaking career at Boston-based Principle Pictures as the Associate Producer and Co-Director of Photography on the feature documentary Beyond Belief, which premiered at the 2007 Tribeca Film Festival and aired on Sundance Channel. As a cinematographer, Sean has worked in 15 countries including conflict zones like Iraq, Afghanistan, Burma, and the West Bank. As a producer, he has helped garner support for numerous social issue film projects from many of the nations leading documentary funders, including ITVS, NEH, Cinereach, Fledgling Fund, Chicken & Egg Pictures, and the Tribeca Film Institute. Most recently, he was a producer on The List, which premiered at the 2012 Tribeca Film Festival. Much of Seans documentary film work involves investigating the points of contact between societies widely separated by conflict or inequality. In 2012, he spent four months researching the emergence of slum tourism in Mumbai while on a Fulbright fellowship. Seans research interests include exploring the ways that new media technologies can be leveraged to disrupt the traditional relationships between filmmaker, subject, and audience, creating new forms of nonfiction storytelling. Sean received his B.A. from the University of Southern Californias School of Cinematic Arts. Desi Gonzalez (CMS) Emory University, B.A. Desi comes to MIT having been a museum educator and as a writer completing a yearlong fellowship at the Museum of Modern Art. There, she endeavors to make modern and contemporary art accessible to all audiences through materials such as wall texts, audio tours, games, interactive learning spaces, and websites. She previously worked in Family Programs at the Whitney Museum of American Art, where she managed and wrote texts for the Whitneys website for young artists, For Kids. At CMS, she plans to study the relationship between digital media and the visitor experience in museums. Puerto Rico-born and Maryland-raised, Desi graduated from Emory University with majors in art history and linguistics. She

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writes for various culture publications about art, language, feminism, and occasionally the intersection of all three. In her spare time, shes probably eating dessert. Alix Morris (Science Writing) Colgate University, B.A.; Johns Hopkins, M.H.S. Alix grew up in Boxford, Massachusetts, in a 300-year-old haunted farmhouse home to Scottish Highland cows, donkeys, and chickens. After obtaining her Bachelors degree in English Literature, she took the very natural path towardsglobal health. Inspired by her work for a childrens HIV program, Alix spent a few years working in the field where she wrote the occasional news story about HIV prevention efforts. She then returned to school to obtain her Masters in Health Science from Johns Hopkins School of Public Health. From there, she traveled to East Africa where she conducted research on ways to improve malaria treatment and diagnosis. It was her desire to communicate the effects of a malaria subsidy pilot program, or the suspected outbreak of the Ebola virus in one of the research communities, or even what she claims was a near death experience with a friendly whale shark and giant manta ray while on vacation in Mozambique, among many other reasons, that drove Alix towards the world of science writing. Shes now eager to learn ways in which to communicate the many wonders of health, science, and the environment. Jenny Rood (Science Writing) Harvard University, B.A.; MIT, Ph.D. Jenny was born and raised in Boulder, Colorado, where she developed an early love for science and nature from keeping an eye out for scurrying prairie dogs along the highways of her home state. Elementary school science fair experiments on the metal-cleaning powers of lemon juice, the electrical conductivity of pickles, the beauty (or horror?) of everyday bacteria and fungi and the stickiness of adhesive bandages under water were followed by middle school frog dissections and high school genetics lessons that convinced her she wanted to be a biologist. Meanwhile, she published poems and short stories often concerned with animals or biological topics. While pursuing her bachelors degree in biochemical sciences at Harvard University, she continued writing, penning an award-winning essay on Mary Shelleys Frankenstein. After college she visited the stunning natural wonders of Antarctica and served as a research fellow in the German parliament before returning to Cambridge and the lab bench. Now armed with a deep biochemical knowledge of enzymes and a Ph.D. in biology from MIT,

Jenny is excited to have the opportunity to learn how to communicate to others why science is so fascinatingly beautiful. Emma Sconyers (Science Writing) University of Rhode Island, B.A. Emma grew up in Newport, Rhode Island, never far from the beach or the local nature preserve, where she could usually be found with stacks of field guides, glass collection jars, and a magnifying glass tucked safely under her arms. Her love of the natural world inspired her to pursue a degree in Biology from the University of Rhode Island. However, her love of literature and writing nagged so hard she decided to double minor in English and Writing and Rhetoric. After completing an honors thesis on the history of tuberculosis sanitaria in Rhode Island, her dedication to pursuing a career in science writing was cemented. Emma landed a job as a Medical Staff Secretary at Newport Hospital. When shes not chasing down doctors to sign piles of paperwork, she moonlights as the co-director of her high schools theater company as well as a photography assistant (both of which shes been doing for some time). Emma is thrilled to join the MIT Science Writing program this fall where she hopes to delve into her favorite subjects: the history of medicine, genetics, natural conservation, and biological discovery. She is unapologetically in love with Martha Stewart and all things domestic, walking in the woods with her dog, and singing old jazz standards far too loudly while shes doing dishes. Jesse Sell (CMS) University of Pittsburgh, S.B. Jesse grew up in Allentown, Pennsylvania, spending most of his time playing volleyball and video games. He received a B.S. in Cultural Anthropology and Classical Studies from the University of Pittsburgh. He spent his college summers working aboard cruise ships in the Caribbean and the Pacific Northwest. Both his education and employment allowed him to meet and work with people from around the world and to notice the universal and connecting nature of gaming. After graduation, Jesse accepted a job with a mortgage company in Philadelphia. While trying to balance both his work and social life, games became his outlet for communication and socialization. Jesse applied to the CMS program with hopes to study the impact of video games on culture. At CMS, Jesse is a member of the Education Arcade. His research interests include the power of play as a tool, livestreaming, and the future of professional gaming.

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Erik Stayton (CMS) Brown University, S.B. Erik is a writer, designer, and programmer with a background in physics and English. He is interested in the effects of technological development, particularly computer and information technologies, on culture and specifically, how the affordances of computer languages affect cultural and artistic production. Currently, he is focused on the evolution of the World Wide Web and how web technologies shape online discourse. He is also fascinated by copyright and privacy law. He moonlights as a writer and editor, and his current programming ventures include mobile application projects for the programming partnership Cinnamon Bird. Erik is from Massachusetts and got his dual degree at Brown University in Providence. He plays guitar and enjoys mountain biking, archery, iaido, and swing dance. Abi Nighthill (Science Writing) Columbia College Chicago, B.A. Abi grew up just outside of Portland, Oregon. There, most of her skies were obscured by branches, clouds, or both. After wandering aimlessly around Portland State University for a few years, she moved to Chicago and earned a B.A. in Poetry with a minor in Environmental Studies. Her thesis focused on haiku poetics and the behavior of jumping spiders, and other major works exhumed the science from Emily Dickinsons works or followed the story of DARPAs HI-MEMS (cyborg moths) project. Easily seduced, she found herself interested in many facets of the sciences: ocean ecology, cognitive neuroscience, quantum mechanics, botany, cyborgs how fortunate that she could sate her curiosity through writing. She has since developed and taught a course at Portland State University that explores intersections of science and poetry, and worked on a memoir in hypertext that focuses on uncertainty, poetry, and new media. Ainsley Sutherland (CMS) University of Chicago, B.A. Ainsley graduated from the University of Chicago with a B.A. in Economics. Her studies have focused on economics, visual art history, cybernetics and media culture, and interactive narrative. Ainsley has worked variously as an illustrator, game designer, curriculum designer, and most recently as a research specialist at Game Changer Chicago,

where she co-designed transmedia games and stories to promote healthy behaviors alongside youth. She is interested in how real-time feedback causes users to modify their behavior, within social arenas and especially within narrative arenas. Ainsley hails originally from Baltimore and also likes her dog Kodiak, speculative fiction, other peoples poetry, cyclocross, and big ships. Yu Wang (CMS) University of Science and Technology of China, B.A. and M.A. Wang spent his years empowering Chinese grassroots NGOs with technology. As a member of NGO 2.0 China project, he participated in building the Philanthropy Map, which is designed to help Chinese NGOs and corporations find each others needs. He also attended web 2.0 workshops for Chinese NGOs as an instructor, to train them how to utilize social media to achieve their goals. As a graduate student at University of Science and Technology of China, Wang is interested in software developing and engineering, science communication, online education, data analysis, mining, and visualization. He believes that the well-being of society resides in the collaborative solving of social issues and sharing a delight about knowledge, life, and the world. Sam Wotipka (Science Writing) University of Oregon, B.A. Sam is a product of the Pacific Northwest. Born and raised in Oregon. He has also spent time living in British Columbia and the State of Washington. A summer spent growing tiny poplar trees in a muggy greenhouse for a university forestry department inspired a fascination in the scientific process that sticks with him to this day. Since then he has worked in a lab studying photoperiodism in mosquitoes and helped to grow, breed, and analyze trisomic corn plants for botany research. The origins of his love of writing are harder to identify, but it probably has something to do with being born to a pair of librarians. After graduating from the University of Oregon, Sam has spent the last two years working and living at a large state park on Whidbey Island in Washington State. He is both excited and admittedly a bit anxious about returning to civilization this year. While his scientific interests are broad, Sam is especially looking forward to writing about the life sciences and issues pertaining to the management of public lands.

