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.

The Dangerous World of a GPS That Does Not Exist

Every now and then something crosses my inbox that makes my jaw drop. Sometimes it’s genius, sometimes it’s astonishingly crass, and sometimes it’s a combination of the two. This morning’s report from DVICE.com on the Mio Knight Rider GPS is definitely a category three jaw-dropper. On the one hand, it makes perfect sense. If you’re […]

On Maps and Legends.

This morning I finished reading Michael Chabon’s new collection of essays Maps and Legends (2008, McSweeney’s Books). I knew that I enjoyed Chabon’s work from the few essays and chapters of his I’ve read already, but this one really knocked it out of the park. An embarrassed confession: I have yet to finish reading The […]

On George Carlin.

Fuck. George Carlin was one of my all-time favorite comics. When I was in high school, my friends and I used to listen to Carlin and Denis Leary while we were out driving around. When you’re a teenager in the middle-of-nowhere Ohio, driving around listening to stuff is what you do. We’d drive to Akron […]

The tranquility of travel.

I never would have thought that I’d be hearing advice on the tranquility of anything from Uncle Warren Ellis, but there you go. Me, I enjoy traveling as well, except for the fact that I still feel like I’m paying penance for making a friend’s cousin miss her flight when I was a freshman in […]

Links list: 06-12-08.

Warren Ellis on SF magazine sales. I love this series of posts. Studio Tour: New Yorker cartoonist Mick Stevens. Nice digs. Kevin Smith and Tim Burton talk smack. I’d’ve pegged Burton for a comics fan. J.K. Rowling at Harvard. Alas, I missed the speech. Charlie Stross at The Guardian. “Novels are one of the few […]

Fit? Not mii.

For some reason, I have never been the sort to preorder games. No, let me start that again – for one of a number of possible reasons, I have never been the sort to preorder games. I blame my parents, and especially my Mom, for instilling in me two very fundamental psychology quirks. First is […]

Links list: 06-07-08.

Heh. I didn’t realize the quirkiness of today’s date until I just typed in today’s headline. Vandermeer on postmodern techniques in fantasy. “A postmodern technique used in a ‘fantastical setting’ often supports the milieu, even if those same techniques used with a modern-day setting can seem artificial or distracting from the reality of place.” Jason […]

What I did at work today.

For the MIT homepage sometime next week, hopefully. Click to enlarge slightly. My favorite bit is the airship, which Philip had me add late in the game. Good call, cap’n:

A magnificent deskful of guilty pleasures.

So. Earlier this week I did something perhaps I shouldn’t have done, and right now I’m doing something else I shouldn’t be doing by taking a break at my dayjob to blog, but right now I think the head of the lab and I are the only two people left in the lab (today being […]

Links list: 06-05-08.

Games+Learning+Society Conference 4.0. Gotta get to Wisconsin. The International Society for the Study of Narrative. Very cool research going on here. Neil Gaiman writes Teenage Mutant (Something) Heroes. “After many years of study…” Dreams with Sharp Teeth. Still irked that I missed this on the festival circuit. Who’s Your City? Dang, Florida’s new book has […]