There Is No Spoon

I often ruminate on the future of media and how its intersection with technology has forever altered our society’s trajectory. But rarely do I capture these thoughts in any meaningful way. Since that is exactly the reason I started this blog in first place, I thought I would post them here.

These questions come from UMD student Angela Wong. I had the pleasure of meeting her at one of the recent ONADC events. She wrote me to ask my opinion on some of the big picture questions the media industry faces today. Angela is applying for the AP-Google Journalism and Technology Scholarship and asked me these questions about the convergance of journalism and technology I mentioned:

• What have been the biggest disruptors so far?
• What are the latest trends digital journalists and developers are following?
• What skills will digital journalists and developers need in the future?

All great ideas worth pondering. Thankfully, the holiday gave me a little time to spend fleshing out some answers. Here is what I wrote to Angela. [more]

Pretty much every up and coming developer position asks the applicant to have at least some knowledge and experience using Github. Some even go as far to say the distributed source-control system is actually becoming your resume. But for those of us without much command line experience, getting into something that looks like the best way to ruin your computer from the inside is more than a little intimidating.

Github's friendly Octocat.

But never fear! The friendly folks at Github want you to be able to learn the basics of push and pull version control without the hurdles of the terminal. You can now download the official app for Mac OSX.

I’m currently building a WordPress site for a small non-profit NGO. Having learned the hard way how tricky it can be to keep track of production code vs development, especially when using mulitple work stations, I thought this would be an opportune time to learn Git. [more]

Jumping up and screaming with excitement is not something I often encounter watching sports. It isn’t that I’m not a sports fan – I’m quite enthralled by many athletic spectacles. I just find myself typically more reserved on the couch than your average enthusiast. That being said, I leapt for joy when Abby Wambach nailed the equalizing goal in the 122nd minute of the US team’s Women’s World Cup quarterfinal match against Brazil Sunday. [more]

To be honest, few companies have influenced how I’ve spent my time more directly or more tangibly than Bungie. Playing Marathon with my brother when we were little taught me about how to set up a LAN. I created my first maps and mods around age 12 using their avant garde editing tools Forge and Anvil. Memories of Macworld 1999 surface the giddy feelings of anticipation at the seismic shift in gaming the original Halo represented.  Nights in the dorm at college screaming with delight at a friend’s place over Halo 2. The chance to go back, after grad school, and complete the suite of Halo works since then was certainly the main catalyst for recently purchasing an Xbox 360 – much to my girlfriend’s chagrin. And nothing whet my appetite for E3 more this year than the expectancy of seeing even just a glimpse at what the future holds for this seminal franchise.

Bungie has moved on from Halo and left it in the hands of 343 Industries. But what if I helped craft that future? What would I do with that power? That responsibility? [more]

More of us than would probably admit it have fantasized about being a hacker or some sort. A cyber-ninja capable of overriding electronic counter-measures and piercing secure networks. Not to mention doing it while holed up in a hideaway, clad in black ops gear, a la Ving Rhames style from the original Mission: Impossible. Movies and TV shows have done a fantastic job making the job of breaking software security glamorous and sometimes even sexy.

Then, why have video games fallen flat? [more]