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The Best of Times

By Tom Levenson, Director, Graduate Program in Science Writing

A New Age for Science Readers

iven my day job teaching young writers about covering science, and given that were at the first day of classes for our next cohort of science-writing graduate students, Ive been doing an informal survey of whats out there as venues in which those folks will perform over the next few years. And I came away with the somewhat unexpected sense that we are living in a genuinely great age for writing and the public engagement with science.1 Science writers are fond of weeping in their cups1 about the dire state of the traditional science media. And they/we should. MSM science writing is often said to have peaked in the so called golden age of the 80s. That was when a whole new crop of science-technology-gee-whiz glossies appeared. Time Inc.s Discover (my first real employer), Science 8X , Penthouse publications Omni 2 (founded 1978, actually) and others Im blanking on, joining old stalwarts enjoying new interest Scientific American, Popular Science, Science News, and others. The end of the decade saw the birth of one of my all-time favorites, the short-lived, much missed Mondo 2000, and in the early 90s, you got Wired. The NYTs Science Times first appeared as a separate section on November 14, 1978. It still exists, and is reasonably healthy but diminished from its heydey. Following the Grey Lady (no longer of ) 43rd St., other newspapers built up their own dedicated science, technology, and health desks. There were lots of jobs to be had, a seemingly endless tally of stories to be written. Part of the reason you saw such an expansion of science journalism was that the late 70s and onwards have been simply a fabulous time to be covering the beat. Consider: ITEM: You had the beginnings of the digital revolution ramping up into full scale insurrection over those years. I didnt grasp fully what it meant that I could haul my Kaypro C/PM driven, dual-disk drive machine down to the subway below the Time-Life Bldg., and then muscle it up to my fourth floor walk-up in Little Italy to pound away through the night but I knew that this was a wholly different experience from the typewriter-and-carbons system Id used just a year or two before to file from Manila and London. I got the significance a little more when I first played with the 300 baud modem I got with my TRS 100 (NEC clone, actually) notebook computer a couple of years later.3 But even if I was a little blas about this sudden appearance of computation in the nooks and crannies of my daily life, still, it was clear something big was in progress. ITEM: Same for the molecular biology story. As of 1980, it was still a huge deal to sequence a single gene, which meant that there was a lot of what looks from here to be dicey scientific claims and dicier stories

about the gene for (x) where x could be alcoholism or what have you. But again, even if in those days both researchers and reporters leapt to conclusions actual biology would erode over time,4 it was clear that we were in the midst of transformative shift in the precision and levels of explanation the understanding of causation that biology could approach when it tackled life at the molecular level. If weve learned that all the problems that seemed just one more DNA sequence short of solution are considerably more complicated than we might wish, still its not often you live through the kind of conceptual earthquake that occurred from the 70s to the 90s. That it now seems obviously the necessary approach is just a measure of how powerful a wave it was then.

But heres a funny thing. I do not believe there has been a better time to be a science reader.
ITEM: I could go on all day (and some might say I have). The original Keck telescope saw first light with its complete 10 meter mirror on April 14, 1992 an event that ended Mt. Palomars Hale telescopes 45-year run as the worlds largest (high performance) optical telescope.5 In the two decades since the Keck went live though I need to check this number I believe more telescope observing area has been installed around the world than was used in the entire prior history of professional observing dating back to 1609. Throw in the Hubble, the other NASA Great Observatories and the record of NASAs other unmanned space-science missions and you have a revolution in our knowledge of both the earth (remotely sensed from space) and our cosmic surroundings through incomprehensible ranges of space and time. And then theres you get the idea. Oh Brave New World with such knowledge int. Science is still roaring along, of course, and fundamental inquiry lands in technology with astonishing, daily-life-reworking speed. I remember in 1983 taking a trip to the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, where a virtuoso microscopist showed me a video image of a segment of a neuron, saying some think thats where memory resides. This year I spent time at MITs McGovern Institute for Brain Science, and talked to someone who was tracing in high resolution images of living brains thinking the development of specialized systems of thinking about other people. We live in amazing times; flat-out gorgeous, exciting times. Only, not so much for science writers trained up as I was, in an ecosystem dominated by a robust print advertising model. The newspaper science sections are gone, mostly, hundreds of them between 2000 and now. Magazines have folded, or eroded into shadows of their former selves. Theres a fragmentation of the business; there are these things that every graduate student seems to write I think theyre called blogs and.

Originally published as The Best of Times: (Good Reads Redux) at http://inversesquare. wordpress.com/2013/08/08/the-best-of-times-good-reads-redux/ Image above: Rembrandt van Rijn, A Scholar Seated at a Desk, 1634

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you know this drill too. But heres a funny thing. I do not believe there has been a better time to be a science reader. Ever. Again, in previous writing, I focused on a couple of fine articles turning up in one of the new venues for long-form science writing, London-based Aeon Magazine.6 Aeon is in some ways simply a digital expression of a conventional media type. It publishes essays and features, nicely illustrated with a bit of flat art, just like a magazine on dead trees. But even with that utterly familiar genre focus, there is still this crucial difference: that Aeon is an all-digital production means that it has no constraint either as to the overall length of the pieces it publishes, or to a need to cram its pieces into set frames, one page in the magazine for a short, say, and five for a full-length feature. The news hole is what it wants to be for each and every article it chooses to put out into the world. This sounds like a small thing, or maybe just an obvious one but it sets up a radically different writing framework than the one that I and my friends and colleagues encountered (and still do, sometimes) when working to the constraints of cold type. Stories get to be what they need to be, and not what the issue-budget that month dictates. (One corollary: this puts a premium on the one true constraint in this new golden age: excellent editing. Long doesnt mean good, unless its actually good, and the only way to be sure of that is if someone with a brain, an ear, and a sharp red pencil is available to go to work on ones deathless prose.) Merely digitizing words, thus, opens up venues and forms to writers who could never have hoped to try that sort of thing when only The New Yorker and a handful of other rags would let their chosen few rabbit on until they were done. We hear more voices, younger voices, more from across the gender line and so on, and thats a big change. Thus the importance not just of Aeon, but of Matter, Byliner (not just a science-themed site, but with a lot in that area), Nautilus, which is trying to enact a concept-album approach to popular science publication, and many more. I sent out a query to some science writing buddies to survey the venues people in the business are pitching to, and the names came pouring out: Quanta, Pacific Standard (formerly Miller McCune Magazine, and also not exlusively aimed at science), The Verge, and others that my colleagues are already writing for, despite the fact that they have yet to launch. Older venues are shifting some resources this direction too Ive written once for The New Yorker s new Elements strand, a daily feed of some commentary and some original science and technology reporting under that august brand. Old warhorses like Popular Mechanics, Scientific American, or Popular Science are putting good material out there, and so are places like the Nature News Serviceand the list goes on. The science blog world is enormously valuable as well, the more so (in my honest opinion), as it professionalizes. Theres the Scientific American blog network; National Geographics new Phenomena salon, Wired.coms stable and many others. The New York Times may be dropping blogs but in the science writing world, theres no shortage, and increasingly, the old signal-noise problem of that blogosphere is resolving itself through a rather traditional gate-keeping/ quality control editorial approach, updated for new media.

And then there is the penetration of science into culture and vice versa as documented at strands like Io9, or parts of the ArsTechnica site, BoingBoing, and dozens more that I know exist but one oneperson/one-day-per-day life doesnt permit me to read. A torrent of words, of ideas, of engagement with science, its applications in technology and the useful arts, and its intellectual penetration into the realms of story, narrative, expression, art, all the good stuff. Just digging through this first layer of links to write this essay has made me happy: so much interesting, unexpected, important stuff out there, daily, for my private, personal edification. And wait! Theres more. I and a lot of the folks I talk to about the future of science communication talk often about Atavist. Atavist acts as both a publisher and a platform, and the secret sauce there is their system to produce multimedia reads: texts augmented by computation to permit the use of a rich range of materials, moving images, sound, interactive graphics and so on. You can turn on or off such add-ons (and you can buy Atavist published work as plain e-books for a bit less than the fully gadgetized texts if you choose). But theirs is one of the most elegant solutions yet to the challenge and opportunity posed by what the digitization of words permits in the way of marrying text to all the rest of the ways to communicate with each other both the ones weve had for a while and those now being created. Other publishers are working on similar stuff, books that are actually apps.

All of which is to belabor the obvious: this is a Gutenberg moment, a handful of years decades at most when the range of ideas about science and its connections to human experience can reach audiences that have never had such a wealth of information and interpretation so immediately available to them.
In such work, you have something inconceivable when I started out in the business: an account of something about science that can, at the readers command, reach through the first layer of words into (conceivably) anything that bears on the matter at hand that exists anywhere on the web. All of which is to belabor the obvious: this is a Gutenberg moment, a handful of years decades at most when the range of ideas about science and its connections to human experience can reach audiences that have never had such a wealth of information and interpretation so immediately available to them. As someone for whom this stuff is the Greatest Story Ever Told as a reader I couldnt be happier. But as a writer and a teacher of those who would deliver this stuff into the great, gaping maw of the web? There are problems, no doubt. All those good staff jobs of a generation ago are gone, and there is no reason to expect them back anytime soon. Take the current run on resume-writing software in a newsroom in DC as a material reminder of that reality.7

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a hunger for one flavor or another of raw meat. CNN isnt imploding for lack of resources; it is, at least as I see it, dying of contempt for its audience. So it is with many othersand so it isnt with the best of whats happening in the science writing-and-reading world. Here endeth the lesson. Notes
1. Fond of their cups full stop, I might add. Standard wisdom at the relevant conferences: Dont drink with the ocean folks. Hangover city. (Trust me on this.) Actually, puke till it leaks past your eyeballs city, but never mind. 2. As I was working on this piece, news has come that Omni is getting a reboot. Great news. It really was a gonzo magazine, a great one when it played to the top of its game. One of its strengths killer fiction to go along with all the rest, works by folks like William Gibson, Bruce Sterling (wholl be appearing in the reincarnation, it seems), and many others. As I say through the rest of this, this is a fine time to be a reader of smart stuff infused with ideas, science, technological imagination, and all the rest. 3. That Radio Shack box was truly revolutionary the first really functional traveling computer, one that in some ways was never really replaced. It weighed three pounds,

Galileos sketch of the moon from Sidereus Nuncius, 1610, with a photograph of the same view.

ran on AA batteries (I repeat: it ran on double As!) and could do just a couple of things with its eight lines by forty character screen. But what it could do was great: you could write, and using its on-board modem (an add-on for my NEC) you could file over any phone line in the country. Netbooks and earlier versions of ultralight computers could serve the same function, but what the Trash 100 (as it was affectionately known) had going for it was (a) extreme simplicity, (b) a go-anywhere capability made possible by the use of standard batteries, and (c) after a while, a pretty reasonable price. I dont know if this is just my impression, having been in a world journalism that really glommed onto the little beasts, but that one bit of kit seems in retrospect to be a true cultural harbinger. Your mileage may vary. 4. (not that weve altogether shed that particular error) 5. A Soviet-era telescope with a mirror six meters in diameter went into operation in the north Caucasus mountains in 1977. In the context of the Cold War, the instrument took direct aim at the five-meter Hale for the title of the largest optical telescope in the world. A series of issues with the mirror and the siting and design of the observatory itself significantly limited its effectiveness, and it never out-resolved the Hale. Hence, most western histories of optical astronomy ignore it, perhaps, unfairly. 6. As of this writing (August 7, 2013) the top-of-the-feed post is another good one, an essay on privacy in the context of Snowden and Facebook. I take some issue with its dependence on that most studied of all human groups, 18-22 year old, at least relatively well-to-do American college students, but I found provocative the notion that while we retain a desire and/or need for privacy, the fact that, as writer Ian Leslie puts it, we dont really believe in the internet, puts us in a position where there is a mismatch between the technology of communication and our expectations of it. Theres a bit of a get off of my lawn, kids feel to that argument, but I dont think its all wrong. And here Im making my point: the piece is making me argue with it and myself, which is a marker of useful writing. 7. Not intended to be a factual statement.

