ENG 123 1.F: Working with Quotations, Delving Deeper into AI Topics

Today’s Plan:

  • Reviewing Quotation Assignment
  • Rewriting
  • AI Topics
  • For Next Session
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ENG 301 1.W: Brumberger and Lauer, Coding Job Ads

Today’s Plan:

  • Syllabus Refresh
  • Review B&L Responses
  • Examine Job Ads in Google Drive Folder
  • Quick Intro to Qualitative Coding
  • For Next Session (and the one after that)

Syllabus Refresh

Monday feels like a blur and I can’t remember what I discussed on the syllabus. Let me highlight a few things.

Review B&L Responses

I made a Google Doc.

Examine Job Ads in Google Drive Folder

Clean ’em up!

Quick Introduction to Qualitative Coding

Time to norm. We will need this.

For Next Session

I want you to go into your job advertisement and code it, using the coding sheet I have you (linked above). Make a comment to “insert” a code. Leave a query if you are uncertain. We will work on these in class Friday.

For Monday HA–just kidding, we don’t have class next Monday. For next week (likely Friday), the Herrick reading / response assignment.

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ENG 123 1.W: Mollick Responses, Potential Research Topics

Today’s Plan:

  • Review Mollick Responses
  • Emerging Research Topics
  • For Next Session

Review Mollick Responses

Someone wrote:

“That is our responsibility: to make sure AI stays a tool for humans to improve our lives and not turn into gods made of wires and code.”

Great sentence. As a theorist, my work looks at human desire for certainty, and the dangers that it causes for other people. A former mentor of mine, Victor Vitanza, once wrote: “we are never at home in our whirl/world of language. Any and every attempt to assume that we are has or will have created for human beings dangerous situations.”

That desire for certainty can manifest in many forms: in a notion of God (not all forms of religious are dangerous in this way, but some are) or Reason (the 19th century testifies to how intellectual transcendence can translate directly into genocide) or Utopia (I had a friend who used to joke “tell me what your perfect world looks like. Now tell me how many people we have to kill to make it happen”).

AI might promise a kind of technocratic Reason-Utopia that would realize much of Vitanza’s fears. It would dictate one world of truth against which all others would be judged.

Emerging Research Topics

As I went through the responses, I tried to keep track of potential research areas. Here’s a preliminary list:

  • AI and Creativity
  • AI and Government Oversight / Corporate Oversight / Universal Income [Do we trust corporations to have our best interests at heart? How do we address the job market / economy of the future? How can/should we regulate AI?]
  • AI and Education [benefits, distinguishing productive use vs cheating]
  • AI and Alignment [Whose Values Get Coded?

Snippets:
On education, someone wrote:

I’m working towards being a special education teacher, and depending on what level of special education I teach I understand that I might have students who use AI as a shortcut for their own learning.

Which makes me ask: how do we draw the line between AI as an aid and AI as a shortcut?

Someone else wrote:

Although, I have used AI more creatively. Sometimes, I will play around with visual AI and type in silly prompts like, “a pink dolphin jumping out of the water” just to see what a pink dolphin would look like. Or when SnapChat came out with “My AI” I played around with it and asked it random questions just to see what it would respond with. My major is Elementary Education, so I don’t feel particularly threatened by AI, but I am nervous that my students may tend to use it in the future. I know that K-6 students might not use it as much as a student at the high school level might use it, but it is still a worry of mine.

Hmm.

On creativity, someone wrote:

There are lots of people in the world who use AI to make various forms of art and then either pass it off as their own or argue that AI does it better than humans, making artists obsolete. I’m attending UNC to study Art Education with the plan of becoming an elementary school art teacher, so potentially AI could take over my future job. I think AI is a unique tool that can be helpful for a lot of things, and I have used it for help with a lot of things, but the idea of using it to take people out of certain fields of work is terrible.

Which led me to ask: “I’d be really curious: what do you see as the value of making art? How do you defend taking hours to make a painting vs taking minutes to have an AI generate that painting for you?” Notice that I’m asking someone to define a foundational postulate (learning to make art has value because…).

Notice, too, that I am not addressing the other argument. Because there is two arguments kind of mashed together here. That’s fine! Writing, drafting, responding is messy work. But as we revise, and as we develop a research question, we need to pull them apart. The first concerns creativity in the way I have presented it above. The second concerns employment–those concerns are also valid! But I would not try to write a paper that explores both of those things at once.

For Next Session

Read one of the following:

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ENG 123 1.M: Welcome. Game. Syllabus. Reading. Writing.

