[Macro error: Can't call "homePageLink" because there aren't enough parameters.]
Torill Elvira Mortensen

Torill Mortensen represents the academic approach towards the new phenomenon her expertise is especially in the field of games. Torill: I am working on a model for research into social spaces created and maintained through personal publishing and multi-user games. This is a convergence of my interests in blogging and the experience from the work on my thesis, defended 12th of September 2003: Pleasures of the Player: Flow and Control in Online Games.

Dialogue in slow motion � the pleasure of writing and reading across the web
Vienna still has its coffee houses, a City with a centre where it is possible to walk slowly, linger, watch and meet others, or stop entirely to sit down and read, write or talk. Before our advanced communication technology the infrastructure of communication needed to facilitate the human body, since the interface was the face-to-face meeting, the hand-written letter and the physical object carried at the speed of a human travellring on foot, by boat or by horse. Today the interface has changed dramatically, as has the speed and distance that information can travel. Due to this media research tends to focus on the changes in the interface, not on the nature of communication. Weblogs are a technology driven by the pleasure of communication rather than the necessity or utility of the tool. In the push to develop better tools for writing, disseminating, filtering and keeping track of posts we tend to focus on the question: Why are blogs useful? In this session I will look at it from a different angle. My question is �Why are blogs so much fun?� I will address this question on the background of my research on computer games and the pleasures of players. By looking at weblogs, their content, tools and toys as well as weblog games, I see a pattern of gaming in the blogger community. Playfulness, competition, teamwork and even griefplay are all present. From this point of view I strive to show what I enjoy the most about weblogs: They are so much fun!

last update: Friday, July 23, 2004 at 10:31:47 AM-----------------------
Copyright 2004