The reality is that science writing of the sort that Ive been discussing here longer pieces, essays, attempts to dive beneath the surface of any single paper or finding is largely a freelance game. Freelancing in the context of a mostly online publishing ecosystem is tricky; the dust is very far from settling in the transition from a centralized on-paper publishing model to the much more variegated evolutionary tree were seeing now. I get emails regularly from well-intentioned people who want me or my students to write for free for exposure and who are surprised when they are told that exposure dont pay the rent. Some of the new web publications get this and are paying rates that are at least plausible, even if they dont approach the five figure paydays one could aspire to with a major feature in a top glossy. Some places notably Atavist, but others as well are trying some new payment models that can reward writers very well indeed. Some are still stuck in the old couple-of-bucks-for-a-blog-post mindset, even as they seek the much more involved and deeply reported-and-thought pieces you now often see at the best blog venues. The writers I admire are making it (thats a bit of circular logic, I guess; they wouldnt be there to admire if they werent), but theres no question that it is an uncertain, unpredictable game for newer writers trying to build a selfsustaining career. But acknowledging that reality, this wealth of new venues implies an audience responding to these attempts to bring serious, sophisticated, complex, variegated stories of science to the public. That, to me, is the most hopeful sign for a healthy, economically viable culture of science communication. The argument made by the simple existence of a venue like Aeon or a platform like Atavist is in direct contradiction to the daily-evident failure of those media institutions that have tried to chase a presumed ever shorter attention span and/or

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Diversifying Your Online World

In a new book, Ethan Zuckerman asserts we need to overcome the internets sorting tendencies

By Peter Dizikes, MIT News Office

sorts of issues that make you realize that if you dont have more of a global perspective, youre missing opportunities to improve things, youre not anticipating dangers. Another point Zuckerman emphasizes is that cognitive diversity is useful for both creativity and problem-solving and that kind of diversity is more readily available to people who step outside their cognitive comfort zones. Historically a great deal of creative thought has come from engagement with people in other cultures, Zuckerman says; his book cites examples from music, politics and corporate life. The initial response to Rewire has been positive; a review in Bookforum called it a patient and thoughtful assessment of the internets realities and potential. But if were missing an opportunity to become better global citizens, how can we change that? The current approach of Zuckerman, and his graduate students, is to create online tools that nudge internet users toward new perspectives. Do you really want to use Facebook to help you track down every elementary school friend you ever had? Zuckerman asks. Or can we push you in new directions and introduce you to, say, people from other parts of the world who have things in common with you? One tool Zuckermans group is working on does this with Twitter, by analyzing the composition of the feeds people follow, and then recommending more feeds mostly ones only slightly similar to your own user profile. A conventional recommendation system would say, Let me find the people who recommend the same things, whatever they found that you didnt find, youre going to love, Zuckerman says. What you probably want to do is build a recommendation system thats about thirty degrees different. If youre a secular liberal and you get links to a religious conservative, theres a pretty good chance your response will be, Why do I want to pay attention to this? But handing me links from a religious progressive might push me in an interesting direction. Other tools, Zuckerman suggests, will help identify key links in social networks that might diversify ones contacts. Many social networking sites presume that weak ties people we dont know particularly well can be highly valuable in areas like job searches. But Zuckerman believes that certain people who constitute a set of unique connections for us they represent bridge ties are the most valuable of all. Identifying and emphasizing these bridge people for all of us, Zuckerman thinks, could improve social networking sites. In this view, being a digital cosmopolitan is everyones responsibility and software engineers, among others, should keep thinking about ways to encourage that practice. Im hoping the book will inspire other people to start building this stuff, Zuckerman says.
Reprinted with permission of MIT News

he internet promises a seemingly frictionless way of connecting individuals from around the globe. But in reality, thats not what happens online: Instead, we clump together with people similar to ourselves, and have those affinities reinforced by tools that guide us to other people or products that resemble those we already know. Perhaps we can change that, though, and better incorporate new, international perspectives and knowledge into our everyday lives. That, at least, is the thesis of Rewire: Digital Cosmopolitans in the Age of Connection, a new book by Ethan Zuckerman. There was this early promise on the internet that no one cares if youre coming from Japan or Jordan or Jamaica, as along as you have something to add to the conversation, says Zuckerman, director of the Center for Civic Media and principal research scientist at the Media Lab. But it seemed to me that weve been getting narrower and narrower views of the world [online]. I wasnt even getting the perspective Id get from a good newspaper. As Zuckerman details in the book, this is not just his impression. Many studies have shown that social, political and cultural filtering occurs routinely on the internet not to mention filtering by gender and language. Zuckermans aim in the book and in his research group is to encourage researchers to build tools encouraging people to explore the world, engage others and move beyond their normal social circuits. Were still well below what a really level world would look like, Zuckerman says. The good news is, we can still get it right. There is time to jump in and try to make it better. Zuckermans interest in diversifying online culture arose, in part, from his experiences working at a nonprofit organization in Ghana about a dozen years ago. Ghana had a remarkable election in 2000, free and fair, Zuckerman says, referring to the countrys first-ever democratic transfer of power. From the perspective of people following Africa, we thought this was amazing news, people should be celebrating. But no one really noticed in the U.S., [apart from] The New York Times. I got very interested in what we do, and dont, pay attention to. Among other efforts, Zuckerman co-founded the Global Voices project, an online citizen-media site relaying news and information from around the world. Were not just filtering politically and culturally, were filtering on a national basis, Zuckerman says. To be sure, one might ask: Why is having a global perspective desirable? Zuckerman offers a few answers, including basic civic engagement at a time of, for instance, globalized supply chains that undergird the products we buy. If were going to depend on stuff built by people from all over the globe, theres a point at which we might have to pay attention to the issues and politics, Zuckerman says. Suddenly people have a lot of questions about buying clothes [made] in Bangladesh. These are the

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NGO 2.0
An Interview with Jing Wang

NGO 2.0 is a China-based project to increase the capacity of Chinese NGOs (non-governmental organizations) to work with social media and other communications technologies. Much of such training is accomplished through hackathons and workshops, pictured above. Last spring, In Medias Res talked with NGO 2.0s founder Professor Jing Wang, of MIT Foreign Languages and Literatures and a CMS/W affiliate, to get a better sense of how NGO 2.0 works and why it is so needed. n Media Res: What can you tell us about your path from Taiwan to MIT?

Jing Wang: I grew up there, back in the 1950s and 60s, and came to the U.S. in the 70s for graduate school. (Though I grew up in Taiwan, my work is in China and, so, I go there quite regularly.) My mother was a housewife. My father was a sea captain. I didnt get to see him at lot when I was growing up maybe once every three years. We were considered lower middle class in the early 50s when Chiang Kai-shek and the Nationalists retreated to Taiwan. It was very, very difficult being lower middle-class back then. I was trained as a scholar in comparative literature. The discipline of comparative literature took many twists and turns. It branched into cultural studies in the 70s. And then within cultural studies, you had people who were more interested in theoretical study on the relationship of power and culture and the effects of power on the politics of signifying practices. And then there was another branch that paid attention to the study

of contemporary popular culture. So I sort of made that turn, reoriented my research. There is actually, believe or not, a significant overlap between what I do in my own projects now (advertising research and civic media) and my earlier training as a cultural studies critic. I taught for sixteen years at Duke University. In the late 1990s, I sensed that something big was going to happen in how we create knowledge, how we disseminate knowledge, and how new technology and media will transform the traditional mode of knowledge production. And I made the right decision, I think. I left Duke for MIT in the early 2000s. It was [MIT Foreign Languages and Literatures professor] Edward Turk who told me about the opening. FL&L was looking for somebody who would build connections beyond silos, between separate units of area studies embedded in the department. They were interested in developing pop cultural studies and more contemporary research, so I came to them. Duke University, where I had my prior position, has a strong cultural studies program. But at one point, I was tired of recycling the same kind of meta-discourse. So when MIT approached me, I very happily took the offer. You mentioned your work focuses on China. What sparked that interest, at least in terms of your work studying Chinese NGOs? China has become more open to outside forces since the 1990s. And

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in 1995, I believe, the country held its first World Womens conference. That was the beginning of grassroots NGOs flourishing in China. At the time, there were a lot of international NGOs that poured resources into China. They were so influential that the concept of NGO spread quickly, and domestic Chinese grassroots nonprofits began to form themselves. I started my own project, NGO 2.0, to help improve the digital literacy and social media literacy of grassroots NGOs in the underdeveloped areas of China in the Western and Central provinces especially. And through that, were trying to enhance NGOs capability for social innovation. Only one-third of grassroots NGOs in China is registered officially. Most operate in a gray area. Theyre not legal, but theyre not illegal either. In order to operate and survive as an NGO, they have to cultivate close relationships with local governments. Local NGOs are registered locally, and most of them are visible only locally. There is a paradox though. The more cordial an NGOs relationship with the local government, the more autonomy it enjoys. Take us for instance. For the first two years when NGO 2.0 was underway, I was closely watched by the government. Im an American citizen, and I go to China twice a year. I was known as an MIT professor, a foreigner held in suspect. But then a year ago, I got a faculty appointment from a Chinese university in Guangzhou. And now I have a Chinese identity. So suddenly the government felt less anxious about who I am and what I do. Grassroots NGOs have trouble competing for attention, however. They cannot compete for media coverage with GONGOs government-affiliated NGOs (common in Latin America and in lots of developing countries, especially countries that are ruled by repressive governments). The lack of mainstream media attention made it difficult for grassroots NGOs to raise public awareness of their cause, to recruit volunteers, and to bring in resources. So imagine these very small, grassroots NGOs. They dont have the same access to media. Free media platforms would help. Social media wont solve all their problems, but it will enable them to communicate with the public. Another important program of NGO 2.0 is building the bridge between locally-based software developers and local NGO communities. We bring these two groups together for civic hackathons through which we are building the NGO-Tech network locale by locale. Google played a role in this. The Google Developers community is huge in China, in every province, especially in the largest two cities. They sponsored our first hackathon. In a recent hackathon held in Guangzhou, six teams (each was made up of hackers, interface designers, and NGOs) attended the event, and after twenty-four hours, they came up with six solutions to six user stories. It was an excellent example of collaborative design. For example, one team worked on the prototype of an audio book app for