Today’s Plan:

  • Welcome / Game
  • Syllabus
  • Reading
  • For Next Session

A Quote from Douglas Adams

I’ve come up with a set of rules that describe our reactions to technologies:

  • Anything that is in the world when you’re born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works.
  • Anything that’s invented between when you’re fifteen and thirty-five is new and exciting and revolutionary and you can probably get a career in it.
  • Anything invented after you’re thirty-five is against the natural order of things.

Syllabus

Here is a link to the syllabus.

For Next Session

Read: Ethan Mollick, chapters from Co-Intelligence: Living and Working with AI

Write: a 300 word response to Mollick (single-spaced). I would like your response to address a few things:

  • What are your experiences with AI? Have you used it (statistics tell us you probably have)? In what capacity (it is fine if you have used it to complete assignments)? Are you working toward a major/field that is likely to use AI? Are you an artist who feels like they might be impacted by AI? Are you already working with it proficiently or personally or professionally? You are taking a paragraph to build up a bit of ethos (telling us who you are and placing yourself in an AI discussion)
  • What do you make of Mollick’s claim that “focus[ing] on apocalyptic events robs most of us of our agency and responsibility?”? What agency? What responsibility? Why does Mollick believe we are stripped of it? Why might he be right? Why might he be wrong? [DO BOTH]
  • Explain to me in simple terms what “alignment” is and why we have to care about it. When we hear that world, what questions should we be asking ourselves?
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ENG 328 12.R: Print Typography

Today’s Plan:

  • Typography in InDesign

Paragraph Styles

Today we are going to focus on typography in InDesign. Specifically, we are going to work with paragraph styles. In preparation for today, I have asked you to make a paragraph style for the title of works. We will also make a style for author’s name and, time permitting, different styles for poetry and prose works.

Let’s look at the spring 2023 issue by Shellee Schwartz as an example.

Typography Checklist

Font Choice: I have asked you to pair two fonts together. Because this is a print magazine, you have a lot of options here. Traditionally, you would want your body font to be a serif font. Google can certainly help you find a combination or at least some inspiration. Remember that, if you download and install a font into InDesign for your design (which is awesome), you will need to include that font in the final folder you pass in (move it into your copy of the Crucible materials folder). If you need help with downloading and installing a font, then let me know.

Font Size: Typically, print designs use a “points” (pt) rather than “pixels” system (there’s also ems, but I will skip those today). I tend to prefer using pixels, if only because I learned web design before I learned print design. Typically, body font size in a printed literary magazine is 10pt (which would be 13.3 pixels). If you are ambivalent on this, then I would probably use “points.”

I refer to body font above because that gives us a baseline. To figure out how to size other elements, we want to use a modular scale.

Note that different fonts will size differently, and we ultimately want to create something both beautiful and readable. So don’t be afraid to bump your font up to an 11 base if (like in the Schellee example) your base font is really small).

Line-Length: Ultimately, after choosing a font-type and size, we want a line of 45 to 75 (max) characters. Shorter lines can be easily to read; often Crucible designers will use a column format for multi-page prose works to increase readability (remember to keep the gutter between the columns sensible).

Justification: Obviously we want body text to be left-aligned. But should we justify that text? Generally, the answer is no, unless we are working with dense text in smaller columns. I think the rhetorical purpose of a literary magazine should be to read the literature, and thus readability should trump spatial beauty. No justification please.

Leading: Leading is the amount of space we put between lines; generally leading is set between 1.2 and 1.5 times your font-size. So a font-size of 11pt would set the leading to 1.32 to 16.5. One big factor that designers consider is the x-height of a font–the higher the x-height, the more space you generally want between lines.

Orphans, Widows, Runts, and Rivers: I will admit that I just learned the term “runt” this morning while researching orphans and widows and have no idea if it is a real industry term or just something this writer at Herron Printing and Graphics made up. But it works for me.

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2024 Red Sox Tirade (Definitely Not a Season Preview)

I sit to write this full of rage. Rage, dear reader, rage. The very thought of this miserable off-season inspires it, you see. Lest you forget, Red Sox Chairman Tom Werner promised that “we’re going to be competitive next year. We’re going to have [to] be full throttle in every possible way.”

And how was that promise realized? In a two year contract for once-prospect-now-journeyman Lucas Giolito (now out for the year with an elbow injury) and a handful of barely above replacement-level position players. Rather than the disappointing signings, my rage grows from the fact that the Red Sox, a team with a promising offense and plenty of potential offensive additions on the way from the farm system, a team that desperately needs starting pitching (of which there is none in the farm system), will enter the season 62 millions dollars under the luxury tax. The team that has a media empire. The team that charges more for a ticket than any other in baseball. The team that let Mookie Betts leave ostensibly because they didn’t want to pay him (yeah, still angry about that too). Let me put this as plainly as I can: this team does not deserve a single dime of your money.

