I just got the latest print edition of the Extension School catalogue. It's a different format than the glossy versions from past years -- it's taller and narrower, with a matte finish -- but as always, reading the course descriptions is a lot of fun. There are always new, interesting classes, and invariably, a pang of regret knowing that one cannot take them all.
(That is, unless you are a Harvard employee, in which case you can take most classes for credit or as an auditor for a nominal fee -- it was $40 per semester per class when I worked at the University.)
One thing I noticed with this year's catalogue is the huge number of online courses. It's very apparent in the listing of history classes. Nine out of 23 are online only or have an online attendance option. This compares with just two out of 13 history classes in the 2003-2004 catalogue. I like the in-class learning experience, but I can see the appeal of the online classes, not only because it is more convenient and allows out-of-state students to take part, but also because of the instructors -- many have not taught at the Extension School in the past, and/or would otherwise be unavailable to teach in person. Most of the online instructors are Harvard professors, many with named chairs.
I won't be taking an online course for my last class. I have a writing-intensive elective requirement to fill, and the one that I will probably end up taking is an in -person offering. I'll talk more about this in a future post -- classes don't start for another six weeks.
Monday, July 30, 2007
Saturday, July 28, 2007
A Crisis for China's propaganda apparatus?
I swear, I could maintain a separate blog devoted to Edward Cody and his coverage of developments in China. The Washington Post journalist frequently reports on media-related issues in China, giving me lots of fodder for further analysis and commentary. His latest dispatch is no exception. He examines how, in an age of rapid change and increased openness in Chinese media, old-guard propagandists are faring. It turns out not so well, at least in some regards. Cody's article states that propaganda chief Li Changchun (李長春) was recently slapped down by President Hu Jintao after suggesting that an anti-CCP article be suppressed. The article also suggests that the credibility of the government propaganda apparatus is very low.
Nonetheless, the central government maintains a great deal of control over the type and tone of coverage appearing in mainstream news outlets, particularly in the runup to the 2008 Olympics and the 17th Party Congress this fall:
Nonetheless, the central government maintains a great deal of control over the type and tone of coverage appearing in mainstream news outlets, particularly in the runup to the 2008 Olympics and the 17th Party Congress this fall:
After a meeting of top Beijing propaganda officials, for instance, the capital's newspaper editors and television news directors last week were handed a list of newly off-limits subjects, Beijing journalists reported. The list included food safety as well as riots, fires, deadly auto accidents and bloody murder cases, they said.The rest of the article is an interesting read. It discusses the rise of sensationalism in Chinese mass media and the spread of anti-Hu Jintao dissent on the Internet.
Tuesday, July 24, 2007
Mandarin Chinese gaming vocabulary in Taiwan and China
I am a proficient Mandarin speaker. I lived in Taiwan for six years, studied for more than two years at the Taipei Language Institute, and traveled extensively throughout mainland China. I have family members from Taiwan and China, and we try to speak Mandarin with our kids as much as possible (a difficult proposition, considering both are more and more inclined to speak English -- I'll try to blog about this sometime in the next few months).
Anyway, even though I am proficient in Mandarin, I have not achieved fluency. I often have to learn specialized vocabulary lists prior to conducting interviews or preparing for visits to Asia. In advance of my trip to Singapore to participate in the State of Play V conference, I wanted to get a handle on the Mandarin terminology used to describe virtual worlds and popular gaming platforms. These are words that do not appear in my Oxford putonghua dictionary, so I asked a friend and former colleague of mine to help translate some of the Mandarin used to describe the videogame industry and related software concepts.
It was interesting to see her list. I recognized many of the characters right away, and many terms made perfect sense -- these phrases are often direct translations of the modern English expressions, such as massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPG, 大型多人線上角色扮演遊戲, da4xing2duo1ren2xian4shang4jiao3se4ban4yan3you2xi4).
Others were readable, but were clearly not character-for-word equivalents. According to my wife, some of these terms may have been derived from classic Chinese literature, or older translations from foreign sources -- for instance, the term for "dungeon" is 地下城 (di4xia4cheng2), lit. "underground castle," or 魔洞 (mo2dong4), lit. "monster's cave." It's also interesting to see how -- in certain cases -- the terminology has split in Taiwan and China.
