In January 2025 I presented on a panel called "Alt-Text, Alt-Image: Multimodal Scholarship" at the annual Modern Language Association conference. My talk wasn't so much about multimodal scholarship, but it did take the Alt Text part of the title quite literally. Here's that talk, along with key slides. I want to talk today about alt… Continue reading The Ghosts of ClipartFlash Fiction, Alt Text, and Steganographic Narrative
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The Ghosts of Clipart
Five Theses on E-Lit Scenes
At the 2025 Electronic Literature Organization conference in Toronto I participated on a panel devoted to If/Then, a computational poetics group/workshop/collective/community that has been meeting monthly over Zoom since Fall 2020. Carly Schnitzler and Lillian-Yvonne Bertram, the organizers of If/Then were on the panel, as well as three members of If/Then's Community Advisory Board—Kathy Wu,… Continue reading Five Theses on E-Lit Scenes
The Poetics and Power of Small Language Models
In February 2024 I delivered the keynote address at the DHU8 symposium, the eighth annual digital humanities conference sponsored by seven of Utah's largest universities. Now, well over a year later, I am finally sharing a lightly edited version of my talk. There's a simple reason for the long delay: in my talk I preview… Continue reading The Poetics and Power of Small Language Models
Four Points about the Infrastructures of Professional Development
On Thursday, January 5, I participated on a round table at the 2023 MLA convention, organized by the MLA itself. The panel was called “Infrastructures of Professional Development.” Here's the panel description: This roundtable includes leaders who have developed technical, pedagogical, administrative, and organizational structures with potential to serve as sites for professional development. Brief… Continue reading Four Points about the Infrastructures of Professional Development
Babyface Dev Diary #2 – Choices
My last development diary entry looked at the origins of Babyface, my submission to the 2020 Interactive Fiction competition (IFComp). This dev diary entry looks at one of the first things reviewers say about Babyface: that it’s mostly linear. Usually this comes as a simple description of the game’s format, rather than a criticism. Because… Continue reading Babyface Dev Diary #2 – Choices
Babyface Dev Diary – Origins
So, Babyface is a thing I made. It's a creepypasta-style Southern Gothic horror story. I've entered the game into the 26th annual Interactive Fiction Competition (IFComp for short). You can play Babyface right now! I've followed IFComp for years—since at least 2007—but this is the first time I've made anything for the competition. Not that I… Continue reading Babyface Dev Diary – Origins
An End of Tarred Twine, a Monstrous Moby-Dick Hypertext
In my previous post I listed all the digital creative/critical works I've released in the past 12 months. (Whew, it was a lot, in part because I had the privilege to be on sabbatical from teaching in the fall, my first sabbatical since 2006. I made the most of it.) Now, I want to provide… Continue reading An End of Tarred Twine, a Monstrous Moby-Dick Hypertext
Play This Stuff I Made
When you're a college professor, you follow a different calendar from the rest of the grown-up world. There's school and there's summer, and that's how you plot your time. Of course, a global pandemic wreaks havoc on this calendar. But usually, somewhere about now I stop thinking about the previous academic year and start looking… Continue reading Play This Stuff I Made
Fuck You, Silicon Valley
It's not that I want to be angry, or despairing, but when I see this email in my inbox, on top of the daily hourly whalloping I get from the news and friends and family on the front lines of the coronavirus pandemic, I can't help be angry, and despair: Hey! A virtual summit! You… Continue reading Fuck You, Silicon Valley
AI Dungeon and Creativity
In early January I joined a group of AI researchers from Microsoft and my fellow humanist Kathleen Fitzpatrick to talk at the Modern Language Association convention about the implications of artificial intelligence. Our panel was called Being Human, Seeming Human. Each participant came to this question of "seeming human" from a different angle. My own focus… Continue reading AI Dungeon and Creativity
Speculative Surveillance with Ring™ Log
Over the weekend I launched Ring™ Log, which is simultaneously a critique of surveillance culture and a parody of machine vision in suburbia. In the interactive artist statement I call Ring™ Log an experiment in speculative surveillance. "Speculative" in this context means what if? What if Amazon's Ring™ doorbell cams began integrating AI-powered object detection… Continue reading Speculative Surveillance with Ring™ Log
Things Are Broken More Than Once and Won’t Be Fixed
I don't want to get into everything that's broken with Twitter and has been for a long time. I don't even especially want to get into that small slice of Twitter that was once important to me and is broken, which is its creative bot-making potential. I've written about bots already once or twice, back… Continue reading Things Are Broken More Than Once and Won’t Be Fixed
How a Student Project on Conspiracy Theories Became a Conspiracy Theory
Maybe this post is only of local interest, but I wanted share some insight into a disturbing rumor that went viral at Davidson College after credible evidence emerged about neo-Nazi activity among a few Davidson students. The rumors were scary. The gist was that plans for a school shooting were discovered on a whiteboard in… Continue reading How a Student Project on Conspiracy Theories Became a Conspiracy Theory
A Link Blog, Finally
For years—like ever since I started blogging in 2003 or so—I've wanted to include a link blog on this site. You know, one of those side bars that just has cool links. Back in the day, Andy Baio's link blog was my jam, something I often paid more attention to than his main blog. It looks… Continue reading A Link Blog, Finally
WRI 101: Monsters
Every so often I have an opportunity to teach a section of Davidson College's first year writing course, WRI 101. It's the only required class that all Davidson students take, but each section is shaped around a different topic. In Fall 2018 topics will range from "Writing about Modern Physics and Technology" (Section A) to… Continue reading WRI 101: Monsters