And I mean it. I don’t want to see any of you taking pictures at Fenway Park. Stay away. I often tell my students that, in this post-industrial-hyper-capitalist wasteland we call an economy, every dollar you spend is a vote for the world in which you want to live. It is a dwindling form of agency, but it is still a form of agency. Exercise that agency my friends, tell the Red Sox you will not live in a world in which they enter a season 62 million dollars under the cap. Tell them this by NOT GOING TO GAMES. Please.

What so frustrates me is that there were real additions out there that might not only help the team in 2024, but also in future seasons as top prospects like Ramon Anthony, Miguel Bleis, Kyle Teel, and (maybe) Marcelo Mayer reach the big leagues. I say maybe for Mayer because his 2023 season showed some contact issues that might be troublesome. I am not giving up on him yet, but he might need to retool his swing or become the next Jeter Downs. Regardless of Mayer’s future–let me not get distracted here–not complimenting this rising core, many of whom will arrive in 2024 or in 2025, with quality pitching this season is unforgivable. Especially when you are 62 million dollars under the luxury tax.

ZIPs projects this team to win 77 games next season. Another last place finish in a loaded AL East. I’m not sure if Blake Snell would be enough to get us out of the basement of the division. But Snell went for essentially 34 million for one year (he has a player option for a second season he will almost certainly waive). Snell isn’t necessarily a great pitcher, despite his two Cy Young awards. He tends to walk a lot of batters and his success largely rides on one killer pitch (thus, he might not age well). However, he is also only entering his age 31 season and is projected to be a 3 win player. As a baseball team, you get better by signing 3 win players. An 80 win team is 3 wins better than a 77 win team. We had plenty of luxury tax space to offer Snell a 4/120 million dollar deal.

There’s a lot of other pitchers we could have invested in this off-season. I will not go through all of them. There’s a handful of prospects and position players I find intriguing. But, honestly, my heart isn’t into writing about them this year. Not after the “full throttle” offseason that did little but choke my enthusiasm for this team. So I say again: do not give this team your money. They do not deserve it.

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ENG 328 12.T: Crucible Design Project Workday / Timeline

Today’s Plan:

  • Crucible Design Timeline
  • Title Page
  • Threading Content
  • Using Paragraph Styles
  • Working with Layers
  • Questions?

Crucible Design Timeline

The Crucible design project is due next Thursday at midnight. Here’s how I hope things work:

  • Tues (3/26): Title Pages, Threading Content, Paragraph Styles, Working with Layers, Questions
  • Thurs (3/28): Typography overhaul [emphasis on readability: font pairings, leading, tracking, kerning, widows and orphans. NOTE: typical print line-length is 70-80 characters.]
  • Tues (4/2): Page Numbers, Automated Table of Contents. For now, you can leave a space for the page numbers (Insert > [this requires that you have used a “title” paragraph style for all titles in your document]

Here is a link to the class notes with page dimensions.

A useful keyboard shortcut in InDesign: CTRL + Mouse Wheel

For convenience, here is the link to the project files.

Title Pages

I have uploaded the Lulu template (there is a .psd and a .indd option)

Remember that the cover has to include a Crucible logo (Bearistotle).

Note that the Lulu Design Guidebook has info on the spine.

Another reminder that you are welcome to make original art for the cover.

Threading Content and Setting Up Paragraph Styles

A quick demonstration: applying a paragraph style to your titles will make the ToC generation easier.

Working with Layers

Another quick demonstration.

Questions?

If there is something you would like me to demonstrate on Thursday or address, then let me know.

Homework

For Thursday’s class, try and thread all of your content into InDesign. We will be working on typography in class on Thursday.

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ENG 231 11.T: Ethics, Morals, and Decisions in Video Games

Today’s Plan

  • A Brief Lecture on Ethics and Morals
  • Do A Thing!
  • A Quick Check and Responses
  • Trolley Problems, and a Few Absurd Trolley Problems
  • Homework

A Brief Lecture on Morals and Ethics

For me, morality is the study of the rules that govern our behavior, our internalization of the rules, what we value and believe. The spiritual-internal vs. secular-external distinction isn’t particularly productive for me. I don’t care if the rules come from state agencies, critical reason or thinking (Kant) or spiritual institutions (religion). I simply think about morality as the rules we would right down if I asked you waht is right and what is wrong. Morality is how we develop and internalize the rules: thou shalt not kill. A moral. I am not particularly concerned where the rule comes from or who enforces it. I see morality as the study of the rules we internalize, and how those rules govern our behavior, how those rules influence the way we come to see ourselves and the way we formulate/articulate our desires.