Professor Jing Wang

When we designed the curriculum, from the very beginning, we found that teaching them how to use the tools is probably less important than teaching them how to position themselves, how to brand themselves, how to utilize digital communication to deal with stakeholders, the public, and volunteers.
the blind. Chinas largest internet company Tencent will collaborate with NGO 2.0 to develop select prototypes from our hackathons into full-fledged products. In the future, we hope to add an international component to those civic hackathons. We know that almost ninety five percent of China, including underdeveloped areas, are wired. However, the big challenge is how to teach people to navigate the web. Thats a skill that is lacking, not just for NGOs but for people who are learning to adapt to a digital life. And thats a mission the Chinese government is propagating. The government wants to strengthen digital communication infrastructure in rural areas in particular. Whats important is that we cannot contradict the overall goal of the government. We are, in a way, helping with what the government says they want to do. Thats a protection we need in order to be less heavily monitored. We do two social media workshops a year, and we travel from province to province. Since late 2009, we have held nine workshops and trained 270 NGOs. Back in 2009 and 2010, the local public security bureau in some provinces tried to prevent us from holding these workshops. I

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Apart from involving MIT students in a Chinese program to help translate materials for NGOs, we also recruited mainland China students to create more easily spreadable content for grassroots NGOs and display it on the map.

remember one incident where they told the university not to rent us the classroom. They even demanded that the hotels stop accommodating us. But we had flown in representatives of grassroots NGOs from several provinces, so we had to hold the workshop. It was a big crisis. But in China, whenever the government sets up a hurdle, resistors can find countermeasures to prevail. Eventually we succeeded in holding that workshop, because we found an internet cafe in a faraway place, and they were clueless that the local officials tried to stop us. They took us in. In another instance, we held a workshop at the University of Science and Technology of China. But after one day, the school authorities said they could not allow us to continue to hold the workshop on campus. What are we supposed to do?, we asked. They said, Well, why dont you all go sightseeing? So we took a bus. We took a two-hour drive to a lake resort, booked a hotel, and continued our workshop there. I think the authorities knew we would do that. In China, the mid-level officials are very apprehensive about the consequence of allowing something that theyre not sure about. So all they want to do is just stop you, and once you leave their territory, they dont care who you do. It was one of our most successful workshops because of the many obstacles we had to overcome. The team and NGO trainees bonded quickly. Because NGO 2.0 does not have legal status, its difficult for us to get either resources or governmental approval. We are in the process of becoming registered as an NGO in Shenzhen. The motivation for doing that is, otherwise, we cant get funding from China. Nor would

we be able to establish trust with the government. Now let me go back to our program. Originally, NGO 2.0 built a crowdsourced map1 to connect grassroots NGOs with corporations involved in social responsibility. But we had a surprise. After we built the map, we realized NGOs themselves didnt know who was doing what, even in their own NGO sector. So the map met that special need. Although the map is the brainchild of the team, it was coded and designed by our incoming CMS grad student Yu Wang. Right now, NGO 2.0 builds our program around three different areas of NGO needs. One is communication. Another is resources. And the third is technology, NGOs need for technological solutions. In addition to the workshops, we are also compiling a field guide of software for NGOs and foundations.2 Basically, the field guide is organized around the users technology proficiency level and his/her role in an organization because if you are a fundraising officer of an NGO, you probably dont need to learn how to use tools for project management. We are rolling out the guide this October. It will include interactive web and mobile tools and international case studies about how NGOs can utilize social media to do their work. When the guide is completed in 2014, we will have published 250 tool entries and case studies. Recently graduated CMS student Sun Huan was my research assistant and she worked with two other team members on compiling
1www.ngo20map.com 2http://tools.ngo20map.com

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From an NGO 2.0 hackathon hackers at center and NGO workers at left and right.

the field guide to software for NGOs. She loved the work and continued her participation even after she graduated. What makes this project unique is the fact that the volunteers all came from universities. This model can be replicated in places where the founder or organizer has a strong academic background. The person has to be multi-disciplinary, because, as you can tell, this involves collaboration across disciplines, across sectors. I wanted to say something about the connection between my research on advertising and marketing with this project, because a lot of people just dont understand the impact of my earlier research on this project. When we designed the curriculum, from the very beginning, we found that teaching them how to use the tools is probably less important than teaching them how to position themselves, how to brand themselves, how to utilize digital communication to deal with stakeholders, the public, and volunteers. So an integral part of the curriculum that we designed for them is social media communication and marketing strategies. How does an NGO design a social media communication strategy? That starts with finding out who your target audience is, on what kind of social media platforms your targets are congregated, and, step by step, making a marketing plan using microblogging and tagging, and selecting interactive tools or data visualization tools. We prioritize web 2.0 concepts over tools. Marketing 2.0 is an important part of that communication plan. Is the kind of model youve developed something that can be replicated by others? I want to just emphasize how important it is to get the universities, professors, and their students involved. That is a key component to the sustainability of a project like this, that is, a project based totally on volunteer work. Im a volunteer too. All of our teams are made of volunteers.

But most of us do heavy-duty work on academics. We cant always motivate our students to participate in this type of activist work. But we are fortunate. Apart from involving MIT students in a Chinese program to help translate materials for NGOs, we also recruited mainland Chinese students to create more easily spreadable content for grassroots NGOs and display it on the map. More specifically, we mobilized the faculty and students from Sun Yat-sen University, Anhui University, and Sichuan University to work with local NGOs to produce a three-minute long video for each organization. Those volunteers specialize in TV and video production. NGO 2.0 also signed agreements with the deans of communication schools in several provincial universities where faculty and students will be tasked with creating in-depth news stories for the NGOs we recommended that they serve. They will have those journalistic pieces published in print media and online. Best of all, this assignment is integrated into the university curriculum. As for the videos, were going to work with Chinas video-sharing sites such as Youku and Tudou. The Dean of the School of New Media at Beijings Communication University of China will undertake the negotiation with those commercial platforms about setting aside a place for those videos to be showcased. So this kind of cross-sector and inter-university collaboration, I think, is easier to build if the major players are academics. One important factor is: in China, faculty in media and communication departments have a very close working relationships with the news and entertainment industry. What is an example of one of your successful experiments? After one workshop, an NGO came up with an idea of using social media for social good. They used Google Buzz, Twitter, and Follow5 to do a ten-hour long, real-time broadcast of the entire journey of an NGOs water testing team along a polluted river. It attracted strangers who happened to be around the river, at different parts of the river, and who joined the teams real-time reporting of polluted spots. We (the NGO 2.0 volunteers) were also spread in different provinces of China, yet we were having a sustained conversation with the watertesting team about their findings round the clock in real time. It was a successful experiment. Originally, we wanted to help them promote this activity to media, but the board of trustees of the NGO got scared. They werent sure about broadcasting this; they didnt want trouble. But even with that, it ended up being a sort of internal experiment, a wonderful experience because it was open and participatory. And since Google Buzz was linked to Google Maps, you could see exactly where they stationed themselves along different parts of the river and what they were doing even what they were eating for lunch while having a continuous conversation with them.

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Introducing Edward Schiappa

New to MIT but long familiar to the CMS/W community, Edward Schiappa, now associate head of CMS/W, brings a background in both classical rhetoric and contemporary media studies a rare combination. This work has led him to study, write extensively on, and connect disparate bodies of work; Im currently reading his book Defining Reality: Definitions and the Politics of Meaning, in which Ed exhibits some remarkable talents for comparativity, making sure Socrates rubs elbows with Justice John Paul Stevens, B.F. Skinner, and Benedict Spinoza while tackling the rhetoric surrounding how we come to define contested terms, from wetlands to personhood. We spoke in August, just ahead of the release of his new textbook Argumentation: Keeping Faith with Reason, co-authored with John P. Nordin. AW Andrew Whitacre: How would you describe your research path from Ph.D. to now? Ed Schiappa: The three topics I have researched for the past thirty years may sound distinctclassical Greek rhetorical theory, contemporary argumentation and rhetoric, and media studiesbut my study of each topic is animated by related questions: What is the relationship between thought and language? How does communication change our ways of thinking and behaving? And how can scholars best discover and understand such changes? These are questions that are relevant to a number of disciplines, obviously, which may be why I have published in psychology, communication, English, classics, and philosophy journals. To answer your question more directly, I would have to describe my path as uphill and bumpy, because my work has challenged orthodoxies in each area. I argued the traditional narrative about the origins of Rhetoric were just plain wrong, I argued that definitions should be approach rhetorically rather than philosophically, and I argued that textual approaches to popular media studies should be replaced with comparative approaches. What I have learned is that it takes decades of persistence to prevail in such debates (right now I would say I am ahead on two out of three), but the view from this part of the path is pretty cool. AW: Why leave a nice gig at Minnesota for a brand-new community and academic environment in Cambridge? ES: The University of Minnesota is an outstanding public universityI had been there for seventeen years, the past seven as department chair. Though I was happy there, I felt I had accomplished what I could and was ready for a change. MIT is an amazing institution and it became clear to me through the visiting process that MIT and I were a good fit. The Institutes Communication Requirement could benefit from someone with substantial communication pedagogy and planning experience, for example. And as someone who had worked both in Rhetoric and Media, the merger of Comparative Media Studies and Writing and Humanistic Studies made sense and felt comfortable to me.

