All Tomorrow's Cultures

In early 2026, the South African independent game company, Nyamakop , released " Relooted ," a horizontal, side-scrolling heist game with lots of cutscenes. In this Afrofuturist game, players recover looted artifacts from western museums in order to return them to their rightful owners, along the way learning about the meanings of these objects in a variety of different countries and cultures.       In the screenshot above, players are briefed on Djenne terracottas, objects looted from the Djenne-Djenno archaeological site that date from 250 BCE to 900 CE. Gameplay involves making it past defenses, battling drones, and grabbing the artifacts.  For a relatively modest game released by a heretofore little-known independent game company, Relooted generated a great deal of commentary and playthrough videos on YouTube. Partly because I wanted to try the new "topic analyzer" options on Communalytic, I downloaded 8000 comments from a number of playthrough videos and let ...

  There are 3 approaches to generative AI in the classroom: 1) an outright ban on it; 2) a limited use policy that covers certain assignments or parts of assignments, and 3) an open approach that allows students to do what they would. None of these are fool-proof, whatever the intentions of the professor. Ultimately, generative AI are third-party, black-boxed products–more tempting to students, perhaps, than Wikipedia, but also more treacherous. I feel for my colleagues in the humanities attempting to wrest essays from students on Shakespeare or Aristotle: generative AI is all too good at producing a mediocre essay on these subjects. I also understand my colleagues in the computer and information sciences, who utilize these chatbots to help with their instruction.   But with anthropology, there are several caveats. 99.99% of writings on other peoples of the world are drenched in ethnocentrism, colonialism and racism. The internet is awash in complete nonsense about “trib...