Ethics, for me, signals how we employ, actualize, our moral values in lived experience. It is how/whether we (choose to) act. What do we do when our rules seem to fail us? When our rules come into conflict? When it is unclear how our generic rules apply to a messy, complicated, specific situation? Ethics attends to those moments when we make a decision that we think feels right even though the rules might tell us it is probably wrong (I think you can probably see how Papers, Please is an ethical game in the sense I am describing–a game in which what is “right” isn’t clear, a game that makes us decide through a haze of uncertainty). If morality is our sense of what should be, ethics is the study of how we actually act. Ethics operates in relation to morality, often in its shadow, in the places where morals break down. I think the study of ethics is the most interesting when we encounter a situation in which or moral convictions come into conflict. Again, if we believe that “thou shalt not kill,” then how do we also celebrate the soldier? How do we operate in the face of competing morals, competing “goods,” competing obligations?

My understanding of ethics is heavily indebted to the work of philosopher Emmanuel Levinas. Levinas’s work encourages us to recognize our aversion to difference, and the lengths humans will go to eliminate alterity (that which is strange, different, unknown or unknowable to them). He jests that we have an allergy to the strange and different, to what he terms “the other.” We seek to “joyously possess” the world as a certain knowledge. Such possession is akin to mastery–to rule the world without question. To eliminate questions that make us uncomfortable. Rather than deal with the other, we desire the same–we desire to know, label, categorize, understand something. Facing something we do not know, or cannot know, can bring out the worst in us. To be ethical, for Levinas, is to learn to inhabit this discomfort, disequilibrium and repress the desire to transform something other into something familiar, what he calls “the same.” To welcome the other as an other, to let them be different, rather than to convert them into the “same” thing that I already know. [First principle is ethics not ontology–before we know what is, we are aware of the presence of an-other that calls us into being etc etc].

Ethics, for Levinas, is learning to recognize and prioritize others, to put their needs ahead of our own. Ethics becomes extra complicated when we realize that others make different demands on us–and no matter how generous we might want to be, we cannot give everything to everyone. To give to one other often means we have to take away from an other. Thus, in his later career, Levinas pays more attention to the concept of justice. Justice requires I choose between the competing demands of the other and the neighbor–that I chose knowing I must betray one of them. Their is no justice without choice, no choice without imposition. [Levinas’s formula: to make the choice that causes the least amount of violence].

More than just an analytical science of how we act, ethics for me marks our ability to handle, to process, the unknown. How do we feel, and respond to our feelings, when we encounter the strange? Do we curl back in repulsion? Express exasperation (*why do they do that? that’s so weird?*). Or do we become self-critical? Do we invite reflection (*why don’t I do that?*). In short, for Levinas ethics is a practice of hospitality. How/do we welcome the stranger? Something different? Further, what happens when we encounter something we cannot control, when we have to make a decision with no clear right answer, when we face something that resists our mastery?

What does this have to do with the distinction between morality and ethics? I believe that the more we recognize and study ethics (as moments of moral indecision), the better we become at carefully choosing how to act when we have no one true, certain, “right” answer to guide our choice. We have to learn to deal with complexity, and the icky feeling that it can produce in us. Video games can help us do that. The point of moral philosophy, of interrogating why we think or feel a particular way, why we make a decision, is to become more familiar with what we value. To reveal consistency, or inconsistency. To invite indecision or the second guess. To, hopefully, learn to live more thoughtfully.

Our last project, focused on the work of Miguel Sicart and the game Detroit Become Human questions whether games, by constructing *sophisticated* ethical problems, can make players more ethical in the sense I have just worked out. The reading you will do for homework will provide us some insight into how Sicart thinks moral problems should (and shouldn’t) be formulated in games to best encourage the kind of critical thinking and questioning I describe in the previous paragraph.

Do A Thing

A link to a Google Form.

Trolley Problems, and a Few Absurd Trolley Problems

Let’s talk about the Trolley Problem, created by Foot and complicated by Thompson. Very simply: the trolley problem is a philosophical thought experiment created in the 1970’s by philosopher Philippa Foot.

TED on Trolley Problems.

So, if you haven’t guessed by now, here is my theory for what video games have learned is their unique province: they can leverage the emotional unrest, affectation, difficulty, disequilibrium of Trolley Problems. Foot’s trolley problem is meant to explore the moral consistency, or lack thereof, people use to make life or death decisions. Video games can proceduralize this thought experiment, to make it more visceral or “real.” We feel the decision–this kind of feeling is called “affective” or pathetic (deriving from the Greek term for emotion, pathos).