Edward Schiappa

AW: Tell me more about your work in media studies you say you advocate comparative approaches? ES: Many communication scholars working on popular media engage in close readings or close textual analysis. One problem with that approach is that to be publishable, you have to produce readings that are provocative or even counterintuitive. I would read work that claimed Jurassic Park promoted postmodern skepticism or that Will & Grace reinforced heterosexism, and I would think that cant be right! So I became an advocate for comparative studies that would include audience responses, based on focus groups, surveys, or experiments. In the process of collaborating with colleagues at Minnesota, we created the Parasocial Contact Hypothesis, which argues that certain forms of media contact with minority groups, such as gay men, can actually reduce prejudice. When Joe Biden gave Will & Grace credit

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for increasing support for same-sex marriage, he was on the right track. Our work was written up in Newsweek and our framework has been used in research all over the world now. AW: What would you point to as a sign that your work has had an effect on the field? ES: Google Scholar is a great tool for that our original set of media studies has been cited over 200 times. Also, I have been asked to review several grant proposals from different parts of the world that use our theoretical framework. In Los Angeles, the Center for Global Engagement is now drawing from my work in their Entertainment & Media Initiative1 and asked me to join their Advisory Council. AW: CMS/W touts its active research relationship between faculty and masters students a principal investigator/research assistant model more common in the physical and social sciences but rarely at the masters level in the humanities. Aside from the fact that such work is how we cover our graduate students tuition I believe the only program in the school that does so are there advantages and disadvantages to using that model? ES: I strongly support such a model. Research assistantships are sparse in the humanities, but I can assure you that most graduate programs would love to offer them if they could, as they give students great exposure to the research process and help the programs research productivity. The only short-term downside is that graduate students in CMS do not get the experience of teaching their own class, but if they want to go on for a Ph.D., typically they will have the opportunity to do so in a doctoral program. AW: The CMS part of CMS/W has certainly bumped up against the social sciences T.L. Taylors ethnographic methods and Sasha Costanza-Chocks communications technology work, for example but, looking back on your very-humanistic Greek rhetoric studies, on what kind of humanities work beyond publishing papers and books could you imagine partnering with a masters student? ES: Well, I am interested primarily in publishing articles and books! I have co-authored now with ten different graduate students over the years, and in one case a former graduate student and I published a book together. Now that I am here at MIT, I am also thinking about other sorts of projects that could contribute to outreach efforts in Civic Media and CMS. AW: You hint at it, but one can look through your publications and see an evolution in interests. What were the inflection points where you said to yourself, I want to go in this direction now? ES: Evolution is not a bad metaphor in this case as long as we recall that it does not imply a singular direction of change, but rather adaptations to a changing environment. For example, upon arriving at MIT I learned that we have the Thomas S. Kuhn archives here, so that has provided me the opportunity to publish and comment on a previously unpublished paper by Kuhn titled Rhetoric and Liberation. I dont have a master plan. I pursue projects I find interesting and that are relevant to those big picture questions I identified earlier. I anticipate that being in the MIT environment will provide some rich opportunities for me to adapt and grow.
1thecgeinc.org/current_initiatives.html

Books by Edward Schiappa

Argumentation: Keeping Faith with Reason Pearson 2013

Keeping Faith with Reason: A Theory of Practical Reason Pearson 2011

Beyond Representational Correctness: Criticism of Popular Media State University of New York Press 2009

Rethinking

Defining Reality: Definitions and the Politics of Meaning Southern Illinois University Press 2003

The Beginnings of Rhetorical Theory in Classical Greece Yale University Press 1999

Warranting Assent: Case Studies in Argument Evaluation State University of New York Press 1995

Protagoras and Logos: A Study in Greek Philosophy and Rhetoric University of South Carolina Press 1991

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Suzanne Lane and Andreas Karatsolis

The New Team Behind Writing Across the Curriculum
With Edward Schiappa, CMS/W Associate Head
This year CMS/W has a new Director and Associate Director for the Writing Across the Curriculum (WAC) Program, the core of the MIT's Communication Requirement. As a member of both search committees, I can share the fact that they were our #1 picks and that we are very excited to have them both as our dream team of WAC leadership. Edward Schiappa: How about a 25-word description of your position? Suzanne Lane: As Director of Writing Across the Curriculum, I collaborate with faculty to integrate and improve writing and communication instruction at MIT, and guide the research and development of communications pedagogy. Andreas Karatsolis: As Associate Director of WAC, I support the Director in administering the existing program components and in designing and implementing new research and teaching initiatives related to the development of communication skills in academia and beyond. ES: What should folks know about the path that led you to MIT? SL: Directing the Writing Across the Curriculum program is particularly meaningful to me because it allows me to unite my interests in engineering and in writing. As an undergraduate here at MIT in Chemical Engineering, I was fascinated by the chemistry of aromatic hydrocarbons, which allow so many structural transformations, as well as by systems of heat and energy transfer in combustion reactors. While my focus has shifted to rhetoric, my interests in systems and transformations have remained consistentI think of rhetoric as engineering with words, or, in Lloyd Bitzers terms, as a mode of altering reality, not by the direct application of energy to objects, but by the creation of discourse which changes reality through the mediation of thought and action. My first research project in rhetoric was a study of how enslaved Americans, and later, those writing about the history of slavery, used rhetoric to negotiate the boundaries and implications of slavery in specific contexts, and, indeed, to change reality. Later, as Assistant Director of Harvards Expository Writing Program, and a researcher with the Harvard Study of Undergraduate Writing, I analyzed all of the writing that 18 science majors produced as undergraduates, which allowed me to study how students learn to write from a systems perspective, rather than the more limited view within individual classrooms. Most of these students struggled for many semesters to make their writing do somethingdevelop new relationships between complex ideas, or persuade the reader to think differently about the results of an experimentand felt as if they could not apply what they learned in one class to their writing in the next. For many of them, though, finally understanding argumentation in their field unlocked their own scientific research. From this study, I came to see rhetoric as central to a strong science and engineering education, and when I returned to MIT as Associate

Suzanne Lane and Andreas Karatsolis

Director of the WAC program in 2008, I began to develop more systematic and comparative methods of teaching writing so that students can more successfully transfer and adapt their knowledge of argumentation to new contexts. In particular, Ive developed this comparative and rhetorical approach to teaching students to write with sources, so that they better understand the knowledge structures that texts in different fields embed, and can more effectively manipulate (and ac-

I think of rhetoric as engineering with words, or, in Lloyd Bitzers terms, as a mode of altering reality, not by the direct application of energy to objects, but by the creation of discourse which changes reality through the mediation of thought and action. Suzanne Lane
knowledge) the ideas and information from sources in the development of their own ideas. AK: The story of my coming to MIT this fall as the new Associate Director of WAC traverses through four disciplines, spans three continents, and includes a moment of intellectual transformation triggered by a 2,500-year-old controversy. In my early years in Greece, I studied what one might call the Art of Letters, whether this was Classical Grammatology or English Literature. Throughout these foundational years, I was introduced to language as a rule-based, fixed, and unchanging system, learning to identify patterns in canonical works from classical and contemporary literature. My goal was to become an effective instructor of the correct ways of using language to help students engage with powerful and complex ideas. My graduate studies in Writing at Emerson College continued

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along the same path, only this time I was able to understand better the power of genre, as I approached texts as objects that do certain work in the world for different audiences. My Ph.D. work in Rhetoric quickly led to the transformative moment, when I realized that a solid understanding of the art of discourse, rather than that of letters, is critical in supporting how students communicate in real contexts. The main difference, to put in Isocrates words, is that the art of Discourse is good only if it has the qualities of fitness for the occasion, propriety of style, and originality of treatment. In short, my concerns shifted from correctness to appropriateness as the main approach to analyzing and producing effective discourse. The implications of such an approach for professional practice, particularly within science-based disciplines, were enormous: I quickly began to study the rhetorical nature of academic and professional communication practices, such as citation, annotation, and collaborative writing. My interest in the design of technologies that help inform these practices also led to the design and development of several prototypes of tools aimed at supporting or potentially transforming communication practices, as well as a graduate certificate in Human-Computer Interaction. From that point onwards, my path was consistently tied to institutions where I would be able to design and implement both pedagogy and technologies for professional communication: first as the Director of Instructional Communication at the Albany College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences, and then as the Associate Director for the Center for Teaching Excellence at Carnegie Mellon University in Qatar. All this has led me to MITs door, carrying the intellectual luggage of Classical Literature, Writing Studies, Rhetoric, and HCI, having gone through Europe, the U.S., and the Middle East, but now foregrounding the art the discourse, especially mediated by new technologies. Given MITs reputation for such work, I dare say I think Ill be happy here. ES: What projects are you most excited about pursuing in the next few years? SL: Im interested in helping MIT students gain a deep understanding of the theory and application of rhetorical concepts, so they can effectively transform the world through transforming peoples understanding of that world. Because rhetoric is so central to the research processfrom structuring information and developing alternative explanations, to collaborating with other researchers, to persuading someone to fund a projecta thoroughly integrated approach to teaching communication in the disciplines is key, and our Communication Requirement provides a great foundation. At the same time, my research and that of others shows how difficult it is for students to transfer what theyve learned about writing and communication in one context, such as a History class, to a new context, such as a Materials Science poster presentation. So over the next few years, I see more research in what we call knowledge transfer as central to our work, exploring how we can teach rhetorical concepts in History and Materials Science subjects in ways that help students to abstract the underlying principles and understand why and how they need to be adapted to different situations. Given the opportunities with web 2.0 applications and MITx, Im

My Ph.D. work in Rhetoric quickly led to the transformative moment, when I realized that a solid understanding of the art of discourse, rather than that of letters, is critical in supporting how students communicate in real contexts. Andreas Karatsolis
also excited about continuing to explore the affordances of digital instruction, including developing and assessing new digital tools for teaching students to analyze texts. One project Ive been working on, with Rob Miller in CSAIL and a graduate student, Denzil Sikka, is a set of apps for teaching writing, including one that helps students learn to paraphrase sources. Im looking forward to partnering more closely with labs, such as HyperStudio, and with graduate students in CMS/W, on these projects. And like many others in CMS/W, Im intrigued by issues at the intersection of culture, media, and knowledge production; in particular, I want to continue researching the implications of cultural changes in academic and professional communication, such as the use of new media to discuss and disseminate academic research, and the effects of open-access publishing and post-publication peer review. AK: Given my interest in developing curricula that address the academic and professional needs of students, and my engagement with technologies of learning, I see myself collaborating with faculty to continually improve and develop the teaching of communication at MIT, including designing and assessing technology-based components. One of the research projects Ive been pursuing is a mobile-first module-based learning environment aimed at supporting the work of computer scientists as they engage with communication artifacts. Such a tool can be used both as a learning environment and as a knowledge management system to support innovative knowledge work. Since knowledge work is inherently social, Im also interested in pursuing a project aimed at visualizing the rhetorical dimensions of source use in academic research. Given the implications of such a large effort both for the teaching of source use and the collaboration of research groups around it, I am hopeful that this can be a good example of the kinds of digital tools we now need to support the vast amounts of information we have to work with. Finally, I would like to pursue a project arising out of a course I recently taught in Qatar on Classical Rhetoric and Contemporary Public Discourse. For several regions in the world, the teaching (or practice) of public discourse is still very new, and I believe there are ways we can use what we know from Rhetoric to support societies in their attempt to grapple with critical public issues. Such a project can be extremely relevant for people who aspire to become agents of change or have an impact on public policy in the whole world.

