ProphecyBoy

Strange to think that the thing we've been working on for the past 6 months is launching next week. Huh. - more on Twitter
November 12th 2007
Tags: Mapping

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Mapping presentation on Cosgrove & Sant

Here are the slides with notes from the presentation on Cosgrove and Sant which Chul and I gave last week. I spoke on Dennis Cosgrove's essay "Cartocity" from Else/Where, which describes the historical back-and-forth of city maps and urban planning throughout history, then Chul talked about modern technology's ability to ...
November 12th 2007
Tags: Mapping

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The User Illusion

In my discussion with Rachel, it occurred to me suddenly that a lot of my internal narrative has been shaped by The User Illusion. Tor Norretranders' book is about quantum physics, the nature of consciousness, and how all that data that comes shooting at us every moment of the day ...
November 12th 2007
Tags: Mapping

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Player Mappings

In regards to a recent post on The Legend of Zelda, I think it's worth noting that the latest game in the series, The Legend of Zelda: The Phantom Hourglass, actually allows you to annotate the game maps yourself. While drawing maps has been a part of some style of ...
October 19th 2007
Tags: Big Games, Mapping, Redial: Interactive Telephony

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The Invention of Murder play testing this weekend

Jeff designed this awesome cover for our Invention of Murder game books. Adam, Jeff, Ruth, and I are play testing our big game this weekend, and we'd love for you to join us. The Invention of Murder is a mystery game based on the real unsolved murder of Mary Rogers in ...
October 9th 2007
Tags: Mapping

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Train Wandering

The woman next to me looks at me suspiciously. People always look suspiciously at me whenever I’m on the train without my head down. I suppose they might look at me the same way when my head’s down, nose in a book or some papers, but I don’t see it ...
October 8th 2007
Tags: Mapping

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Map critiques

Randall Munroe, Map of Online Communities, 2007 This map addresses the relationship between disparate online social networks and community sites, reflecting both psychological proximity, relative size, and their position on the subjective scale of practical vs. intellectual and focus on real life vs. virtual life. The blending of cartological tropes with ...
October 8th 2007
Tags: Big Games, Mapping, Performing Technology

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Mapping across disciplines

In thinking about how mapping relates to the rest of my ITP work, the first thing that springs to mind is certainly situationism and the ideas of Guy Debord, who has come up multiple times in different contexts. For Big Games I reported on SFZero, a real world game steeped ...

Colophon

Turning coffee into feats of intellectual derring-do since 2001

Hi there, I'm Adam Simon. I'm the Creative Director and Co-Founder of Socialbomb, a social gaming startup in New York City. I recently graduated from NYU's Interactive Telecommunications Program (ITP), doing research in large scale game design, social networking, urban computing, performative technology, and networked objects. You can find info on my thesis here, and a big list of all my ITP-related posts here

I sometimes work at area/code.

Projects that I've been a part of which you might have heard of include BootyDialer, The Invention of Murder, Rumplestiltskin (An Aretefactual Performance), & Sharkrunners

You can email me at adam @ [the name of this website].

Syndicate

March 12th 2009
Tags: ITP, Social Software Studio, Thesis, Uncategorized No Comments

Social Heroes: Games as APIs for Social Interaction (aka, my ITP thesis)

Because I've been busy/lazy and off the blogging habit, here, at long last, is my thesis for ITP, almost a year late. Comments and such are still more than welcome, as many of the ideas are still being worked on in my current projects, and Social Heroes itself is likely ...
April 14th 2008
Tags: Social Facts, Social Software Studio No Comments

Crazy Blind Date: A Quintet for Human & Computer

The appeal of Crazy Blind Date\ is immediately apparent, and seems custom-designed for busy city folks: “on very short notice we can set you up on quick dates with total strangers at public places like bars and coffee shops. You're not allowed to see their picture or even communicate.” Created ...
March 29th 2008
Tags: Social Software Studio, Thesis 2 Comments

Social Heroes

My thesis has split into two ideas, something which was foreshadowed at the end of my midterm presentation. I mistakenly assumed that one of the ideas would seem obviously better than the other, but that hasn't happened. Rather, I'm stuck with two ideas which I think explore the ideas I'm ...
March 16th 2008
Tags: ITP One Comment

PCBs from Eagle to Production

In this post I'm going to explain how to output files from Eagle PCB in order to send your designs off to be professionally fabbed. There are two major steps before this in the process: creating the electrical schematic, and moving from that schematic to a board layout. I'm not ...
March 14th 2008
Tags: Social Software Studio, Thesis One Comment

Thesis: midterm presentation & playtest

| View | Upload your own ITP Thesis: Midterm presentation (with notes) (PDF) Here's the midterm presentation I just gave in my thesis section (the PDF includes the presenter notes, and is perhaps more comprehensible). I felt like this presentation was a return to form for me - lots of photos, ...

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