The list:
3d (3d image): (3D 影像）or 三度空間影像
video game engine: 電玩遊戲引擎
Software platform: 軟體平台 (Taiwan); 軟體平台 (China)
Hardware platform: 硬體平台 (Taiwan); 軟件平台 (China)
Tolkien: 托爾金 (Taiwan and China)
Lord of the Rings: 魔戒
Gaming experience: 遊戲體驗 or 遊戲經驗 (in different contexts)
Players: 玩遊戲者 （could also be 玩家）
Gamers: 玩家
Fans:（電玩）迷
Massively multiplayer online game (MMOG, MMO game): 大型多人線上遊戲
Massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG): 大型多人線上角色扮演遊戲
Subscription model: 訂購模式
Micro-transactions: 微交易
Virtual goods: 虛擬物品
Dungeons: 地下城 or 魔洞
player-vs-player: 玩家對玩家
Online account: 線上帳戶
Username: 使用者名稱
Online community: 線上社群
Beta: 測試版
Concurrent users: 同時上線使用者
Game industry: 電玩業
Internet cafe: 網咖 (Taiwan), 網吧 (China)
Prepaid cards: 預付卡 (Taiwan), 預付費卡 (China)
Prepaid playing time: 預付遊戲時間
Anyway, even though I am proficient in Mandarin, I have not achieved fluency. I often have to learn specialized vocabulary lists prior to conducting interviews or preparing for visits to Asia. In advance of my trip to Singapore to participate in the State of Play V conference, I wanted to get a handle on the Mandarin terminology used to describe virtual worlds and popular gaming platforms. These are words that do not appear in my Oxford putonghua dictionary, so I asked a friend and former colleague of mine to help translate some of the Mandarin used to describe the videogame industry and related software concepts.
It was interesting to see her list. I recognized many of the characters right away, and many terms made perfect sense -- these phrases are often direct translations of the modern English expressions, such as massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPG, 大型多人線上角色扮演遊戲, da4xing2duo1ren2xian4shang4jiao3se4ban4yan3you2xi4).
Others were readable, but were clearly not character-for-word equivalents. According to my wife, some of these terms may have been derived from classic Chinese literature, or older translations from foreign sources -- for instance, the term for "dungeon" is 地下城 (di4xia4cheng2), lit. "underground castle," or 魔洞 (mo2dong4), lit. "monster's cave." It's also interesting to see how -- in certain cases -- the terminology has split in Taiwan and China.
The list:
3d (3d image): (3D 影像）or 三度空間影像
video game engine: 電玩遊戲引擎
Software platform: 軟體平台 (Taiwan); 軟體平台 (China)
Hardware platform: 硬體平台 (Taiwan); 軟件平台 (China)
Tolkien: 托爾金 (Taiwan and China)
Lord of the Rings: 魔戒
Gaming experience: 遊戲體驗 or 遊戲經驗 (in different contexts)
Players: 玩遊戲者 （could also be 玩家）
Gamers: 玩家
Fans:（電玩）迷
Massively multiplayer online game (MMOG, MMO game): 大型多人線上遊戲
Massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG): 大型多人線上角色扮演遊戲
Subscription model: 訂購模式
Micro-transactions: 微交易
Virtual goods: 虛擬物品
Dungeons: 地下城 or 魔洞
player-vs-player: 玩家對玩家
Online account: 線上帳戶
Username: 使用者名稱
Online community: 線上社群
Beta: 測試版
Concurrent users: 同時上線使用者
Game industry: 電玩業
Internet cafe: 網咖 (Taiwan), 網吧 (China)
Prepaid cards: 預付卡 (Taiwan), 預付費卡 (China)
Prepaid playing time: 預付遊戲時間
Wednesday, July 18, 2007
Attending State of Play V in Singapore/HiPiHi
About two months ago, I was invited to participate in a panel at the State of Play V conference in Singapore, and I have just confirmed my participation after sorting out the travel-related details. This is the third public speaking engagement I've had in the past year that touches upon virtual worlds and 3D media. The title of the State of Play panel: Understanding Virtual World Inhabitants. From the program:
The rest of the program looks interesting, too -- the list of panelists and speakers includes a few people from the Chinese gaming industry, which has grown very rapidly in the past five years. I've heard that there will be a screening of a documentary about Chinese "Gold Farming" at the conference.