In a book or a film, we are left to watch the trolley driver pull the switch or not. The author decides. The author justifies. Perhaps she does so to secretly stir our outrage, to get us to deconstruct her flawed reasoning. She can spur reflection, contemplation, resistance. But we are always a bystander to the action, distanced from the choice. We are witness.

But not so in a game. I remember my first play through of Dragon Age: Origins. The details are a bit foggy–I remember encountering some elves and some werewolves. The werewolves were created by dark elven magic? And then, like Frankenstein’s monster, abandoned by their creators. At some point a wolf had killed an elf. Maybe it was self-defense? I honestly don’t remember. But I remember, unexpectedly, having to decide which species to exterminate. Only one can survive. Neither is innocent. And there is no heroic path to saving them both (well there is, but you are probably only going to have that option if you have made a series of other decisions, and only about 1 in every 10 player unlocks that “perfect” ending). The game forced me to be responsible. I must pull the lever and determine who gets hit by the train.

I’ve played games since roughly 1984 on my Atari 2600. I’ve murdered hundreds of thousands, if not millions of aliens and demons and terrorists and zombies and horde (“For the Vanguard” or “For the Alliance!”). I’ve killed all these things from a moral position that authorizes their death. I’ve never been troubled by all this killing. Those aliens threaten our light. Those demons threaten Tristram. Those terrorists threaten democracy. Those zombies would eat me and the few others remaining in Raccoon City. I killed them all without friction. (Save for Silent Hill 3, one of the greatest mindfuck games of all-time unfortunately lost to history–“they look like monsters to you?”).

But Dragon Age interrupted my joyous possession of the world, my righteous action, my moral foundation. It stung me. This was something different. I introduce the Trolley Problem, the lever, the notions of disequilibrium, ethics, and agency as a way of thinking about games. I imagine many of you are already thinking of games that leverage this dynamic. Soon we will work together to generate lists of games–AAA, mobile, indie–that we can play and explore as a class (in addition to my required experience: Walking Dead episode 1).

As should become clear through the next project, I feel that games can spur ethical reflection. However, as Miguel Sicart notes, there are things that both programmers and players must do for games to best realize this potential. We will explore these things in class. For now, I would suggest that reflection is a key component of ethical thinking and growth. It isn’t enough to simply “do,” we must ask why we do. It isn’t enough to simply “feel,” we must ask why we feel. Both the procedural paper and the tragedy paper have begun this kind of work.

A Wicked Brief Introduction to Moral Systems

Last class I lectured on how I think about ethics, arguing for a sense of ethics:

  • Tied to moments in which moral laws come into conflict or when it is unclear which choice is the more moral. Moments of pause or indecision in which the plentitude of possibilities give us pause
  • And as attempts to overcome our inability to handle the stranger and the strange.

Today I’ll open over-simplifying those definitions a bit. Let’s call ethics the study of how we make difficult choices. To study ethics is to become more self-reflective and self-aware. As the skit from The Good Life implied, this can lead to a kind of paralysis by analysis (philosophers and theorists often are excellent at discovering and mapping complexity, less great at deciding on one definitive course of action). Rhetoricians (some of us) recognize the need for deep analysis, but often insist on a moment of decision, where analysis has to turn into action. That is a lecture for another course. (In my rhetorical theory class we work with an essay called “The Q Question” by Richard Lanham that urges humanities scholars toward more public, pragmatic projects; see also the work of Bruno Latour, especially Politics of Nature).

Given the complexity of human decision making, there’s a lot of different theories and approaches to ethics. Let me lay out 4 of them:

  • Deontology or Moral Law
  • Teleology or Consequentialism
  • Virtue Ethics
  • Hospitality Ethics

Deontological ethics are based on identifying moral laws and obligations. To know if we are making the right decision, we ask ourselves what the rules are. For instance, if you didn’t lie to Herschel because lying is wrong, then you were invoking a deontological frame. You made a deontological decision. You worked back from the specific concrete moment to a (prior) conviction (philosophical knowledge that precedes any human experience, stuff we might “innately” know, is termed “a priori”–some empirical philosophers, like John Locke, argue that nothing is a priori, everything is learned). Deontological ethics get critiqued because sometimes moral laws come into conflict and because it requires absolute adherence to the law without thought of context. At core: God, Reason, Science, common sense dictate right from wrong.

