Week 25 Update

Industry News
Apple breaks sales records with new iPad launch 
http://gamasutra.com/view/news/166463/Apple_breaks_sales_records_with_new_iPad_launch.php
When ex-BioWare devs make their own strategy RPG
http://gamasutra.com/view/news/165823/When_exBioWare_devs_make_their_own_strategy_RPG.php
Top iPhone game apps: Modern Combat 3, Draw Something dominate paid charts 
http://gamasutra.com/view/news/166439/Top_iPhone_game_apps_Modern_Combat_3_Draw_Something_dominate_paid_charts.php
Inafune: Japanese games industry needs to take more chances on 'the young guys' 
http://gamasutra.com/view/news/167173/Inafune_Japanese_games_industry_needs_to_take_more_chances_on_the_young_guys.php

Week 24 Update

Industry News
Report: Obsidian missed Fallout: New Vegas bonus by one Metacritic point 
http://gamasutra.com/view/news/165900/Report_Obsidian_missed_Fallout_New_Vegas_bonus_by_one_Metacritic_point.php
Ex-Zynga, Sony Online boss heads to Amalur house 38 Studios 
http://gamasutra.com/view/news/165935/ExZynga_Sony_Online_boss_heads_to_Amalur_house_38_Studios.php
Diablo III will sell 5M in first year - analyst 
http://gamasutra.com/view/news/165936/Diablo_III_will_sell_5M_in_first_year__analyst.php
Amazon's Android Appstore reaches 31K apps, sells 'millions'
http://gamasutra.com/view/news/165952/Amazons_Android_Appstore_reaches_31K_apps_sells_millions.php

Week 23 Update

Semiotics Study
This is a perfect website for semiotics study, which has detailed description of semiotic, including history.

http://carbon.ucdenver.edu/~mryder/itc/semiotics.html

Week 22 Update

HCI Studies
The Study of Computer Games as a Second-Order Cybernetic System
http://www.digra.org/dl/db/05164.33512.pdf

Video Games HCI

http://usab-symposium.uni-klu.ac.at/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=56&Itemid=66

Video Game Values: Play as Human-Computer Interaction

http://www.pippinbarr.com/academic/Pippin_Barr_PhD_Thesis.pdf

Week 21 Update

The Cybernetics of HCI: A Pragmatic Approach

 Paul Pangaro, Sun Microsystems

Seminar on People, Computers, and Design
Stanford University February 15, 2001

A discussion of cybernetics for HCI is pragmatic by nature because cybernetics is a "science of interactions" for which human-computer interaction is a subset. The ability of cybernetics to model the progression and limitations of human communications holds insight for difficult problems such as HCI design.

As we all know, semantic information processing by machine hasn't yet been achieved and today's technology is incapable of conversing with humans. Human-computer interaction is a means to the end of human-to-human exchange (messaging), human-to-team (collaborative work), or human-to-self (learning). One could paraphrase the goal of HCI therefore as supporting effective human-through-computer interaction. Interactions of hands and eyes to input and screen are necessary but unfortunate intermediations. What we want are our wants to be manifest. With its practical tools for modeling purpose, feedback, and autonomy, cybernetics has something to offer.

Early cybernetics was responsible for the now-common but once startling and revolutionary word "feedback", along with the first electronic "turtles", and the first "learning machines." From the 1940s it held an even-handed consideration for either organic or machine embodiments of intelligence. Neural nets arose here. In the 1950s, with the ascendancy of the programmable computer and its theoretical equivalencies to the nervous system, the fathers of cybernetics begat the fathers of artificial intelligence. Then cybernetics turned inward to consider the purpose, feedback functions, and limitations of cybernetics itself -- that is, to observe human observing. With the 1960s it grew into an applied epistemology, a discipline whose modeling tools would crack the conundrum of subjectivity in a scientific frame.

With a sketch of theory and a smattering of screenshots, this talk will position cybernetics as a means to sharpen understanding of human-through-computer interactions in terms of:

• conversation, defined as the rise and evolution of distinctions in a semantic space; and its dual,
• intelligence, defined as a property of a system that can assert, achieve, and modify its goals.

Today's technology isn't doing much talking, but there is no a priori reason why conversations with an artifact cannot be achieved. The key is a prescriptive model for innovation, which is possible in today's cybernetics at least at an architectural level. At the implementation level, it is a matter of when, not if.