As part of my preparations for the conference, I've been reading up on the state of gaming and virtual worlds in China. There's been lots of news about the incredible popularity of World of Warcraft in China, and the virtual demonstration that I remarked upon last year, but there are some new products that are worth mentioning, too, most notably the emerging VW platform, HiPiHi.
Unfortunately, I haven't been able to try out the beta version of HiPiHi -- like many software products designed for the Chinese market, it's PC only, and my Mac is too old to effectively use Boot Camp or Parallels.
Over the next few weeks I'll try to log some of the reading and other information that I am gathering as the conference approaches. The event takes place August 19-22, so I am going to combine it with a family trip to Taiwan, which will also give me a chance to do a little pre-conference research about the Taiwanese gaming scene. This is not a work-supported trip, but I was able to secure a small travel grant through my Harvard association, and the other out-of-pocket expenses are worth it -- this is an exciting field, and the conference seems like a fascinating opportunity.
As the virtual world landscape matures, industry and academic researchers are developing systematic methods of measuring user behaviors and understanding resident attitudes. This panel explores the value of quantitative and qualitative approaches to such investigations.This is a chance to discuss the role of the media in shaping public opinion about virtual worlds and their inhabitants, as well as the expectations of new residents. There is also a lot to say about quantitative research and data relating to virtual worlds and behaviors in virtual worlds. These are topics which I have discussed several times in the past year on this blog and elsewhere.
The rest of the program looks interesting, too -- the list of panelists and speakers includes a few people from the Chinese gaming industry, which has grown very rapidly in the past five years. I've heard that there will be a screening of a documentary about Chinese "Gold Farming" at the conference.
As part of my preparations for the conference, I've been reading up on the state of gaming and virtual worlds in China. There's been lots of news about the incredible popularity of World of Warcraft in China, and the virtual demonstration that I remarked upon last year, but there are some new products that are worth mentioning, too, most notably the emerging VW platform, HiPiHi.
Unfortunately, I haven't been able to try out the beta version of HiPiHi -- like many software products designed for the Chinese market, it's PC only, and my Mac is too old to effectively use Boot Camp or Parallels.
Over the next few weeks I'll try to log some of the reading and other information that I am gathering as the conference approaches. The event takes place August 19-22, so I am going to combine it with a family trip to Taiwan, which will also give me a chance to do a little pre-conference research about the Taiwanese gaming scene. This is not a work-supported trip, but I was able to secure a small travel grant through my Harvard association, and the other out-of-pocket expenses are worth it -- this is an exciting field, and the conference seems like a fascinating opportunity.
Sunday, July 01, 2007
Thesis Update: Formatting horrors, and the Extension School's electronic archiving problem
I'm so close to the end of my thesis, I can practically smell the hardcover binding!
To recap, in April got the final sign-off from my thesis director. I made a few minor changes that he had suggested (most of the major changes had been implemented in earlier drafts, as I described in March) and then printed up a copy to hand in to the Extension School's ALM research advisor. Late April was a bad time to do this, as there was a crush of '07 grads who had submitted their theses around that time, and needed to get them corrected and bound in time for Commencement. I could wait, however -- I am not graduating until next year, and my official deadline for completing the thesis doesn't arrive until the end of July.
As I expected, when I received the printed copy back from the ALM office with the proofreader's marks in late June, there were only a few minor issues that had to be taken care of. I had followed the ALM Thesis Guide and Chicago Manual of Style very closely, and the mistakes included things like missing periods in footnotes, too many spaces between headings and the first paragraph of text, front matter page numbering issues, and a missing list of figures.