Consequential ethics look ahead, from the action and decision, to its consequences. You use prior knowledge to make hypotheses about what will happen. Your focus here isn’t on what other people or institutions would declare right or wrong, but on producing “the greater good.” This is often called utilitarianism, which strives to imagine what will make the greatest good for the greatest amount of people. Another form of consequentialism is hedonism, which strives to make the most (personal) pleasure and minimize (personal) pain. If you didn’t lie to Herschel because you thought lying might lead him to question you further or kick you out of the farm, then you probably made a hedonistic decision. If you didn’t lie to Herschel because you thought lying might lead him to question you and kick you and Clementine out of the farm, then you made a consequential decision. Consequential ethics get critiqued because they can lead us into hurting minority populations. One could argue, for instance, that slavery contributed to the “greater good”–that enslaving 3 people makes life wonderful for 7. I’d say they are wrong–but one can rationalize pain in relation to happiness, which can lead us down dark paths, trying to calculate levels of pain, which is precisely why Kant thought of consequentialist ethics as “wishy washy” and wanted to develop something more universal. At core: act in service to the greater good.

Virtue ethics are a bit different–though, like consequential ethics they rely on our imagination. Virtue ethics asks us to imagine, in that situation how a good person would act. This, in a sense, mixes deontology (who is the good here? what rules do they follow? what institutions would they represent?) with the situational flexibility of consequentialism. If deontology operates around rules that govern behavior, virtue ethics begins by establishing the characteristics common to good people (bravery, compassion, justice, etc). Often we tie virtue ethics to a particular person–for instance, we might cite Martin Luther King’s dedication to non-violence, self-sacrifice, and self-discipline (but, like, if you try to tell me that MLK was “cooperative” or “less radical” then you are simply telling me you haven’t read MLK. MLK’s domestication is a topic for another day). At core: imagine what a great person would do in this situation.
If you didn’t lie to Herschel because you believe a good person should tell the truth and be brave, and trust others (etc.), then you are exercising virtue ethics. Note: this is different than deontology, because here you don’t *have* to follow the rules, and there might be times that lying (say, to protect someone from Nazi pursuit), is justified.

Ethics of hospitality also involve an effort of imagination; this time it is our task to put ourselves in the other person’s shoes and imagine a decision from their perspective. Is this a decision we would want someone to make if they were in our position? We can think of this as a more radical version of the Christian ethic of the Golden Rule (from Lev. “do unto others as you would have them do unto you”), except here we are self-skeptical enough to realize that the other might not want the same things as us. So rather than assume the other is just like us, we train ourselves to recognize and honor their difference, their alterity. Hence hospitality, since we train ourselves to welcome the strange, the unfamiliar. Ethics, here, trains people to negotiate the unknown and the contingent. Ethics as the impossibility of ever walking in another’s shoes, but trying like hell all the same. At core: ethics as making “space” for other people.

Final Thought: Morals, Ethics, and Video Games

I want to reserve the final 10 minutes of class for you to write a comments, question, response to today’s class. What stuck out? What are you unsure of? What would you challenge? What would you want to contribute?

Homework

There is no class on Thursday as I will be away at an academic conference. In lieu of class, do two things:

  • Read Sicart’s “Moral Dilemmas” essay in the Files section of Canvas and respond to the questions in the Canvas 11.R assignment
  • Download the PollEverywhere App for a cell phone, tablet, or create an account on a laptop. We will start using this in next Tuesday’s class to collaboratively play Detroit: Become Human
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ENG 319 11.T: Crucible Design Project

Today’s Plan
  • Crucible Final Deliverables
  • Crucible Inspection
  • Crucible Design Checklist
  • Saving Files
  • Pages / Parent Pages
Note: I will be out of town Wednesday and Friday. I am uncertain when I will receive the final copy from The Crucible. Eventually, I will get it and share with you a folder that looks like this:

My hope is that you can start this project this week. I can give you a link to last year’s copy, if you want to start by setting your page styles. You might also start by thinking about cover design. Several past issues use a piece of art as the cover (Bittersweet, Notice, Refrain), but not all do. Take, for instance, Space or Unearthed. There is a template from Lulu printing that you can use for your cover design.

Final Deliverables

You will share a link to a .zip folder that contains:

  • .indd and .pdf files of your Fall 2023 Crucible layout
  • Assets folder containing any custom fonts and/or images you used in your issue. NOTE: this includes all of the art images in the Crucible issue. You can drag the Crucible folder I provide you (once I have it) into your project folder.
  • .psd and .pdf files of your Fall 2023 Crucible cover (front and back using Lulu template)

Note on saving files: remember to start a folder on the machine you will be using to design your Crucible issue. As you download fonts, save them in that folder. Save images in that folder BEFORE you place them in InDesign. Remember that InDesign does not create copies of the media you place in, but rather creates links to that media’s location on your computer. We need all of those assets to be saved properly for your .indd file to work.

