milhorizon.com

Here is just one quick example of this kind of disposition in action: Billmonk, which Constance posted about hereThe site promises to help you keep track of your obligations throughout your social network precisely (using any of a number of imaginable currencies)It is double-entry bookeeping for your friendships, and thereby prompts you to conceive of these obligations in exact termsThis is a perfect example of a code-based solution to a code-defined problem: People's moral obligations are essentially precise and monetary, and they therefore need a precise tool to manage them. 

(And this approach is not just applied externally; within software companies one frequently sees similar efforts to address organizational issues with precise and enumerated systems that can be, above all, measured.) Heather Kelly, one of the developers on a panel on Monday asked a great question about game development that she hoped researchers could help answer: Why does money trump everything? The answer lies in the remarkably good 'fit' between the market and code, and in the existence of a lot of well-trained people who can find ways to exploit it

I submit for your comments the idea that the reason many developers have a hard time finding anything of value not only from researchers, but often from their own players, is that they are, in effect, seeing a different world, all the timeAn optimistic disposition -- a faith, even -- in technology and code-based problem solving runs deep in the technology and software development community (see, for example, Gary Lee Downey's ethnography of CAD/CAM engineering, The Machine in Me), and it hampers developers' ability to recognize the range of content and community creation (very broadly defined) by users as well as the fruits of the well-established but different methodologies and concepts of researchers

Amazon.com

This Ron Howard film parlays the troubled story of Nobel laureate John Forbes Nash Jr., a gifted Princeton mathematics professor tormented for decades by paranoid schizophrenia, into something considerably richer than typical Hollywood triumph-against-all-odds fareHoward has teamed here again with frequent collaborator James Horner, and it's the composer who deftly shades the film's difficult emotional landscape and helps impart a compelling humanityHorner's first task is not inconsiderable: musically portraying the arcane realm of mathematical theorems that are the story's backdropIn doing so, the composer leans heavily on modern minimalist technique, bright flourishes that recur briefly throughout an orchestral score that increasingly reflects Nash's bleak inner landscape in its quietly somber and brooding tonesAnd while Horner has frequently been accused of excessively repeating himself in his scores, the neo-minimalist gambit employed on this reflectively pastoral, postmodernist soundscape neatly nips such criticism in the budNash's triumph is ultimately an intensely personal one, well reflected in Welsh soprano Charlotte Church's lilting performance of the Horner/Will Jennings ballad "All Love Can Be." This enhanced CD also features notes by the director and composer, as well as exclusive photos and the film's trailer--Jerry McCulley