io9: w00t

You Are Already in a Game. Right Now.

Annalee Newitz — Mon, 12 May 2008 14:39:32 PDT

My favorite new mind-bending idea is an extension for Firefox released today by brainy game designers Merci Grace and Justin Hall. It's called PMOG, for passively multiplayer online game, and it turns the entire web into a fantasy world where you can go on quests. Like all cool art, PMOG makes apparent something that you knew unconsciously for a long time. Browsing the web is just a game. Gathering knowledge is a game. Finding cool new pieces of information by reading is a game. PMOG just makes those games literal, by letting you earn points for web surfing — erm, questing. And io9 is part of that quest!

PMOG was launched by GameLayers, who said in a statement this morning:

So many of us spend hours each day on the web. What do we have to show for our time? PMOG gives players points for surfing with the PMOG Firefox extension. Those points can be used to leave traps or treasure on any web site, for other players to find. Suddenly, surfing the web is a casual multiplayer online game.
PMOG provides a web-wide platform for people to poke, gift or share links. "PMOG is arms dealer to the web," quips Merci Victoria Grace, GameLayers Chief Creative Officer and co-founder. PMOG game events are created by other players, and layered over the web that we all share. Players see PMOG "Mines" "Crates" or "Portals" affixed to CNN, Facebook or Google. Players can unlock badges based on their web surfing on sites like BoingBoing, YouTube, Facebook or Twitter. The entire internet now offers a chance to play.

The coolest part for yours truly, aside from getting rewarded for compulsively reading BoingBoing and Hackaday, is that io9 is part of a quest called "Take Me to Your Readers." There's even a badge (pictured) for io9.

You know what that means, don't you? You are all part of a game, right now. You can feel it when you go to work. When you pay your taxes. When you quote that cool speech in the Matrix for the fiftieth time. So make your web surfing count by checking out PMOG and going on a quest.

PMOG [official site]

Sleep, Obey, Consume, and Watch "They Live"

Annalee Newitz — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 18:21:41 PDT

If you want to spend your Friday evening contemplating the joys of alien-based paranoia, plus a little wrestling, then there's nothing better than a nice heaping of They Live. Released in the late 1980s, this ironic-paranoid classic was John Carpenter's giant fuck you to the Reagan Administration and social conformity of all types. Aliens have taken over, and are controlling all of the United States (and perhaps the whole world) by beaming a signal into everybody's mind that masks the true aliens, as well as the "obey" signs they've planted everywhere. In this awesome scene, "Rowdy" Roddy Piper puts on some sunglasses that allow him to see the truth. It's like the "taking the red pill" moment — suddenly the extent of his manipulation becomes clear.

And of course, it's hilarious. Instead of spouting some speech about simulation Wachowski-Bros-style, Piper is basically dumbstruck. He finally lashes out at an old lady alien by telling her she looks like her face has "been in the cheese dip since 1957." Yup, those were the days, when high tech social control was solved with a nice wrassle and you didn't need any of them fancy computer hackers to do the job. If it were possible to force every human in the U.S. and Canada to watch this movie, I would do it. Using my MIND CONTROL BEAM.

They Live [Amazon]

The Future Belongs to W00t, O.K.?

Annalee Newitz — Wed, 12 Dec 2007 07:30:50 PST

Dictionary publisher Merriam-Webster announced yesterday that "w00t," the cyber-talk word for "yay," is word of the year. Apparently it reflects the future of language. Spelled with two zeros, w00t is the kind of coinage that Merriam-Webster president John Morse says he would expect from a generation raised on computers and cell phones. But Global Language Monitor, a group that uses an algorithm to track word popularity in the media and online, says the main word on everyone's typing fingertips this year was "hybrid." As in the car. What were the weird runners-up?

Merriam-Webster's runner-up was the verb "facebook," meaning to add somebody to your group of friends. For example, Bob facebooked Alice but then Eve de-facebooked Bob. Glad they picked w00t. But Global Language Monitor's runner-up words were equally yuck: "surge" (as in Iraq) and "bubble" (as in what's bursting in the US economy right now). GLM also noted that the most popular emoticon was ?-), the smiley for pirates. In addition, the mostly widely-understood word in the world is "O.K."

w00t Crowned Word of the Year [Reuters]