Author Archives: geoffreylong

Geoffrey Long is a media analyst, scholar, and storyteller exploring transmedia experiences, emerging entertainment platforms and the future of entertainment as the Lead Narrative Producer for the Narrative Design Team at Microsoft Studios. He is an alum of the MIT Comparative Media Studies program, a FoE Fellow with the Futures of Entertainment community, and a co-editor of the Playful Thinking book series from the MIT Press. His personal site can be found at geoffreylong.com.

Would Baudelaire hate the Kindle?

I love this new post over at HarperCollins’ HarperStudio blog: Would Charles Baudelaire hate the Kindle? As they quote the man himself: “As the photographic industry was the refuge of every would-be painter, every painter too ill-endowed or too lazy to complete his studies, this universal infatuation bore not only the mark of a blindness, […]

OLPC cutting way back to birth the XO2.

Courtesy of my friend and coworker Andrew comes the news that Nicholas Negroponte’s One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) group is laying off half its staff, slashing salaries and ceasing its support of Sugar, the XO’s open-source OS to focus on finishing development of its second-generation XO laptop, the (presumably-titled) XO2. While I’m definitely troubled to […]

Antici…

This is a tiny little thing, but I was thinking this morning about how the GAMBIT website uses funny terminology for each of its sections. Back when Philip and I were first designing it, we wanted to name each section after a component of the gaming experience, so “News” became “Updates”, “Careers” became “Join Game”, […]

A literary clubhouse.

Here’s one to add to my scrapbook of possible future housing ideas: the New York Times has posted a slideshow and article featuring the salon/home of Richard and Lisa Howorth, who own Square Books in Oxford, Mississippi. They have gotten into the habit of inviting authors and other luminaries passing through town to stay with […]

The root of ‘resolution’ is ‘resolve’.

Well, it’s a week into the new year and I’ve already blown most of my New Year’s resolutions. While it’s annoying, it’s also not that surprising: the biggest issue I have right now is trying to rework my daily schedule into something that can accommodate all the different things that I want – or need […]

Support the Interstitial Arts Foundation!

One last shout-out before logging off for the night: a very heartfelt plea to join me in supporting the Interstitial Arts Foundation, an excellent group dedicated to the fine art of boundary-blurring creativity. Here’s the official letter from the IAF board: Dear All, Only a few nights remain before the turn of the year, providing […]

Packing up.

Every time I leave Ohio it gets a little harder. Back in Boston on Sunday or so, and regular blogging will resume then. Probably. Happy New Year, everybody.

Videoblogging Singapore.

Greetings to anyone coming to this site via the mySingapore Twitter stream! To provide you with some context, my name is Geoffrey Long and I’m the Communications Director for the US side of the Singapore-MIT GAMBIT Game Lab. In early December 2008 I flew from chilly Cambridge, Massachusetts to sunny Singapore to help our Singapore […]

Why We Need Comparative Media Studies.

As many of you know, I finished my master’s degree in Comparative Media Studies at MIT in the spring of 2007. I liked it so much there that I decided to stay on, first as the Communications DIrector for CMS and the Singapore-MIT GAMBIT Game Lab and then as a combination of Communications Director and […]

SG0821: Signing Off from Terminal 5.

Wherein our hero brings this entire adventure very nearly full circle by signing off from London’s Heathrow airport, and begrudgingly revises his opinion of the earlier-maligned Terminal 5. Final bonus video: turnaround footage of Terminal 5.