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CMS/W IN THE NEWS

Even If You Dont Recognize the Characters, You Want to Find Out Who They Are
MLK Visiting Scholar and Atlantic senior editor Ta-Nehisi Coates won a National Magazine Award for his essay Fear of a Black President, about President Obamas reluctance to make race his defining topic. An InsideClimate News team, including 09 Science Writing alum Lisa Song, received a Pulitzer Prize for national reporting, the third web-based outfit to receive the honor. MIT, through the curriculum run by MIT Game Lab faculty and researchers, was again named in Princeton Reviews Top 10 Schools To Study Game Design. Its undergrad and graduate courses came in fifth and seventh, respectively. The Boston Globe told the story of Alan Lightman and science and playwriting friends that gathered once a month as a salontheir ending didnt keep members from collaborating on a play born out of Jeremy Bernsteins book Hitlers Uranium Club: The Secret Recordings at Farm Hall. The New York Times spoke with Chris Peterson, MIT admissions office staffer and graduate of the CMS class of 2013, about free online educations potential impact on colleges own costs. People turn to profitmaking education, he argues, because they have no other option when they have a job, when they have a kid, when they have other things eating into their life. Mr. Peterson said he envisions free online courses evolving from a jumble of individual courses into free degree programs. Seth Mnookin used a Slate column to criticize Time for its headline How to Cure Cancer: Yes, its now possible, thanks to new cancer dream teams that are delivering better results faster. Instead of jump-starting a conversation about the most effective approach to cancer research, Mnookin wrote, Time distorted it beyond recognition. Ed Schiappa joined a panel on Minnesota Public Radio to discuss the psychological effect of the Boston Marathon bombing and whether to some it will become as indelible an event as 9/11. In more from public radio, Vivek Bald described his book Bengali Harlem and the Lost Histories of South Asian America in an interview on WNYC. Bald was also interviewed by The New York Times India Ink blog. Nick Montfort spoke with the Times as well, about the video game industrys best-known worst game: Ataris E.T., so terrible most of its copies lie buried in Alamagordo, NM. To meet the 1982 holiday season deadline, E.T. was developed in a mere five weeks. It seems really impossible that anyone could have made a good game in that amount of time, said Montfort, adding that when Atari also famously made more Pac-Man cartridges than Atari consoles, it was like making more records than there are record players. The Los Angeles Times photography blog named Moments of Innovation as a Best of the Web. Moments of Innovation is a collaboration between the MIT Open Documentary Lab and International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam telling the story of how documentary drove technology possible, not the other way around. Meanwhile, the Open Doc Lab partnered with Filmmaker to interview Fox Harrell about his work exploring the relationship between imaginative cognition and computation the research behind his Imagination, Computation, and Expression Lab. Youve now got the ability to invade kids space much more aggressively than ever before, Education Arcade creative director Scot Osterweil told The Wall Street Journal, describing marketers push to get mobile games directly into kids hands. Covered by BoingBoing and others, the thesis by Molly Sauter (CMS, 13) caught the internets attention. And how could it not? Her work Distributed Denial of Service Actions and the Challenge of Civic Disobedience on the Internet is available on our website. PRIs The World was the latest to talk to anime authority Ian Condry about the draw of Anime Boston, which also happens to be one of the largest gatherings of cosplayers. Even if you dont recognize the characters, you want to find out who they are. And I think thats the excitement of the anime world, theres always more to explore. Its a vast world where people are intensely involved with it, and that kind of excitement is contagious. Condrys recent book The Soul of Anime: Collaborative Creativity and Japans Media Success Story is the subject of several major book reviews, including in the English-language Japan Times. Something large happens as we write and talk together in that room, separated from the rest of the world, says Helen Lee in The New York Times in a piece about her work teaching creative writing to the incarcerated. These men bring forth their best selves, and I, too, am the awake, compassionate me. Playboy published the piece A Brief History of [Junot] Daz, in which it quoted Edmund White, reflecting the consensus about the CMS/W writer: Books about class struggle have been replaced with books about gauche, privileged Americans. Daz doesnt do that. Hes working from the inside, describing the immigrant experience, and he is a terribly serious person when it comes to writing. Coinciding with the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington, lecturer B.D. Colen wrote What I Saw and What Still Hasn't Been Achieved for The Atlantic, reflecting on his own experience that day in D.C. as a seventeen year old and since.

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Affiliated with the Center for Civic Media, the new Creative Communities Initiative (CCI) explores emerging forms of collaboration at the intersection of social media, online networks and real life collectives. The phenomenal growth of social networks in recent years has been facilitated in part by digital tools, but equally through social dynamics that build trust, rapport, and shared commitments. CCI operates as a team of ethnographers who use participant-observation fieldwork to examine the workings of these communities. Wikipedia, Facebook, and Twitter illustrate the ways that new forms of productivity and social interaction are developing, but we believe they are just the beginning. Our initial focus will be on creative communities focused on global health, online education, the creative arts, and do-it-yourself maker communities. What forms do successful communities take? What is the interplay between technological tools and collaborative creativity? How do such communities emerge, take shape, and evolve? Can such communities be the basis for rethinking where new jobs will come from? We believe ethnography can illuminate aspects of these communities in ways that mining data through algorithms alone cannot. Culture, politics, and business are clearly changing as online communities become centers of production and political participation in their own right, challenging the dominance of traditional corporations and governmental institutions. This initiative will use ethnography to understand these developments and try to push their potentials in new directions.
civic.mit.edu

Work at the Ed Arcade has proceeded along several interesting fronts over the last six months. Work continues on Radix, our STEM focused MMO which is funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Graduate students Steve Schirra, Eduardo Alvarez, and Ling Zhong all contributed quest challenges and narratives to the gameworlds first two sections, devoted to biology and the math of probability and statistics. We also hosted a convening on behalf of the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation bringing together curriculum development experts to help explore strategies for helping existing curricula that promote deeper learning achieve wider penetration. Deeper learning is the Hewlett Foundations formulation for describing pedagogical approaches that enable students to (in their words): Master core academic content Think critically and solve complex problems Work collaboratively Communicate effectively Learn how to learn (e.g., self-directed learning) Managed by Carole Urbano and Caitlin Feeley, and co-chaired by Jacqueline Miller from Educational Development Corporation, the convening raised some promising ideas for future practice. Watch this space for information about the white paper The Ed Arcade will be producing on the subject. The Ed Arcade has also just received a major grant from the Gates Foundation to work with our partners at Learning Games Network to pilot an adaptation of their successful language learning games XENOS for literacy education, with a focus on promoting stronger use of academic language in middle grade students. Incoming graduate student Jesse Sell will work with Carole in developing the core curriculum for this pilot.
educationarcade.org

Its been a very busy and exciting eight months at Hyperstudio. The team traveled to Paris in both January and June to present updates on the ComdieFranaise Registers Project to French collaborators and to discuss data modeling, interface design, and plans for collaboration. We participated at iAnnotate.org in April in San Francisco, hosted by Hypothes.is, a convening of the community of theorists and practitioners in the very active field of social and collaborative online annotation. We presented Annotation Studio, our tool aimed at supporting annotation in humanities instruction. Also in April, HyperStudio presented concepts for visualizations of data from both the Comdie Franaise project and from Annotation Studio at HASTAC in Toronto. At Digital Humanities 2013 in July at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, we presented on Comdie-Franaise. Were also thrilled to announce that HyperStudio was awarded an NEH Digital Humanities Implementation Grant, a two-year grant to begin in September to help further develop Annotation Studio. Ours was one of six winning proposals from a very competitive field of almost 100. Well be adding capacity to the Hyperstudio team this fall, both to accelerate work on our existing projects and to embark on several exciting new initiatives currently in the planning stages. In particular, were excited to be joined by research assistants Liam Andrew and Desi Gonzales, both CMS class of 2015.
hyperstudio.mit.edu

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R E S E A R C H G R O U P U P D AT E S

Researchers at the MIT Game Lab have published two books: Sports Videogames and The Culture of Digital Fighting Games, contributed to major games studies conferences and computer-human interaction, and authored papers for journals and chapters in books. The MIT Press has commenced publication of the Playful Thinking series, co-edited by Game Lab principle investigator William Uricchio. Our students and researchers have published six games and two open-source toolkits. The nine courses and research and development opportunities we have provided have helped maintain MITs standing in the Princeton Reviews top 10 schools for undergraduate or graduate study of game development, for a fourth year running. Three of the games we developed this summer and three from previous summers have won awards at conferences in various fields this year. In 2012, we co-hosted the Boston Festival of Indie Games, which 2,000 people attended. The event was covered in national media, placing MIT and the MIT Game Lab as a center for independent game development. We begin this school year hosting a symposium and festival as well. CMS/W faculty member T.L. Taylor joined our faculty committee and began engaging with thenCMS/W Visiting Professor, now new Game Lab Research Scientist, Mikael Jakobsson. We hosted our largest game jam yet with the Education Arcade and Learning Games Network, where over 100 people made games about sensitive topics including love, disease, the organ donation system, and transgender issues. In August, we expanded our outreach by teaching a one-week summer short program via MITs Professional Education. We have also received a $100,000 expendable anonymous gift donation and a scheduled series of $200,000 endowment donations are providing a foundation of funds to stabilize the new Lab.
gamelab.mit.edu

