Fei Liu

New Mercy Park

A process and research blog about making teaching about code more narrative.

A dream about a sign on a building

A sign with the words “Welcome to New Mercy Park” is posted outside a gray institutional building surrounded by deep but calm water. Two years ago, this familiar yet disconcerting place appeared in my dreams. It was so convincingly real that I didn’t even bother to Google it for confirmation when I woke up. New Mercy Park didn’t exist, of course, but I couldn’t get its image out of my head. Something exciting but frightening was happening behind its walls and I had to go see it for

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Coming Online in America

Hunched over your computer keyboards, separated by a sea of wires, you tap our erotic messages that materialize, like spirit writing, as glowing characters on each other’s screens. Soon you find yourself typing with one hand. Coitus in cyberspace, like intercourse in the physical world, progresses from foreplay to climax; orgasms are signaled by cartoony exclamations: “ohhhhhh,” “WOW!!!” and the perennial favorite “I’mmmm Commmmmmmminnnggggggggg!!!!!!” –Mark Dery1 My “evangelism for online culture” story starts out pretty much just like that of many

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