While most of them were easy to fix, I had a devil of a time with the page numbers. The Mac version of Microsoft Word I am using at home doesn't display page numbers in the footer (required for the front matter), and it took me hours to figure out a workaround -- one potential fix is listed here, but in the end I had to transfer the file to my work laptop -- a Windows machine which doesn't have this problem -- and generate a PDF. For some reason, transferring the file to Windows caused several paragraphs and footnotes to break earlier, which resulted in all of the chapter II and III page numbers shifting around. This in turn resulted in my list of figures and manual page references being made obsolete, which forced me to go through the entire document to correct most page number references.
A third problem was the inability to suppress the page number on the first page of new chapters and the appendices, as required in the ALM thesis format. There is no MS Word command I am aware of that can take care of this problem, so I had to manually create little white squares to place over each verboten page number.
But I finally got all of this taken care of late on Sunday night, and exported my PDF to my USB drive. It's now early Monday morning, and I will take the file to Office Depot tomorrow for printing, and then ship both paper versions back to the ALM office for the final review. Assuming everything is OK, my last step will be to take the file to the bindery for printing, and then submit the bound thesis to the Harvard Extension School. Then I can celebrate.
Actually, there will be one additional step related to my thesis, but it's something I don't need to do. It's something I want to do: getting a copy submitted to UMI/ProQuest or some other electronic database, so the global scholarly community can access it. I lobbied the Extension School to make electronic database submissions part of the thesis publication process, as is apparently the case with GSAS History Department research. I was told the Harvard Extension School program doesn't have the resources to make this happen. That's a major problem, in my opinion -- if the only place people can access ALM theses is in the Grossman Library, then the impact of Extension School research upon our respective disciplines will remain limited.
(See all of my thesis updates from 2005 to the present)
To recap, in April got the final sign-off from my thesis director. I made a few minor changes that he had suggested (most of the major changes had been implemented in earlier drafts, as I described in March) and then printed up a copy to hand in to the Extension School's ALM research advisor. Late April was a bad time to do this, as there was a crush of '07 grads who had submitted their theses around that time, and needed to get them corrected and bound in time for Commencement. I could wait, however -- I am not graduating until next year, and my official deadline for completing the thesis doesn't arrive until the end of July.
As I expected, when I received the printed copy back from the ALM office with the proofreader's marks in late June, there were only a few minor issues that had to be taken care of. I had followed the ALM Thesis Guide and Chicago Manual of Style very closely, and the mistakes included things like missing periods in footnotes, too many spaces between headings and the first paragraph of text, front matter page numbering issues, and a missing list of figures.
While most of them were easy to fix, I had a devil of a time with the page numbers. The Mac version of Microsoft Word I am using at home doesn't display page numbers in the footer (required for the front matter), and it took me hours to figure out a workaround -- one potential fix is listed here, but in the end I had to transfer the file to my work laptop -- a Windows machine which doesn't have this problem -- and generate a PDF. For some reason, transferring the file to Windows caused several paragraphs and footnotes to break earlier, which resulted in all of the chapter II and III page numbers shifting around. This in turn resulted in my list of figures and manual page references being made obsolete, which forced me to go through the entire document to correct most page number references.
A third problem was the inability to suppress the page number on the first page of new chapters and the appendices, as required in the ALM thesis format. There is no MS Word command I am aware of that can take care of this problem, so I had to manually create little white squares to place over each verboten page number.
But I finally got all of this taken care of late on Sunday night, and exported my PDF to my USB drive. It's now early Monday morning, and I will take the file to Office Depot tomorrow for printing, and then ship both paper versions back to the ALM office for the final review. Assuming everything is OK, my last step will be to take the file to the bindery for printing, and then submit the bound thesis to the Harvard Extension School. Then I can celebrate.
Actually, there will be one additional step related to my thesis, but it's something I don't need to do. It's something I want to do: getting a copy submitted to UMI/ProQuest or some other electronic database, so the global scholarly community can access it. I lobbied the Extension School to make electronic database submissions part of the thesis publication process, as is apparently the case with GSAS History Department research. I was told the Harvard Extension School program doesn't have the resources to make this happen. That's a major problem, in my opinion -- if the only place people can access ALM theses is in the Grossman Library, then the impact of Extension School research upon our respective disciplines will remain limited.
(See all of my thesis updates from 2005 to the present)
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