The Imagination, Computation, and Expression Lab, established in 2010 by Associate Professor D. Fox Harrell, researches and develops artificial intelligence and cognitive science-based computing systems for creative expression, cultural analysis, and social change. Outcomes include new forms of gaming, interactive narrative, social media, software art, and unanticipated creative computing forms. The Living Liberia Fabric project, an interactive narrative memorial supporting the goal of lasting piece in Liberia after years of civil war, was showcased at the International Symposium on Electronic Art in Sydney. Outcomes of the Advanced Identity Representation Project and the NEH-supported Gestural Narrative Interaction Engine (GeNIE) were both presented at Digital Humanities 2013. The talks covered our pedagogical aims, design processes, and theoretical framework. We also showcased Mimesis, a gesture-driven interactive narrative to better understand discrimination. We also launched Chimeria, a computational system capable of modeling dynamic group membership to help people explore and better understand experiences related to social group membership. Additionally, the lab made further developments with the AIR-Player-Preference Analyzer. As a case study, it was applied to analyze the commercial multi-player online game Team Fortress 2. Results related to the modeling and predicting of player performance of status in Team Fortress 2 using players social network data were presented at the IEEE Computational Intelligence and Games 2013 conference. Finally, we would like to congratulate, and bid a very warm good-bye to ICE Lab members: Sonny Sidhu, Jia Zhang, and Ayse Gursoy, 2013 graduates of the CMS master's program. Congratulations!
icelab.mit.edu

This summer the Mobile Experience Lab has experienced a growth with several projects and a still-expanding new team of researchers. In a highlight of these projects a team of researchers spent the summer in Rome looking for new ways to transmit the knowledge of farming through intergenerational tools. The outcome of the project was a companion planting puzzle to be played directly in soil. The playing cards themselves held nested seeds, and an augmented reality app helped players keep score and track their planted puzzle solutions. Additionally, we worked with a group of researchers in Istanbul, to develop two new mobile apps for rethinking real-time urban soccer playing. Both app demos will be available on the Mobile Experience Lab website. Our researchers spent time in Milan working with ENI, in July. This trip was part of a large collaboration with the energy giant, looking for ways to retrofit existing fuel station infrastructures with updated technologies and smoother user experiences. These technologies, still under design, include automated pumping systems, mobile payment, and innovative human/car interfaces. We did extensive ethnographic research in order to understand how a gas station works and to start the design phase. Other research this summer included Brazilian banking platforms, mobile health applications in India, a continuation of our hospitality initiative, and last but not least our completion of the Media Wall, an interactive branding installation for the CMS/W department. Overall, the summer was busy but successful for the lab and we look forward to the new semester.
mobile.mit.edu

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New CMS/W Website

After nearly seven years of devoted duty, cms. mit.edu has given way to cmsw.mit.edu, representing our new structure, language, and expanded user base. The site's development drew upon many of the lessons applied by our research groups, ones any developerespecially of redesignscan use. Among them: 1. Focus on your audience(s). You get into trouble prioritizing internal needs. Assemble an advisory team based on who can represent site user groups. Better yet 2. Conduct rounds of user testing: you don't know what you don't know. Consider usertesting.com to evaluate your current site, test your in-development site, and refine your new site. If you're in academia, print this out now : http://xkcd.com/773. 3. Account for existing content, politics, and resources, including your own skills. This lessens the guesswork in your schedule. 4. Spend most of your planning on how you structure and name your navigation. If your nav is off, your site will fail. Doing this also surfaces internal tensions. How to do it? There's nothing like magic markers, notecards, tape, and a wall. 5. Study search engine optimization and metadata. Both teach you how users find what they're looking for. 6. Keep a descriptive log of your code customizations, and maintain a living will. You never know when someone might need to take over site management.

The OpenDocLab received a grant from the National Endowment of the Arts this past spring to create and maintain a curated, participatory online database of interactive, collaborative, location-based, and communitycreated documentaries. Aggregating the most interesting examples of documentary experiments from around the world, the database will be a resource for anyone interested in learning about the new arts of documentary and for filmmakers who will benefit from a comprehensive database that is easily searchable by topic, type, title, or technology. Currently, there is no such resource in the field. The projects span across the arts, journalism, and community media and include key precedents such as Dziga Vertovs 1929 film Man with a Camera, as well as cutting-edge examples of this rapidly evolving genre. The goal is twofold: to attract audiences and participation from across disciplines to inspire cross disciplinary and participatory innovation and to use the database as a tool to study language and categorizing trends in the field. The database is a collaborative research project that allows anyone to create his or her own playlist and accompanying essay. The award-winning interactive design team, Upian, is designing the site. It will launch in November at the Montreal International Documentary Film Festival. Professor William Uricchio is the principal investigator. Other items of note include a grant from the Fledgling fund to research and write two case studies assessing the social impact of participatory documentaries. Professor Sasha Costanza-Chock will lead this research. And finally, the OpenDocLab launches its inaugural fellows program this fall with an MIT visiting artist, two artists-in-residence and four research affiliates.
opendoclab.mit.edu

The Trope Tank , directed by Associate Professor Nick Montfort, is a lab featuring material computing systems curated and ready for use by researchers, students, poets, and artists. Trope Tank equipment has recently supported presentations and workshops at the Boston Cyberarts Gallery, Microsoft Research in Redmond, UCLA, the University of Maine, and @party. The lab was the topic of a presentation Montfort was invited to give at the recent Preserving.exe summit at the Library of Congress. As the fall semester begins, postdoctoral researcher Clara Fernndez-Vara is ready to present Trope Tank research on emulation and hardware access to videogames. Her presentation will be at Pressing Restart, a workshop in New York in September. Also in September, Fernndez-Vara will join the faculty of the NYU Game Center. The Trope Tanks major computational creativity project is Slant, which allows different component systems to interact and build stories together. The text generation from Montforts Curveship, plot generation from the system MEXICA, and production of figuration inspired by GRIOT are all part of Slant. At the 2013 International Conference on Computational Creativity in Sydney, collaborators Rafael Prez y Prez (a professor at UAM-Cuajimalpa in Mxico) and Fox Harrell (of the CMS/W faculty and the ICE Lab) presented the first paper on Slant, written with Montfort and Harvard graduate student Andrew Campana. Finally, a multi-year creative Trope Tank collaboration, the Deletionist, premiered at E-Poetry 2013 at Kingston University, London. The project is by Montfort, Amaranth Borsuk, and Jesper Juul, and can be obtained for free from thedeletionist.com. It creates erasure poems automatically out of any web page.
trope-tank.mit.edu

Recommended Reading
For planning: Content Strategy for the Web, Kristina Halvorson and Melissa Rach. For writing: Positioning, Al Reis and Jack Trout. For design: The Elements of Typographic Style, Robert Bringhurst.

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EVENTS

Fall 2013 Talks

Sep 12 | 5:00 PM | E14-633 | Communications Forum

The Phoenix Burns Out: Remembering a Boston Institution

When the Boston Phoenix announced its closing, the city lost a powerful cultural force and a vibrant source of information. Panelists will be author and essayist Anita Diamant, who started out answering the editors phone in the mid-1970s; poet and classical music critic Lloyd Schwartz, who won a Pulitzer Prize with the Phoenix; and Carly Carioli, who started as an intern and rose to become the papers editor.
Sep 19 | 5:00 PM | E14-633

Oct 24 | 5:00 PM | E14-633

A Performance Approach to Primate Politics

New York-based interdisciplinary artist and writer Coco Fusco will consider the critical responses to the original Planet of the Apes films, focusing in particular on the interpretation of the films as critiques of American race relations during the 1960s and 70s.
Oct 31 | 5:00 PM | E14-633

Kate Crawford

Keepr: Algorithm for Extracting Entities, Eyewitnesses, and Amplifiers

When a big news story breaks, Twitter goes crazy. Keepr tries to make sense of these periodic bursts by implementing natural language processing and social network analysis algorithms to surface topics, eyewitnesses, and amplifiers. A live demo by Keepr creator Hong Qu will be followed by a discussion of the capabilities and limitations of computational newsgathering.
Sep 26 | 5:00 PM | 4-231

Principal Researcher at Microsoft Research (Social Media Collective) and a Visiting Professor at the Center for Civic Media.
Nov 7 | 5:00 PM | E14-633

Sonia Livingstone
Professor of Social Psychology, head of the Department of Media and Communications at London School of Economics, and researcher of children and Internet use.
Nov 14 | 5:00 PM | 4-231 | Communications Forum

Ethan Zuckerman
Director of the MIT Center for Civic Media and author of Rewire: Digital Cosmopolitans in the Age of Connection.
Oct 3 | 5:00 PM | 4-231

Visualizing Information: ChartGirl on an Alternate Route to Understanding and Explaining Complicated Information
Hilary Sargent is the founder of ChartGirl.com, where she makes charts to describe complicated news stories. Her site was recently called one of the 50 Best Websites of 2013 by TIME Magazine and her charts have been featured by Reuters, AtlanticWire, BoingBoing, Business Insider, and others. Sargent has worked as an investigator for law firms, corporations, non-profit organizations, and political campaigns.
Nov 21 | 5:00 PM | 4-231

Lets Fight Like Gentlemen

Examining the influences and norms of the fighting games community, its spiritual and physical roots in the arcade, common gameplay practices, and how issues of ethnicity and gender collide with gamer identity. MIT Game Lab research Todd Harpers current research focuses on competitive communities and their cultural norms, as well as queer and gender representation in gaming culture.
Oct 10 | 5:00 PM | E14-633 | Communications Forum

Mary Flanagan

Born Digital

Artist, author, educator, and designer. She is the inaugural chair holder of the Sherman Fairchild Distinguished Professorship in Digital Humanities at Dartmouth College.
Dec 5 | 5:00 PM | 66-110 | Communications Forum

How is the generation born in the digital age different? Are those born digital likely to have different notions of privacy, community, identity itself? How do educators approach this generation to help prepare them for scholarship and for citizenship? Speakers: John Palfrey, Head of School at Phillips Academy and author of Born Digital: Understanding the First Generation of Digital Natives, and Ethan Zuckerman, director of the MIT Center for Civic Media.
Oct 17 | 5:00 PM | E14-633

Long-Form Journalism: Behind the Scenes at The Atlantic

Some have called long-form journalism an endangered species. But ground-breaking articles requiring months of research and writing continue to appear. Why is such work important? How is it created? James Fallows and Corby Kummer of The Atlantic will chart the journey of a major feature story from conception to publication and speculate about the future of long-form writing in the digital age. Tom Levenson, Professor of Writing at MIT, will moderate.
A current schedule, including conferences and special events, is available at cmsw.mit.edu/events. Miss an event? Catch up at cmsw.mit.edu/podcasts.