You are welcome to do this project on your own or in pairs. It is quite a bit of work–so teaming up with someone can help, provided you have a way of sharing your project folder and files. That can be tricky.

Design Parameters and Checklist

Remember that this semester’s theme is “mirage.” There’s obviously a lot of different ways to think about what that means as a designer. How literal do you want to be? How playful? What colors does that suggest to you? Please, I beg you, no papyrus.

General Requirements:

  • Formatting a Table of Contents [I will dedicate class time to this once I get back]
  • Page Numbers
  • Image Credits / Artist Name
  • Crucible logo has to appear on the back cover. It should also appear inside on the “production” page.
  • Title Page (typically we use one of the art submissions for this, although it is usually okay to modify / edit the piece. This requires artist permission. Due to lower submissions this year, you are welcome to design your own title from scratch.) Remember that the cover is a separate file, created in Photoshop, using the Lulu template as a guide.

Spring 2024 Concerns:

  • “Concrete” spacing
  • Misreflection has paragraph indents (mostly)
  • Ill Thoughts on a Sunday Night: indents, italics
  • Throwing Shit at the Wall–concrete poem with very specific spacing
  • Dysmorphia – column-like spacing alignment

Typography:

  • Font selection and balance [mix at least two different fonts / title / author / body copy / footer]
  • Should you justify your text?
  • Font size [likely 10-11pt depending on style]/ kerning-tracking-leading / Use a modular scale [I’ll be paying attention to how your typography scales; we will work on this once I get back]
  • Leading/Line spacing [note: the higher your x-height, the more you should try bumping your leading up; generally leading is set between 1.2 and 1.5–also, the more leading, the more pages, the higher the cost of production]
  • Line length (how many characters per line? Be sure for print not web). General rule: 45 characters for columns, 70 max characters across a page (and 70 is a lot).
  • Dealing with Orphans. We will cover this when I get back.

Other Design Stuff:

  • Backgrounds and bleeds (zine format: we’re paying for color printing with [crucible folk?] full bleeds–make sure your design takes advantage of this throughout the document)
  • Strategic use of color / Developing a color scheme. More than just images should be in color, and we have free reign to do a bleed. Think about developing a motif that can be spread across pages.

Below are old notes that I will revisit / update as we go through the project.

Working with Parent Pages

To help kick start this project, I’ve set up a template to get you started. To do this, I created a new document with the following settings:

Document settings are 6x9, facing pages, with a .25 inch margin and a .125 inch bleed

I then set up a very simple Parent Page for the document (these used to be called Master pages). This page only has a reserved space for the Footer (which will be the page number and the contributor’s name).

Parent pages can be incredibly powerful in InDesign, but also frustrating and confusing. Often I have found students prefer simply copy and pasting existing pages to tinkering with a Parent. The benefit of Parent pages is that if you make a change to one page it will effect every page of that type.

One thing I learned from last time we did this was to pay special attention to paragraph styles as we are developing the document. Paragraph styles are an essential part of professional editing and technical documentation, since you are basically “tagging” (coding) information so that it can be processed en masse. For our project, we will be using paragraph styles to automate making a table of contents.

We will have a decision to make down the line:

  • A very simple ToC simply has the title of the work and the page number. There’s a number of straight-forward tutorials for this. Basic carpentry.
  • A more complicated ToC has the title of the work and the author’s name. This might require sorcery.
Everyone will prepare for sorcery. What does this mean. It means that you need to create two special paragraph styles:
  • Title of Work
  • Author Name
You will apply those two styles to every piece in the edition. This might be a bit disorienting, so let’s walk this through this together.
  • Create a Title field
    • Open the Paragraph Styles box; add it to your workspace
    • Name Paragraph Style
    • Set a Paragraph Shade
    • Set Indent to Away from Spine
    • Turn off Baseline Grid
  • Create an Author field
    • Set Indent to “Towards Spine”
    • Text Box Option > Align > Center
  • Create Text Box
    • Adjust Tracking
    • Space After Paragraph Option
    • Justification
  • Hack For Master Pages–using some guide lines
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ENG 319 11.T: Syllabus Check, Project 3, Rhetoric and Technology

Today’s Plan:

  • Syllabus Check-In
  • Project 3 Schedule
  • Time Permitting: ENG 492 Rhetoric and Technology / On Writing, Thinking, and Artificial Intelligence

Syllabus Check-In

Significant Things as the year draws to a close:

  • Final “Exam”: The final paper for this class will be a slightly extended Write-Up. In it, you will offer a definition of rhetoric. We will share these papers on our final exam day.
  • One last note, to earn an A for the course does require a bit of extra work:
    • Share one or two extra write-ups with the class
    • Read an additional book on contemporary rhetorical theory and write up an academic book review. I will have a list of books by week 2. Book reviews will be due week 12. You will design a class presentation and activity for week 13, 14, or 15 (note: these can be collaborative team projects).

