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How to Use Fun to Find Meaning in Life

September 13, 2016

Ian Bogost, professor in the School of Literature, Media, and Communication, was interviewed in "How to Use Fun to Find Meaning in Life" by The Atlantic about his new book, Play Anything.

Excerpt:

Ian Bogost is really into things. He’s been my colleague for the three years I’ve worked at The Atlantic, and in that time, there have been a lot of chats in our work Slack-room about video games and Soylent and Tab and typewriters and the new iPhone’s missing headphone jack. He also edits Object Lessons, a series that goes super in-depth on the history and meaning of things, like cardigans and meatballs.

So it’s not surprising to those who know him that his newest book, Play Anything,is mostly about stuff, all the stuff that makes up the world, from the duct tape at Walmart with the boys of One Direction printed on it to his lawnmower. (He talks about his lawnmower a lot.) By paying attention to this stuff instead of just dismissing it, we can find meaning, he says.

For the full article, read here

Published in: The Atlantic
Energy Efficiency, Clean Power Plan Would Cut Consumer Costs, Reduce Use of Dirty Fuel

September 11, 2016

Marilyn Brown, professor in the School of Public Policy, wrote "Energy Efficiency, Clean Power Plan Would Cut Consumer Costs, Reduce Use of Dirty Fuel" for Saporta Report.

Excerpt:

In a year marked by ever deepening political divides, an unlikely consensus has formed between Georgia regulators and environmental advocates: energy bills must remain affordable as we transition to a low-carbon economy. My research on sustainable energy policies and the electric utility industry demonstrates that we can best achieve this result by using innovative tools already available to us.

One year ago, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency set the nation’s first-ever limits on carbon pollution from power plants. TheClean Power Plan addresses the largest source of the pollution driving climate change and is the centerpiece of President Obama’s climate action plan, as well as the linchpin of the U.S. commitment to the Paris climate agreement.

For the full article, read here

Published in: Saporta Report
Mao's Long Shadow: A Difficult Discussion for China

September 8, 2016

Fei-Ling Wang, professor in the Sam Nunn School of International Affairs, was quoted in "Mao's Long Shadow: A Difficult Discussion for China" by Yahoo Finance.

Excerpt:

Under President Xi, the government has gone to ever greater lengths to make sure everyone says the same thing when they talk about Mao.

The most powerful leader since the Great Helmsman himself, Xi has cautioned against both "historical nihilism" and "neo-liberalism", an implicit warning to bury both praise and criticism of Mao's era.

"There is an officially-induced and sanctioned amnesia about Mao's true record," said Fei-Ling Wang, a China expert at the Georgia Institute of Technology.

For the full article, read here

Published in: Yahoo Finance
How Apple Sells its Controlling Ways as Futurism

September 8, 2016

Ian Bogost, professor in the School of Literature, Media, and Communication, wrote “How Apple Sells its Controlling Ways as Futurism” for The Atlantic.

Excerpt:

The company has a good track record for success, too. Two of its other forced obsolescences have largely been forgotten by today’s users. The removal of floppy drives upon the launch of the iMac in 1998 felt similarly aggressive at the time. Most computer users had dozens of disks loaded with software and files, all rendered useless. And the MacBook Air, first introduced in 2008, removed the optical drive to allow for a thinner, lighter laptop body. Today, none of Apple’s computers feature built-in CD/DVD drives, and nobody seems terribly bothered. Thinner computers are far more important.

But Nicer’s parody underscores an unseen motivation: Apple’s aggressive battle against the retrograde pull of hardware standards also exerts an implicit control on its users. Buying an Apple product becomes an exercise in trust for the future it will bring about. And the problem with the future is that it’s very hard to think about how it might have been different once it arrives.

For the full article, read here.

Published in: The Atlantic
What If Star Trek Had Never Existed?

September 8, 2016

Lisa Yaszek and Jay Telotte, professors in the Ivan Allen College School of Literature, Media, and Communication, were quoted in "What If Star Trek Had Never Existed?" by Wired.

Excerpt:

Fans had been active in creating and shaping science fiction since the days of Hugo Gernsback, but Trek was the first big media franchise to engage fans in that way—and the fans reacted in kind by creating media-oriented conventions of their own. “Isaac Asimov remembers casually walking over to the first Star Trek convention in the 1970s, expecting it to be a relatively small affair for maybe a few hundred fans at most,” says Lisa Yaszek, a Georgia Tech professor and author of Galactic Suburbia: Recovering Women’s Science Fiction. “But when he got there, he was surprised and delighted to see thousands of fans patiently waiting to get into a venue that, as it turned out, was far too small to accommodate everyone there.”

