Civilization in the Digital Age: Virtual Spaces and Hybrid Reality

Well, the White Whale is slain. My final paper is done. Soon the Rachel will come round to pick up the surviving orphans from the sea, and I'll go back home to warmth and solitude.

In any case, I decided to include a link to the paper in a .doc format, as I know I hate reading papers like this on blogs. I hope you enjoy!

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B_oHVteZi_KNWHZsMWxIdUhXQ0U/edit?usp=sharing

Google Alerts: the Now, the What, the Who

I've been looking into Google Alerts as a curation tool of late, as I wrote in a recent blog post, but I wanted to throw some thoughts out there as to its usefulness and some of the things that I've found .

My general impression is that I'm very impressed. I've used Google Alerts before to monitor people, but I've never really approached it topically, and I have to say, I've really been missing out on a valuable tool. I put up three alerts (queries) on Thursday and have been receiving daily updates on "digital worlds," "virtual worlds," and "virtual civilizations," and while I've gotten a few things that were less applicable to my particular area of interest, I've discovered a lot of really interesting recent, meaningful resources and found people with whom I can connect.