Given how tight our calendar is the rest of the way, I want to propose a modification here. There will still be a final “exam” day, in preparation for which you will respond to a prompt that I provide.

If you want to earn an “A” for the class, then you will have to incorporate an additional book into that response. [Note that some of the following books are long; I only expect you to read about 120 pages–so the Introduction and 2-3 body chapters based on length]. Here is a list of potential books:

If you would like to read another book on demagoguery, race, feminism/queer theory, human difference and ethics, or “politics” (in the sense that Arendt/Cavarero offer) that *isn’t* on this list, email me and include a link to the work (Amazon links are fine).

Note that you still qualify for an A- even if you do not complete this extra reading (and provided you have completed all other assignments).

To clarify, the workload for the rest of the year is:

  • Read the Cavarero and complete two write-ups on her book (see schedule below)
  • Participate in the Cavarero Surging Democracy project
  • Complete the Cavarero reflection (shorter but similar to the Race and Rhetoric reflection
  • Complete the final Write Up for exam week; those wanting an A will discuss their extra book in this write-up
  • Complete the self-assessment form

Project 3: Surging Democracy

From the syllabus:

Staging a Rhetorical Carnival: In the spring, our class will host a “horizontal, nonviolent, creative, participatory” event on campus. I have tentatively named this event a “rhetorical carnival.” The class will have an opportunity to rename it. I want it to feel like a county fair, with various “horizontal, nonviolent, creative, and participatory” events designed and ran by my “carnies.” You are my carnies. I have no idea what a “horizontal, nonviolent, creative, and participatory” event is. Well, I have a few ideas that my grad class brainstormed last year when I first read of this book and designed this project. But I probably won’t share them with you. Your goal as a class will be to design and stage this event, and then write a paper reflecting on the process and product.

Here’s a bit more articulate description.
Schedule

  • Tuesday, March 19th: That’s today! Project 3, Cavarero Preface,
  • Thursday, March 21st: No class, reading assignment is to read Cavarero 1-56
  • Tuesday, March 26th: Discuss Cavarero 1-56 (brainstorm Write-Up topics); Homework: Cavarero Write Up #1
  • Thursday, March 28th: Share Write Up #1; Homework: Read Cavarero 57-86
  • Tuesday, April 2nd: Pitch potential “Carnival” ideas. Rename the “Carnival.” Homework: Cavarero Write Up #2
  • Thursday, April 4th: Share Cavarero Write-Up #2
  • Tuesday, April 9th: Final Write-Up Prompt and discussion: What is Rhetoric?
  • Thursday, April 11th: Revisit “carnival” ideas – “A” folks tell us what they are reading
  • Tuesday, April 16th: Event Planning
  • Thursday, April 18th: Event Planning
  • Tuesday, April, 23rd: Event Rehearsal
  • Thursday, April 25th: EVENT DAY
  • Exam Week: Final Write-Up Share

Let’s turn to Cavarero’s “preface.”

ENG 429 Rhetoric and Technology

Advising season is upon us. I will be teaching ENG 429 Rhetoric and Technology in the fall of 2024. ENG 429 will be a special topics seminar; for its inaugural run I will be teaching a course on rhetoric and AI. There will be 3 major projects one, each dedicated to exploring the affordances and limitations of AI writing technologies.

  • Project One: Based on an article by Scott Graham, we will all try to write a paper using ONLY AI generators. You are not allowed to write or edit any of the AI output.
  • Project Two: Based on an article by Doug Eyman, we will compare how 6 different AI generators summarize an academic work (which will likely be a foundational piece of techno-philosophy, something like Benamin’s “Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” or Heidegger’s “The Question Concerning Technology” or something similar. We will spend a week or so carefully reading and discussing the essay ourselves before turning to AI. You will write a report that compares/evaluates/critiques the AI performance.
  • Project Three: This is a project of my own design, based on somewhat recent (2004-2014) rhetorical work on “glitching” technology as a form of resistance. You will design a project / work / performance that attempts to “glitch” an AI generator.

Like ENG 319, this course will employ write-ups and use a hybrid self-assessment approach to grading.
Note: I will be able to provide access to several different AI Generators for project 2. The final project will require you pay for one month’s access to Chat GPT4, which currently costs $10. That should be the course’s only material cost, all other readings will be supplied as .pdfs.

Time-permitting: I spent break working on a conference paper that bridges the work we’ve done in 319 and some of the theoretical under-pinnings of ENG 429.

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