For the full article, read here.

Published in: Wired
Who Controls the Internet? Ted Cruz's Fantasy vs. the Reality

September 6, 2016

Milton Mueller, professor in the School of Public Policy, was quoted in "Who Controls the Internet? Ted Cruz's Fantasy vs. the Reality" by Fusion.

Excerpt:

“Literally, half of them, people like Steve Crocker, Jon Postel, Vint Cerf, went to the same high school in Southern California. They knew each other very well, they trusted each other,” explained Milton Mueller, a Professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology’s School of Public Policy and longtime researcher of internet governance. “They had built something that, obviously, was very important, and they all deserved an enormous amount of credit for their expertise, and for their governance capabilities, in terms of setting up standards organizations. But when [the internet] got so big and so important that conflicts over political power and wealth started coming in, they really resented it.”

For the full article, read here.

Published in: Fusion
Blacks Lag in Business Ownership, but Gap is Narrowing

September 2, 2016

Dr. Thomas Boston, professor in the Sam Nunn School of International Affairs, was quoted in "Blacks Lag in Business Ownership, but Gap Is Narrowing" by The Wall Street Journal.

Excerpt:

In addition, many black-owned firms have focused on doing business with the public sector, leaving them vulnerable to cutbacks in government spending and affirmative action programs.

“Black businesses, even though they have been growing, have lagged behind the growth of other groups,” said Mr. Boston, who also owns a consulting firm that focuses on minorities and small business.

For the full article, read here

Published in: Wall Street Journal
The Great Debate

September 2, 2016

Fact and Fiction in Global Energy Policy: 15 Contentious Questions, the new book co-authored by School of Public Policy Professor Marilyn Brown, was reviewed in "The Great Debate" by Science.

Excerpt:

I have rarely read a book or policy piece that has so clearly laid out the competing perspectives on contentious energy questions with such sympathy, humility, and rigor. In light of the tremendous energy and environmental challenges facing us today and in the future, this would be an excellent book for classes in environmental policy, political science, and geography. Indeed, this is a must read for researchers and practitioners interested in understanding how to address the most pressing contentious energy questions of our day.

For the full article, read here

Published in: Science
Does Killing Terrorist Leaders Make Any Difference? Scholars Are Doubtful

August 30, 2016

Jenna Jordan, an assistant professor in the Ivan Allen College Sam Nunn School of International Affairs, was featured in “Does Killing Terrorist Leaders Make Any Difference? Scholars Are Doubtful" for The New York Times.

Excerpt:

Two features make a terrorist group able to withstand a senior officer’s death, according to research by Jenna Jordan, a Georgia Tech professor and a leading expert on the subject.

The first is popular support. Groups need a steady stream of recruits and a pool of potential new leaders. Support among civilians in areas in which the groups primarily operate also makes them more stable, by broadening support networks and helping them to safely retrench when needed. Leaders are usually killed in or near communities that support them, resulting in those communities rallying behind the terrorist group and against whoever did the killing.

For the full article, read here.

Published in: The New York Times
Valuing Predictability in U.S. Ties, China Would Vote Hillary, Panelists Say

August 26, 2016

John Garver, an emeritus professor in the Ivan Allen College Sam Nunn School of International Affairs, was featured in “Valuing Predictability in U.S. Ties, China Would Vote Hillary, Panelists Say" for Global Atlanta.
Excerpt:
Peace would be tougher to achieve in the increasingly complex Asia-Pacific region under a Donald Trump presidency that would be a “disaster” and a “blunder,” according to John Garver, professor emeritus in the Sam Nunn School of International Affairs at Georgia Institute of Technology.
On several issues Mr. Trump has stated that current U.S. policy is detrimental to the country’s best interests and “he believes that in all things that U.S. interests should be put first,” Dr. Garver said.
For the full article, read here.

Published in: Global Atlanta
Trump Tower and the Question of 'Public' Space

August 25, 2016

Robert Rosenberger, associate professor in the Ivan Allen College School of Public Policy, wrote “Trump Tower and the Question of ‘Public’ Space” for The Atlantic.
Excerpt:
Trump Tower is the place where Donald Trump announced that he was running for president, taking a long escalator down to a stage in the building’s atrium. It’s where some scenes for his reality show were filmed. It’s where, as the Republican Party’s nominee for president, he maintains his campaign headquarters. It’s the command center of his business empire. It’s his home. And it’s also been the subject, over the years, of controversies over the proper management and maintenance of public space.
One such controversy has centered on a 22-foot-long stone bench that went missing from the building’s atrium, and then was suddenly and surreptitiously replaced. The reason the bench is an issue of contention in the first place is that the atrium of Trump Tower is what’s called a privately-owned public space, the product of an agreement in which a developer receives special permissions from the city in exchange for the inclusion and upkeep of spaces open to the general public.
For the full article, read here.

