via Email: Why People Feel Lying is Justified. Recent experiment finds 50% more lies on email than pen and paper. It’s hard to look someone straight in the eye and tell them a blatant lie. Those who can are marked out for more nefarious occupations. Like politics. Over the telephone it’s easier. In a diary study [...]

Cultivated Play: Farmville

by A. J. Patrick Liszkiewicz — SUNY Buffalo (Amherst)
March 09, 2010 – 22:44
[This essay was given as a talk at SUNY Buffalo, 28 January 2010, the day after Howard Zinn’s death. I have left the text unaltered, to better reflect the spirit of the talk.]

“I’m worried that students will take their obedient place in society and look to become successful cogs in the wheel – let the wheel spin them around as it wants without taking a look at what they’re doing.”
— Howard Zinn

The great social historian Howard Zinn, author of A People’s History of the United States, died yesterday of a heart attack. Zinn devoted his life to educating Americans in their country’s history, that they might better understand their place in its present. Such understanding is today at a premium. Ours is a time of confusion, of unprecedented changes that outpace our perceptions. As Zinn might have said, the wheel keeps spinning faster, and the faster it spins the harder it is to see.

Co-written with Greg Nudelman ⇒ Originally published on UXMatters.com Published: April 13, 2009 ⇒ Web site user assistance that consistently exceeds customer’s expectations can catapult your company to legendary status and create brand equity you can measure in billions of dollars. However, making Help a strategic asset for your company is an arduous task. To [...]