Author Archives: Reverend

Bad Day on the Midway

Posted on February 15, 2014 by Reverend

After exploring Will Crowther’s early Interactive Fiction game from 1976, I somehow found myself thinking about The Residents’s interactive CD-Rom from 1995 Bad Day on the Midway. This was a crazy game, and it is one of the multi-media experiments … Continue reading →

Posted in fun, The Internet Course, video games | Tagged , , , , , | 6 Comments

Early Computer Gaming and the Open Net

Posted on February 15, 2014 by Reverend

One bit from Katie Hafner and Matthew Lyon’s Where Wizards Stay Up Late I found particularly interesting was a section of the chapter on E-Mail titled “Adventure and Quasar: The Open Net and Free Speech.” It featured Will Crowther, who … Continue reading →

Posted in The Internet Course, video games | Tagged , , , , , , | 9 Comments

Network Randoms

Posted on February 14, 2014 by Reverend

I’m just about finished with Katie Hafner and Matthew Lyon’s 1998 1996 history of the creation of the internet Where Wizards Stay Up Late. I’ve been enjoying it thoroughly, and while I was familiar with much of the general history … Continue reading →

Posted in digital storytelling, The Internet Course | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

IMPs of Internet History at UCLA

Posted on February 14, 2014 by Reverend

On Wednesday I saw this tweet from Miriam Posner announcing that one of the pioneer developers of the internet, Leonard Kleinrock, was going to lead her students on a tour of the site at UCLA where the internet came to … Continue reading →

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Teaching BitTorrent by Way of Snow Ball Fights

Posted on February 13, 2014 by Reverend

After I wrote this rather emo post about my teaching woes as a result of last Thursday’s class, the follow-up session on Tuesday was awesome. The “How It Works” panel did a phenomenal job of leading the class through a … Continue reading →

Posted in The Internet Course | Tagged , , , | 6 Comments

Agile EdTech

Posted on February 12, 2014 by Reverend

Yesterday morning I met with UMW Computer Science professors Karen Anewalt and Stephen Davies to discuss possible platforms for an online course they are offering high school students in Virginia. In particular, they were wondering about the open source platform … Continue reading →

Posted in experimenting, Instructional Technology | Tagged , , | 19 Comments

Archie, Veronica, and Other Old Gold Technologies

Posted on February 11, 2014 by Reverend

I’ve been having a lot of fun recently exploring old school technologies as part of The Internet Course I’m teaching alongside Paul Bond. Paul wrote an awesome post a couple of days ago investigating the file-sharing protocol Gopher. I’ve been doing … Continue reading →

Posted in The Internet Course, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , | 5 Comments

TIC104: Learning from Internet History

Posted on February 8, 2014 by Reverend

This week in The Internet Course we started discussing the topics the class has been researching, summarizing, and conceptualizing for the first three weeks. Five students made up a panel that talked about the History of the Internet from J.C.R. … Continue reading →

Posted in The Internet Course | Tagged , , , | 3 Comments

The Afterglow of Kilobyte Age Art

Posted on February 7, 2014 by Reverend

I came across the keynote presentation Bruce Sterling delivered at the transmediale conference wherein he discusses the afterglow of internet rubbish that is the basis of some of the most interesting digital art of our moment. His talk ranged far … Continue reading →

Posted in art, The Internet Course | Tagged , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Master of My Domain

Posted on February 7, 2014 by Reverend

We are going full throttle at UMW with Domain of One’s Own, so it’s time to bust out the t-shirt! Mary Kayler got me this gem for Christmas, and I am wearing it with pride today! We have nearly 600 … Continue reading →

Posted in Domain of One's Own | Tagged , | 6 Comments