Published in: The Atlantic
The Olympics are the End of a Track From Poverty

August 18, 2016

Chaunté Lowe, an alumna of the School of Economics (BS '08), was featured in “The Olympics are the End of a Track From Poverty" for The New York Times.

Excerpt:

As she tells it to me, the memory sounds like a home movie in a childhood rich in joy.

Her mom had gone to work, and Chaunté Lowe and her sisters, little girls all, pulled the mattresses into the living room and put on the Kris Kross hit “Jump.” The girls jumped and touched the ceiling. Chaunté landed on the floor. She leapt from the hardwood and still touched the ceiling.

“I thought to myself: Wow! You have a gift!”

For the full article, read here.

Published in: The New York Times
Tech's Chaunte Lowe Has High-Jump Medal Podium in Sight

August 16, 2016

Chaunte Lowe, an alumna of the School of Economics, was featured in “Tech's Chaunte Lowe Has High-Jump Medal Podium in Sight” for The Atlanta Journal-Constiution.
Excerpt:
Lowe, whose competition begins with preliminaries Thursday, is far from the rising junior who represented the U.S. in the 2004 Olympics, when she became Tech’s first-ever female Olympian. She is married with three children. In 2015, she scaled back on her training to care for her daughter Aurora, who was demonstrating behavioral issues that doctors believed were related to autism or Asperger’s Syndrome. Previously based in metro Atlanta, the Lowes now live in Orlando. Lowe and Page keep up through videos of workouts and phone calls.
“This time at the Olympics, I won’t be a sophomore in college, or a mother, nursing a one-year-old,” Lowe told news media at the Olympics. “So this time I put myself in the best advantage, and I think that’s really going to work well for me this time.”

For the full article, read here.

Published in: The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The Job Is Football: The Myth of the Student-Athlete

August 16, 2016

Johnny Smith, assistant professor in the School of History and Sociology, wrote “The Job Is Football: The Myth of the Student-Athlete” for The American Historian.

Excerpt:

He was a student of history, but most people knew him as the star quarterback of the football team.

In the summer of 2013 Kain Colter, the twenty-one year old starting quarterback at Northwestern University, enrolled in a course that examined the social and political history of labor in America since the nineteenth century. His instructor, Nick Dorzweiler, challenged the students to reflect on how the meaning of labor has changed over time and what work means to them as citizens. After visiting a Chicago steel mill, Kain began considering the role of unions in professional sports and wondered why college athletes did not have one, too.

For the full article, read here.

Published in: The American Historian
How a Favela Kid Became Brazil's Top Badminton Player

August 13, 2016

Kirk Bowman, associate chair and Jon Wilcox Term Professor of Soccer, Global Politics, and Society from the Sam Nunn School of International Affairs in Georgia Tech's Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts was quoted in “How a Favela Kid Became Brazil's Top Badminton Player” for The Christian Science Monitor.
Excerpt:
“You go into the favelas and it’s chaos,” says Kirk Bowman, a political scientist at Georgia Tech and co-founder of Rise Up & Care, an American NGO that gives funding to established projects like Miratus in poor communities around the world. “But you walk into [Miratus] and it is order and purpose and happ[iness]. It’s a totally different world, and it’s no wonder that these kids, their grades improve, relationships in the family improve. They have role models and are achieving goals at a really young age.”

For the full article, read here.

Published in: The Christian Science Monitor
Regulating Genetic Research and Applications

August 10, 2016

A short commentary piece by Dr. Margaret Kosal on “Regulating genetic research and applications” related to biosecurity and CRISPR-Cas9 type systems was published in the Summer 2016 issue of the journal “Issues in Science and Technology,” as part of their series on issues at the intersection of technology and policy.

