Misfit of Computer Science

My new business cards came in today. They foolishly let me fill out the order form without anyone checking before the cards were printed.

I got to give my very first business card to Drew Davidson, director of Carnegie Mellon’s Entertainment Technology Center. My advisor brought him in as part of a speaking series. Drew gave a great overview of the ETC and spoke on creativity’s need for constraints: “The Best Playground (with an Electric Fence).” I’m fairly certain he gets all kinds of cool points from his students.

Bibliography

[1] Misfits of Science:

The adventures of a team of misfit superheroes who fight crime for a scientific think tank. [TV Series, 1985-86]

I was devillainized at the Brooklyn Superhero Supply Co.

Today was a full day.

I may have found a new church home (or, rather, home away from home). Let me get to know this community for a while first before I go making any more big declarations, and then I'll talk more about it.

In the afternoon I attended Maker Faire at the New York Hall of Science. Maker Faire is something akin to a geek version of Woodstock, man. I have a gazillion photos to post. These will come later.

On the way back from church this morning, my roommate and I stopped for apples at a sidewalk farmers market and also walked past the Brooklyn Superhero Supply Company. Let me add subtle emphasis. THE BROOKLYN SUPERHERO SUPPLY COMPANY.

I've read about this place. I didn't realize it was in Brooklyn. The capes in the window caught our eye. And then I fell hopelessly in love with the place. Look at the photos. Just look at them.

Yes. They actually sell that stuff. But more than this, the Brooklyn Superhero Supply Co. is part of 826 National — a non-profit dedicated to helping school age students with writing, including creative writing. The store front is, well, a front. Peek through the “portal” photo above to see the tutoring space. There are other such places around the country including a pirate supply store, a robot repair shop, The Boring Store (which absolutely does not sell spy gear), and space and time travel marts. Incidentally, the Liberty Street Robot Supply and Repair shop is located in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Reportedly this shop sells a kit to determine if your kid sister is, in fact, a robot.

Back at the Brooklyn Superhero Supply Company I had opportunity to be devillainized in the devillainizer. After completing the electronic survey I was informed that on the villainy scale I am “unpleasant.” I was promptly zapped in the chamber while taking an oath to give up my villainous ways. I feel much better now, thank you.

I'm thinking of going back to make use of their sidekick matching service. If you have any invisible persons in your life, I highly recommend their line of invisible products. They were clearly — very clearly — the finest in invisible wares.

Readin'. Writin'. 'Rithmetic. Ridiculous.

One of my classes does, in fact, use an old skool chalkboard. The photo above is something I found online of a computer-y class. Sorry to disappoint. Sadly, I didn't think to get a shot of my computer graphics class chalkboard last night.

I've gotten many questions about what classes I'm taking and what in the world it is I'm doing for this whole graduate school thing in the first place. So here we go. Buckle up and settle in. This is gonna be a long ride. I'm summarizing as much as possible.

Let's start with some background. I didn't go looking to get a Ph.D. I needed to do something different than what I had been doing with my working hours, and it turned out that that something different was all wrapped up in deep, searching questions of purpose. Answering those questions took several years, several false starts, lots of conversations, a key story in a book, remembering just how much I love amusement parks and miniature golf, and maybe even ultimately led to a calling.

Having clarity on what I felt compelled to do (I'll get to it — hold your horses) it became obvious that there were no employment opportunities for me to pursue. Companies aren't working in the area I want to work. Even if there was a mythical employer with a mythical position just for me, I'm not qualified for it. So my thinking was — let's go back to school so I can work on this stuff I have in my head and then go do something entrepreneurial after that. Heck. Why stop there. Why not just go ahead and change the world? But first things first. Education. Trouble is there weren't any academic programs doing exactly what I wanted to do either. That led to more hurdles and more searching and more dead ends. Long story short I met my advisor who really got what I wanted to do and laid out a whole plan including funding for it. School. Discipline. Degree. All those were her idea. If I wanted the opportunity she presented it meant a Computer Science Ph.D. at NYU•Poly. Boom. Just like that.

So what is it exactly I'm doing? Great question. You know video games? Right. Not that. Humans have been playing since as long as there have been humans. Games are just one type of playing. The structured kind. Computers are also structured. So the two paired up quite nicely and now we have all manner of amazing ways of playing games thanks to advanced technology. What we don't have is the same thing in all the other unstructured ways of playing — playing with blocks, dress up, make-believe, play fighting, storytelling, climbing on jungle gyms, exploring, creating, etc. Sure. We have toys with blinky lights, but they're novelties at best. I want play and technology to come together in entirely new ways. The sorts of ways that can transform how we work, learn, and relate to one another. Play is creative, exploratory, social, and, in fact, entirely spiritual. It's so very human and even divine. I believe we've forgotten how to play and can go so much further with it than we ever have before. Play really can change the world. And that's where technology comes in.

Technically, my area falls under Human Computer Interaction (HCI) and Affective Computing (fancypants words that mean computers that engage and respond to emotion). I call what I'm trying to do Playful Technology or Playful Media. Sometimes I just say “Disney 2.0.” That's the thing, you see. I don't really know what it is yet exactly. Nobody does. And that's how a Ph.D. program is supposed to work. It's supposed to be far enough out into unknown territory that it's just making stuff up as one goes along. There are classes, of course, and there's a foundational curriculum for me to follow. (I need more class credits than are represented in the core curriculum I just linked to. For some of those credits, I'll probably get to pull in classes from elsewhere within NYU like ITP.) My classes do not make the degree, however; they're merely meant to be in support of whatever direction I, the intrepid, wide-eyed doctoral student, am exploring. I've been writing on play + technology for a while so you can get some sense of where I'm going. Eventually I'll write a book-length dissertation that brings all this together in a single project. If it goes well, some day some people in funny robes will give me an elaborate piece of paper and tell me that I'm now to check the "Dr." box when I fill out my name on forms. I'm already thinking about how to make the dissertation itself something much more than lots of words on lots of pages.

