"Technophiles Podcast: Live" Announcement

As promised in the last post. Here's the promo for the TPN UWM Live Shows. Come join us in the Digital Humanities Lab at 6pm this Wednesday, Sept. 23rd!

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*Apologies to Thomas Malaby and Stuart Moulthrop for the misspelled names.

Skritter: My Favorite App or New Favorite Game?

Skritter logo. (Photo from the web.)

I've been using Skritter for 3 weeks now. Its a program that teaches Chinese and Japanese character writing. I'll admit, I'm in love. Their website claims a user can learn a new character every 192 seconds and remember 95% of what they learn. It is in every way an amazing educational program; not least because it reminds me of city-builder games like Sim City and Civilization. Wait, what?

Funding Justifications

This is what I have been up to lately …

Examining games as an aspect of culture may still be under-developed, but assumptions about digital games abound within public and academic discourses. Many people look at digital games as only a thing which is addictive and damaging without taking the time to look beyond the rare sensational cases that happen to make the evening news. This should not be surprising. Once upon a time the same dystopian fears were expressed about radio, television, and the personal computer. New technology consistently frightens people even as it is accepted by others. This is not, however, an inconsequential historical cycle. These fears lead to uninformed laws and regulations being passed, the blocking of beneficial progress, and the deepening of the class gap (due in large part to unequal access to technologically related opportunities). This is not to suggest that all technology is “good” and that regulation should be done away with completely. Technology is neutral; it is how technology is used that begs moral questions. Therefore, it is imperative that social sciences, such as anthropology, take the time to look at technology, in all of its forms, so that these social practices can be understood and informed decisions can be made.

Report on the Sims Experiment

So I have been playing the Sims now for a little while.  Due to my language constraints (and sometimes my own laziness of not wanting to deal with my Chinese dictionary) I have restarted the game now 3 times when I get stuck.  Despite this, it looks like it has been helping based on the, albeit anecdotal, evidence.

For example, I met the friend of a friend a couple weeks ago while out with a big group of people.  (During this time the language used was more English than Chinese due to the varying level of language ability of the group as a whole.) We had a good time and see we added each other as friends on Facebook and chatted through text messages.  We conversed in a mix of Chinese and English, but using more Chinese than English, because I need to practice Chinese and his English isn’t quite fluent.

After about a week of chatting via text we met up and hung out in person.  After only a short time into the conversation he expressed his surprise at my low level of verbal communication ability in comparison to my written ability. My only explanation is that it must be the Sims.

The Sims game uses written Chinese, but like all versions, the avatars do not speak an actual language.  Therefore, when I play I am being exposed to written Chinese, but not verbal. I further believe this to be a result of playing Sims because although I am still taking Chinese classes, the classes do not emphasis writing and therefore are unlikely to be contributing to a disparity between my written and verbal abilities.

In short, it seems that playing the Sims in Chinese was a good idea.  I’ll keep playing and see if this continues to unfold in the vein.

Personal Experiment - the Beginning

During a couple of my trips to one of the cyber cafes here in Taipei I have met locals who are near fluent in English. Now I understand that most (maybe all?) students here study English in school, but I am talking about meeting people who at first sound like they may actually be ABCs and not locals of Taipei. During my last trip to the cafe I finally broke down and asked one of these guys how he got so good at speaking English. His answer was short and sweet. WoW.

I have been considering off and on since arriving in Taiwan buying a Chinese version of WoW in an attempt to meet people and brush up on my language skills, but I never got around to it for several reasons. After a while I gave up on the idea and forgot about trying to use video games to work on my Chinese skills.

Three days ago though, the idea reemerged in full force while I was walking through the mall near my house. I walked into one of the video game stores and was perusing the DS titles available when a box cover with large Chinese characters caught my attention. It was the Sims online. I immediately decided that this would be the perfect game for me to learn Chinese with. It is a life simulator and so my idea is that the vocabulary I will be confronted with in the game should be words and phrases that I can put to use and practice in my daily life.

The game is downloading right now. I can't wait to try this out.