Emerging Ideas Roundup: Culture & politics

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[word watch]
ludology

noun: The academic discipline of video game studies, covering not just computer science, but everything from game-making theory to cultural critiques of video games. Topics, according to Technology Review (March/April 2006), range from game philology to the study of virtual economies in EverQuest. The magazine notes that more than 100 North American colleges and universities offer some version of video game studies today, a trend that could give the 'slacker' pastime a new cultural legitimacy.

From Snapshot to Mugshot

Women who encounter leers and lewd propositions from strangers on the street have a new high-tech mechanism that might help them take back the sidewalks. Ms. (Summer 2006) reports that Holla Back NYC, a blog and a grassroots movement, is urging women to use their camera phones to snap a photo when a man hassles them in public-and to publish the photo on www.hollabacknyc.com. Sites have sprung up in other cities, too. The goal of this new form of Internet outing is not to catch or punish those who offend, but to give women an alternative to feeling powerless to respond.

Closing Time at EPA Libraries

Budget cuts are forcing 10 regional Environmental Protection Agency libraries, as well the headquarters library, to close or cut staff and hours this fall, reports Science News (July 15, 2006). The shutdowns are alarming because of the potential loss, to both scientists and the public, of access to data on local environmental hazards-records that sometimes are available only in these regional libraries. The agency is digitizing documents from the libraries' collections in order to make them available online. But skeptics contend that it could take years to put everything on the web. And, without librarians, users may have trouble finding what they're looking for.

The View from There

Grasping the complexities of the Middle East can be challenging, especially when U.S. television news often covers international issues in a passing sound bite. Enter Mosaic news. The daily half-hour TV newscast lets Americans watch a compilation of the news Middle Eastern viewers see themselves-unfiltered, unvarnished, and translated into English. The original reports, from both state-controlled and private broadcasters, are watched by 280 million people in 22 countries, including Qatar and Iran. 'We try to represent as many perspectives as possible,' explains producer Jamal Dajani. The Peabody Award-winning program is available via satellite on Link TV and online at http://linktv.org/mosaic.

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