A small agricultural group known as the Baining in Papua New Guinea is infamous among anthropologists for having eradicated the desire to play from its culture—the Baining do not engage in festivals, games, or religious ceremonies. Researchers such as Gregory Bateson studied the group as early as th
A group of students from the Interactive Media program at the University of Southern California (where thatgamecompany’s Jenova Chen first developed Flow) are constructing a consumer version of the Holodeck—that is, the ultimate virtual reality system imagined in Star Trek and countless other scienc
In response to a patent infringement complaint that Uniloc filed against Minecraft developer Mojang, creator Markus Persson (“Notch”) has been issuing statements on his blog: A common argument for patents is that inventors won’t invent unless they can protect their ideas. The problem with this argum
We often attribute the hard work of a hundred people to the vision of a single director, so it’s easy to forget the person on the other side of the camera—the cinematographer. Ultimately, it is his or her eye through which we view our favorite films. Christopher Nolan’s cinematographer, Wally Pfiste
This real-time simulation of a satellite revolving around a simple sphere may be the first computer-generated film. This film was a specific project to define how a particular type of satellite would move through space. Edward E. Zajac made, and narrated, the film, which is considered to be possibl