Still with me? So here's what classes look like. For a grad student nine credits (three classes) is a full load. Grad classes are often at night after the undergrad courses. I have two traditional courses this semester; both are from my core requirements:

1. CS 6533 Interactive Computer Graphics
2. CS 6813 Information Security & Privacy

In addition to these traditional classes I have three credits of independent study with my advisor. My funding right now is connected to security topics and a set of interdisciplinary requirements (this will change in the future). She and I are working out our own “class” and project. It's a work in progress. Here's the abstract I wrote up for it:

CS 9963 — Aligning Authentication and Usability in Secure Systems Using Game Mechanics & Playfulness

Traditionally, the burdens of authentication in secure systems are seen to be in tension with the needs of usability. Very secure systems tend to also be very unusable. Ultimately, a certain low threshold of security may develop — either security is weak so as to be usable, or it is weakened by user circumvention (e.g. posting passwords next to input terminals or choosing easily guessable PINs). Can this authentication/usability tension in secure systems be broken by altering the economics of authentication expense? Might we offset a high authentication cost with a user interaction reward of delight and fun through an interface incorporating game mechanics and playfulness? How can we present a game-like authentication process without an unacceptable interaction time cost? What is the balance between enjoying a fun experience and becoming taxed by engaging a dynamic authentication process anew each time? What are the trade offs and potential security holes of a dynamic, playful authentication scheme?

My week consists of two long classes, two and a half hours each, on Wednesday and Thursday evening respectively; lots of reading; homework projects that require several days each to complete; and lots of looking up crazy articles and chewing on topics and ideas that very well may never have been considered before. Of course, most of them are probably terrible ideas. But if there's anything I've learned in all this, it's that it takes a while to go anywhere worth going…

Chalkboard photo by Tim Lucas, used by permission under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 license.

My favorite bridge in the entire world. And now it's all mine.

A man gave me a great deal on a bridge…

I ventured off on Saturday to see Federal Hall, the original seat of United States government and site of President Washington's oath of office. I got on the wrong train on my way there and ended up missing the last tour of the day. So I wandered around Wall Street. This is one of the oldest parts of Manhattan, but I was still surprised at how narrow the streets were. I have been to this part of New York before — when I was maybe ten or twelve. I just don't recall the New York Stock Exchange dominating the tiny streets around it the way that it does.

I ended up along the East River. I passed by the South Street Seaport, stopping to read about the various historical ships docked there. The whole area was bustling with tourists and street vendors. I mean really bustling. I don't know how often I get to use the word “bustling.” This scene demands its use.

To be honest, Saturday was the first day in two and a half weeks of being here that loneliness of any sort struck. I'm now friendly with quite a few people, and I see or hear from Elyse now and again (which I really appreciate). But I don't have a group of my people around anymore. A few text messages to friends back home helped.

Eventually it dawned on me that if I kept walking I could wind up on the pedestrian deck of my beloved Brooklyn Bridge and walk across the river. So that's just what I did. Mind you — finding your way to the entrance of a giant suspension bridge from the waterway it crosses takes some doing. But I got there. The deck was crazy busy with people. It was bright and sunny and there was a great breeze along the river. It's more than a mile from shore landing to shore landing.

I have loved this bridge since as long as I can remember. It's just simply a gorgeous structure. Neo-Gothic. Iconic. So overbuilt that it has lasted when other bridges of its age are long gone. In college, during much colder months, I walked out only to the first tower. Saturday was my first time walking the entire span.

On the Brooklyn side I wandered on around down to Brooklyn Bridge Park. I was last there about five years ago, my last time in New York City. The park is different than when I last visited, but it was still very familiar.

I had an odd, melancholy moment in that park. I remembered the former girlfriend I had last been there with, and I marveled at the surrealness of now being in that same park today not only as a New Yorker but as a new Brooklynite. If you had told me a few years ago that I would be living in Brooklyn I never would have believed you.

It was somehow fitting, then, that I walked over the Brooklyn Bridge to arrive at that park. Maybe it was like crossing over from the life I had just left to this new one.

My first class is Wednesday evening. As I've gotten requests, I'll write a later post explaining my classes and more importantly what's expected of me as a Ph.D. student.

A day in the life: Street dancing on the subway

Today I headed into Manhattan from Brooklyn to straighten out a multi-day immunization record drama for school. It's all sorted out now. Finally.

I have just recently begun reading Homo Ludens, a classic text on play. The Latin Homo Ludens translates as “Playing Man.” The author puts this name forward as an alternative label for human beings as a species. (The more widely recognized Homo Sapien translates as “Knowing Man.”) I'm here to study play + technology, after all. So I read stuff like this. I know. It's ridiculously geeky. Isn't it great?

When I got on the subway to go back to Brooklyn from Manhattan I left off on a page in the book talking about ritual as play. The section I had just read made specific mention of the relationship of dance to ritual and dance as play.

As I sit down on the subway train, I see a young guy crouching on the floor with an iPod and an amplified speaker. I hear him too — the music was blaring. I direct my attention back to my book when all in a flash this amazing street dancing breaks out in front of me. These two young men were brilliant. Fluid. Funny. Beautiful in their motion. Playing out a dance in front of me as though the words of my book came to life before my very eyes.

And, yes, these dudes' hands were all over the floor and the poles inside the subway train. Try to enjoy this moment and not freak out about the germs. Just let it go. I'm sure they washed up immediately afterwards.