theorywatch

Concern about “inappropriate environments” (especially ones that involve social networking) imposed by instructors etc. on undergraduates etc. is now being dubbed the “creepy treehouse effect,” but it seems to me that many things can constitute “creepiness.” (In fact, you might call it “concept creep” for the “creep concept.”) For instance, how about wikigenes, which is allegedly built on a technology that can track the authorship of every word in an edit? Now, that technological concept and its potential uses and misuses in copyright suits, plagiarism accusations, and scholarly evaluation creeps even me out!

P.S. On the other hand, I think Trevor Owens’ use of simple RPG software to generate historical role-playing games is tree cool.