Published in: Issues in Science and Technology
When to Watch Georgia Athletes Compete on Day 5 of Olympics

August 10, 2016

Gal Nevo, an alumnus of the Ivan Allen College School of Economics, was featured in “When to Watch Georgia Athletes Compete on Day 5 of Olympics” for 11 Alive.
Excerpt:
NBC Noon-2 p.m.
Swimming- Qualifying heats It will be a busy day in the pool. UGA's Chantal Van Landegem will swim for Canada in the 100-meter freestyle. She already has a bronze medal after helping Team Canada in the 4x200-meter free relay. Then, Javier Acevedo will swim for Canada in the 200-meter backstroke. If they all qualify, they will swim in semifinal heats Wednesday night. UGA's Allison Schmitt and Melanie Margalis will help the U.S. try to qualify for the women's 4x200-meter freestyle relay. Schmitt won a silver medal while helping the 4x100 relay team earlier in the games. Georgia Tech will watch Gal Nevo represent Israel in the 200-meter iindividual medley. Finally, in primetime, Georgia's Hali Flickinger will swim in the 200-meter butterfly. She finished fourth in her semifinal heat Tuesday night to qualify.
For the full article, read here.

Published in: 11 Alive
Clinton Accused of Aiding Moscow Push for 'Russian Silicon Valley'

August 10, 2016

A 2010 program headed by then-secretary of state Hillary Clinton to help Moscow develop a “Russian Silicon Valley” may instead have drawn some of America’s biggest tech companies into “industrial espionage” – even advancing the country’s military and spying operations, according to a new report by Clinton critic Peter Schweizer’s Government Accountability Institute. Fox News discussed the report with Margaret E. Kosal, an Associate Professor at Georgia Tech’s Sam Nunn School of International Affairs.
Kosal said that “While the project might have seemed a good opportunity to work in an emerging market, there are challenges working in Russia including dealing with cronyism and government bureaucracy.”
“But from a national security perspective,” Kosal said, “the biggest concern is the ability of the Russian military to obtain, misuse, or develop nanotechnology for an application that catches the U.S. by surprise.”

Published in: Fox News
The Slow-Game App is the New Smoke Break

August 9, 2016

Ian Bogost, professor in the School of Literature, Media, and Communication was referenced in “The Slow-Game App is the New Smoke Break” for The New York Times.
Excerpt:
While the shiniest, most successful phone apps are designed to push our competitive buttons and light up our pleasure centers with quick rewards, slow games seek access to a different part of our brains. They soothe rather than excite. The author and game designer Ian Bogost has referred to this genre as video game Zen, the mobile equivalent of running a tiny rake across a desktop Japanese garden. David OReilly, the filmmaker and digital artist who designed Mountain, calls these games “r elax ’e m u ps,” a clever play on their departure from the ubiquity of first-person shooters. ThatGameCompany, the studio behind slow games like Cloud and Journey, strives to create “positive change to the human psyche.”

For the full article, read here.

Published in: The New York Times
The Clean Power Plan Turns 1

August 3, 2016

Marilyn Brown, Ph.D., the Brook Byers Professor of Sustainable Systems in the School of Public Policy was featured in “The Clean Power Plan Turns 1” for Politico.
Excerpt:
ME loves the smell of energy efficiency in the morning: A new paper out today from Georgia Tech professor Marilyn Brown concludes that the Clean Power Plan offers an opportunity for U.S. commercial building owners to save $11.3 billion annually by 2030 via energy efficiency measures. They would also save $3.6 billion a year on natural gas, according to Brown’s take. Southern states' share of those savings could be $5.26 billion on power and $910 million on gas. Those figures are based on projected business-as-usual increases over the next 15 years. The new paper is based off a June study written by Brown.
For the full article, read here.

Published in: Politico

Recent Press Coverage

How to Use Fun to Find Meaning in Life

Energy Efficiency, Clean Power Plan Would Cut Consumer Costs, Reduce Use of Dirty Fuel

Mao's Long Shadow: A Difficult Discussion for China

How Apple Sells its Controlling Ways as Futurism

What If Star Trek Had Never Existed?

Who Controls the Internet? Ted Cruz's Fantasy vs. the Reality

Blacks Lag in Business Ownership, but Gap is Narrowing

The Great Debate

Does Killing Terrorist Leaders Make Any Difference? Scholars Are Doubtful

Valuing Predictability in U.S. Ties, China Would Vote Hillary, Panelists Say

Trump Tower and the Question of 'Public' Space

The Olympics are the End of a Track From Poverty

Tech's Chaunte Lowe Has High-Jump Medal Podium in Sight

The Job Is Football: The Myth of the Student-Athlete

How a Favela Kid Became Brazil's Top Badminton Player

Regulating Genetic Research and Applications

When to Watch Georgia Athletes Compete on Day 5 of Olympics

Clinton Accused of Aiding Moscow Push for 'Russian Silicon Valley'

The Slow-Game App is the New Smoke Break

The Clean Power Plan Turns 1

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Georgia Institute of Technology

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