The Computer as Medium

by Edited by Peter Bxgh Andersen , Berit Holmqvist , Jens F. Jensen

• ISBN13: 9780521035804
• ISBN10: 0521035805
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2007-05-31
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

Computers are developing into a powerful medium integrating film, pictures, text and sound, and the use of computers for communication and information is rapidly expanding. The Computer as Medium brings insights from art, literature and theatre to bear on computers and discusses the communicative and organizational nature of computer networks within a historical perspective. The book consists of three parts. The first part characterizes the semiotic nature of computers and discusses semiotic approaches to programming and interface design. The second part discusses narrative and aesthetic issues of interactive fiction, information systems and hypertext. The final part contains papers on the cultural, organizational and historical impact of computers.The broad and rich coverage of this book will appeal to scholars in cognitive science, computer science, linguistics, semiotics, media studies and mass communications, cultural studies and education.

Table of Contents

Series foreword

Preface

Contributors

Computer-Based Signs: Introduction

A semiotic approach to programming

Structuralism, computation and cognition: the contribution of glossematics

The shortest way between two points is a good idea: signs, Peirce and theorematic machines

Logic grammar and the triadic sign relation

Meaning and the machine: toward a semiotics of interaction

The Rhetoric of Interactive Media: Introduction

Narrative computer systems: the dialectics of emotion and formalism

Interactive fiction: artificial intelligence as a mode of sign production

Plays, theatres and the art of acting in the eighteenth century: a formal analysis

The meaning of plot and narrative

Face to interface

Drawing and programming

Hypermedia communication and academic discourse: some speculations on a future genre

Computers In Context: Introduction

Computer culture: the meaning of technology and the technology of meaning

One person, one computer: the social construction of the personal computer

Hi-tech network organizations as self-referential systems

Comment: disturbing communication

Dialogues in networks

Historical trends in computer and information technology

Comment: the history of computer-based signs

A historical perspective on work practices and technology

Hypertext: from modern utopia to post-modern dystopia?

Index

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