The Boom-Bust Cycle of Social Media-Fueled Protests Through Gezi Protests in Turkey and Others
Zeynep Tufekci on how social media-fueled protests have surprised observers with their seemingly spontaneous, combustible power. Yet, many have fizzled without having a strong impact on policy at the electoral and legislative levels.

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PEOPLE, PLACES, THINGS

Personal Updates
Have an update for the CMS/W community? Let us know at cmsw@mit. edu, and stay in touch professionally through our 850-member-strong LinkedIn group: cmsw.mit.edu/jobs-and-networking/. Feminists in Games conference in Vancouver and lectured on various subjects such as e-sports, live-streaming, and methods. She also spoke at the Rutgers Extending Play conference and MITs own Business in Games conference. In addition to being quoted in several popular press pieces on the subject of gaming (The New York Times, The Telegraph, Orange County Register, Danish Broadcasting Corp.), she was most excited to be featured in the PBS Off book episode on e-sports. Her co-authored paper on writing Ethnography and Virtual Worlds was accepted for publication to Interactions. Finally, her two recent books (Raising the Stakes and Ethnography and Virtual Worlds) received favorable reviews in Contemporary Sociology and Computer Supported Cooperative Work. Rosalind Williams will have a new book appearing September 30th titled The Triumph of Human Empire. More information is available rosalindwilliams.com/writing/human-empire. plot. In addition to his work at MEL, Jason has presented at a number of conferences including HASTAC, Digital Humanities 2013, DH: The Next Generation, and Media in Transition. He is also at work producing an article on multimedia scholarship for Digital Humanities Quarterly.

Faculty, Scholars, and Lecturers

In the summer, Ian Condry gave talks to celebrate the launch of his new book, The Soul of Anime: Collaborative Creativity and Japans Media Success Story, at Harvard, Anime Boston, EPFL (Lausanne, Switzerland) and Tokyo University of the Arts. He also appeared on NPRs All Things Considered and PRIs The World with Marco Werman. In fall 2013, Ian is launching the Creative Communities Initiative, a new research group affiliated with the Center for Civic Media, which will use ethnography to explore the political, cultural, and economic potential of online social networking and real world cultural action. Seth Mnookin spent the spring and summer trying to figure out how two small children could possibly take up so much of his and his wifes energy. At MIT, he designed a new course, Topics and Methods in 21st Century Journalism, and is hoping to use a web portal he created for the class as a model for other classes and projects. Outside of the confines of 77 Mass Ave., he co-chaired and coordinated a conference this fall at the American Academy of Arts and Sciences that will create a research agenda to establish data-based recommendations for vaccine communication. Finally, hes working on two long-term research projects one dealing with using social media to diagnose new diseases and the other looking at the biology and future of aging. T.L. Taylor had a great inaugural term teaching qualitative methods to both grads and undergrads and serving as a Resident Scholar in Simmons Hall. She also completed her one-year engagement with Microsoft Research. She was a keynote speaker at the

Alumni
Tyler Beck (S.M., Science Writing, 12) has been writing for magazines since he moved to New York in January; not always about science, but usually about people and their brains. In June he moved from 4 Times Square, where he been interning at GQ in the Conde Nast building, to 7 World Trade Center, where he now works for Fast Companys online vertical Co.Labs. He covers mostly data science, brain-hacking, and sometimes healthcare, but he has also written about online prostitution and experiential marketing, a range that fits a restless researcher well. For GQ , he got to talk to Rainn Wilson from The Office about their shared love of songs played by sad, intelligent men with guitars, and reviewed George Saunders latest story, Fox 8. He is enjoying the pace and culture of monthly magazines. Hes not sure yet what the next stage will be, but is keen to keep covering science stories as they impact the world outside the lab. Jim Bizzocchi (S.M., CMS, 01) just finished a sabbatical year. The first phase was reconnecting with his intellectual roots, with two months back at CMS/W still an amazing program in an amazing institution and two months with Henry Jenkins at USC. Henry continues to be a great mentor. Jim then got back into shape for some backcountry shooting in the Rockies with Glen Crawford, a great mountain cinematographer and skier. Jim then re-taught himself to be a cinematographer. It was his toughest task of all. Jim says it feels great to be a bornagain filmmaker. Now its back to teaching and research beginning with a substantial three-year Canadian research grant to further build his computationally-generative video sequencing system. Essentially he will

Graduate Students
Rodrigo Davies served as a Summer Innovation Fellow at the San Francisco Mayors Office of Civic Innovation. There he developed a new data format to standardize public noticing across city departments, designed an app to help residents navigate their options under the Affordable Care Act, and worked on the creation of Living Innovation Zones, a new program to enable communities to activate underused public spaces in the city center. Rodrigo rounded out the summer by hiking through the western forests of California and Oregon and the caves and canyons of West Texas and New Mexico. Jason Lipshin worked for the Mobile Experience Lab over this summer in collaboration with RAI, Italys national broadcasting company. His team has created an innovative puzzle game called Seedmate, which incorporates biodegradable seed cards and an augmented reality application in order to teach the basics of laying out a garden

fall 2013 25

PEOPLE, PLACES, THINGS

be building a version of a human editor. CMS/W is a key part of this initiative William Uricchio is a collaborating researcher on the grant, and Jim will be working with the Open Documentary Lab and consulting with other CMS/W faculty on the design. Kevin Driscoll (S.M., CMS, 09) is entering his fifth year at the University of Southern California and is currently writing a dissertation about alternative histories of the internet. The central story is about Fidonet, a vast network of bulletin-board systems run out of the homes of hobbyist volunteers since the early 1980s. Hes looking forward to getting it off his desk and out into the world. For fun, he has also been hosting a monthly radio show about weird mobile technology and culture on KCHUNG, an independent station in Chinatown, Los Angeles. You can find archived shows and other ephemera at featurephone.tumblr.com. Joellen Easton (S.M., CMS, 05) and husband Geir Gaseidnes bought a small white house with a red roof by the Los Angeles River in Long Beach, CA, in November and in short order filled it with a baby. Alexander Walter Gaseidnes was born on January 19, 2013. As media professionals and consumers who are seldom convinced media do things to people, his parents are decidedly ambivalent about how to approach screen time. (A future Communications Forum topic, perhaps?) In July 2013 Jo became business development manager for the Public Insight Network at American Public Media. Clara Fernandez-Vara and Matthew Weise (both S.M., CMS, 04) have just moved to New York City after six years in the Boston area. Clara is starting her new appointment as Associate Arts Professor at the NYU Game Center, in the Tisch School of the Arts. She is also finishing up the manuscript of her first book, Introduction to Game Analysis, for Routledge. After a year as Senior Narrative Designer at Harmonix Music Systems, Matt will continue working as a freelance game designer in New York, as well as devoting some time to his personal projects. After finishing up maternity leave following the birth of her second son Wyatt in September, Amanda Finkelberg (S.M., CMS, 07) returned to work as a course developer for a new UC Berkeley online initiative. She is helping to produce online advanced degree programs and figuring out ways to make distance learning more engaging and informative. She continues to freelance as a motion graphics animator and has an ongoing venture creating animated videos for startups. It has been a busy and excellent year in the East Bay. Sam Ford (S.M., CMS, 07) has been promoted at Peppercomm to Director of Audience Engagement. The book he coauthored with Henry Jenkins and Joshua Green Spreadable Media: Creating Value and Meaning in a Networked Culture was published by NYU Press. This spring, Sam, Henry, and Josh co-presented the book in a featured session at South by Southwest Interactive. In addition, Sam helped lead workshops on the book at CMS/Ws Media in Transition conference and at the Society for Cinema and Media Studies conference. He presented at the Planning-ness conference, the American Association of University Presses conference, Western Kentucky Universitys Thoughts on Pop series, UCBerkeleys Center for New Medias speaker series, a webinar for Bulldog Reporter, and podcasts such as New Books in Journalism, MarketingProfs, and the Electronic Resources & Libraries IdeaDrop House. This year, he has written multiple pieces for Harvard Business Review and Fast Company, among other outlets. Daughters Emma and Harper are now four and two. Ohio Associated Press Awards bestowed its first place prize on Anne Glausser (S.M., Science Writing, 09) for her work on The Biology of Addiction for WCPN-FM, in Cleveland. One of the award judges said, I wish to God that I could have had a five place tie for first. The quality of the entries was that good. Ms. Glausser earns first place because of the extraordinary job she does in explaining complex medical concepts. Conor Myhrvold (S.M., Science Writing, 12) will be doing the Harvard Computational Science Engineering Program this fall. James A. Nadeau (S.M., CMS, 06) recently completed his fourth Boston LGBT Film Festival as Executive Director. It screened over 125 films from 24 countries in six local theatres, reaching over 7,500 people. The Festival is the third-oldest continuously running festival in North America dedicated to LGBT cinema. 2014 marks its 30th anniversary. This year it was one of the first recipients of a grant from the Boston Foundations Equality Fund. He is starting his fifth year as a lecturer in MIT Literature and is funding his arts work by working as a Portfolio Associate on the Structured Credit team at Putnam Investments. James currently serves on the boards of the Tufts University Aidekman Arts Center and the re-launched arts blog Big, Red, and Shiny (redandshiny. com), which was recently voted winner of the Boston A-Lists Best Local Blog category. Nidhi Subbaraman (S.M., Science Writing, 10) started work as a science/tech contributing writer at NBCNews.com. Lana Swartz (S.M., CMS, 09) and Andres Lombana (S.M., CMS, 08) have publications in the upcoming issue of Media Fields Journal, co-edited by Lan Le (S.M., CMS, 09). Kenrick Vezina (S.M., Science Writing, 11) continues to lance freely and search for long-term work while maintaining the Genetic Literacy Project website and occasionally rescuing injured mockingbirds. Yannis Zavoleas (S.M., CMS, 04) completed his Ph.D. in 2011. In 2013 he moved to Newcastle, Australia, where he accepted a teaching position as Senior Lecturer at The University of Newcastle's School of Architecture and Built Environment. His research includes design methodology, design means as tools for thought, dynamic approaches to design, scripting, systemic architecture, and architectural theory of the 20th century. He has organized the AB-USE Computation in Architecture workshop series held in Porto, Portugal; Prague; and Patras, Greece, with the aim to explore the potentials of the introduction of scripting and coding in architectural creativity. In 2013, Yannis published his book Machine and Network as Structural Models in Architecture in Athens by Futura Publications (in Greek). More of his research work can be found at yzarch.wordpress.com.

26 in medias res

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