I first came across Kevin Brooks’ work around the time he was completing his Ph.D. dissertation at the MIT Media Lab on a technology and method for telling multithreaded interactive stories. Since earning his Ph.D. in 1999, Brooks has applied his knowledge of computer science and storytelling to the process of product and service design for Motorola. I was particularly interested in talking to him because his work arises from the isomorphism between writing and programming.In this video, he explains what he does as a technology storyteller, and explains how he found a way to integrate fields that had once seemed so separate. He has also shared his insights in a book that he co-authored with Whitney Quesenbery, Storytelling User Experience: Crafting Stories for Better Design (Rosenfeld Media, 2010).By the way, Brooks also performs as a storyteller. Here he is performing at 2010 storytelling event sponsored by Massmouth :
The Sword That Wounds Me
“And when [Love’s] wings enfold you yield to him,
Though the sword hidden among his pinions may wound you.”
Kahlil Gibran
Walking as I do now with solitude
The memory of your voice echoes the grief
Carried off by the Angels on that bright September morn.
In those days I was impatient with your loneliness, your fear.
I wanted you to stand up to triumph to find your voice your strength
To not go gently into that good night to not give in to loneliness to despair
To show me the way to be a woman alone.
I had to learn that your past was not my prologue.
So now I stand, back bent, squinting toward the sun
honoring your sacrifice in service to my life.
Understanding now what Alice meant in saying,
The way forward, the way forward the only way forward
My only way forward is with a broken heart.
In joy In sadness
In weakness In strength
In anger In laughter
In defeat In triumph
Then, and now, I loved you. I love you. I love you.
African American Males, Videogames and the Computing Pipeline
A provocative paper from a team of researchers at Georgia Tech.
Reinventing Malcolm X: A Storify Experiment
Interdisciplinary Computing Blog: Interdisciplinary Computing Meeting Number 2: Day 1, Part 1
Liza Kaczmarscyk does a nice job of capturing the first day of discussion at our meeting on Creating a Climate for Interdisciplinary Computing. The discussion on computational journalism to which she alludes was initiated by yours truly and Rich Gordon from the Medill School at Northwestern University. Other journalists here include Jonathan Tracy from the AP, Michelle Ferrier from Elon University, and Barbara Iverson from Columbia College, Chicago.