The New Media Reader

by Wardrip-Fruin, Noah; Montfort, Nick

• ISBN13: 9780262232272
• ISBN10: 0262232278
• Edition: CD
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2003-02-14
• Publisher: MIT PRESS

Summary

This reader collects the texts, videos, and computer programs-many of them now almost impossible to find-that chronicle the history and form the foundation of the still-emerging field of new media. General introductions by Janet Murray and Lev Manovich, along with short introductions to each of the texts, place the works in their historical context and explain their significance. The texts were originally published between World War II-when digital computing, cybernetic feedback, and early notions of hypertext and the Internet first appeared-and the emergence of the World Wide Web-when they entered the mainstream of public life. The texts are by computer scientists, artists, architects, literary writers, interface designers, cultural critics, and individuals working across disciplines. The contributors include (chronologically) Jorge Luis Borges, Vannevar Bush, Alan Turing, Ivan Sutherland, William S. Burroughs, Ted Nelson, Italo Calvino, Marshall McLuhan, Billy Kl?Jean Baudrillard, Nicholas Negroponte, Alan Kay, Bill Viola, Sherry Turkle, Richard Stallman, Brenda Laurel, Langdon Winner, Robert Coover, and Tim Berners-Lee. The CD accompanying the book contains examples of early games, digital art, independent literary efforts, software created at universities, and home-computer commercial software. Also on the CD is digitized video, documenting new media programs and artwork for which no operational version exists. One example is a video record of Douglas Engelbart's first presentation of the mouse, word processor, hyperlink, computer-supported cooperative work, video conferencing, and the dividing up of the screen we now call non-overlapping windows; another is documentation of Lynn Hershman's Lorna, the first interactive video art installation.

Author Biography

Noah Wardrip-Fruin is Professor of Computational Media at the University of California, Santa Cruz, where he codirects the Expressive Intelligent Studio. He is the author of Expressive Processing: Digital Fictions, Computer Games, and Software Studies (MIT Press).

Nick Montfort is Professor of Digital Media at MIT. He is the author of Twisty Little Passages: An Approach to Interactive Fiction and Exploratory Programming for the Arts and Humanities; the coauthor of Racing the Beam: The Atari Video Computer System and 10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10; and the coeditor of The New Media Reader (all published by the MIT Press).

Table of Contents

Advisors	x
Preface: The New Media Reader, A User's Manual	xi
Noah Wardrip-Fruin
Nick Montfort
Acknowledgments	xv
Perspectives on New Media: Two Introductions
Inventing the Medium	3	(10)
Janet Murray
New Media from Borges to HTML	13	(16)
Lev Manovich
I. The Complex, the Changing, and the Indeterminate
The Garden of Forking Paths	29	(6)
Jorge Luis Borges
As We May Think	35	(14)
Vannevar Bush
Computing Machinery and Intelligence	49	(16)
Alan Turing
Men, Machines, and the World About	65	(8)
Norbert Wiener
Man-Computer Symbiosis	73	(10)
J. C. R. Licklider
``Happenings'' in the New York Scene	83	(6)
Allan Kaprow
The Cut-Up Method of Brion Gysin	89	(4)
William S. Burroughs
From Augmenting Human Intellect: A Conceptual Framework	93	(16)
Douglas Engelbart
Sketchpad: A Man-Machine Graphical Communication System	109	(18)
Ivan Sutherland
The Construction of Change	127	(6)
Roy Ascott
A File Structure for the Complex, the Changing, and the Indeterminate	133	(14)
Theodor H. Nelson
Six Selections by the Oulipo	147	(46)
A Hundred Thousand Billion Poems
Raymond Queneau
Yours for the Telling
Raymond Queneau
A Brief History of the Oulipo
Jean Lescure
For a Potential Analysis of Combinatory Literature
Claude Berge
Computer and Writer: The Centre Pompidou Experiment
Paul Fournel
Prose and Anticombinatorics
Italo Calvino
II. Collective Media, Personal Media
Two Selections	193	(18)
Marshall McLuhan
The Medium Is the Message, 1964 (from Understanding Media)
The Galaxy Reconfigured or the Plight of Mass Man in an Individualist
Society, 1969 (from The Gutenberg Galaxy)
Four Selections by Experiments in Art and Technology	211	(16)
From ``The Garden Party''
Billy Kluver
From 9 Evenings
E.A.T., 1966
[Press Release]
E.A.T., 1966
The Pavilion
Billy Kluver
Cybernated Art	227	(4)
Nam June Paik
A Research Center for Augmenting Human Intellect	231	(16)
Douglas Engelbart
William English
From Software---Information Technology: Its New Meaning for Art	247	(12)
Theodor H. Nelson
Nicholas Negroponte
Les Levine
Constituents of a Theory of the Media	259	(18)
Hans Magnus Enzensberger
Requiem for the Media	277	(12)
Jean Baudrillard
The Technology and the Society	289	(12)
Raymond Williams
From Computer Lib / Dream Machines	301	(38)
Theodor H. Nelson
From Theatre of the Oppressed	339	(14)
Augusto Boal
From Soft Architecture Machines	353	(14)
Nicholas Negroponte
From Computer Power and Human Reason	367	(10)
Joseph Weizenbaum
Responsive Environments	377	(14)
Myron W. Krueger
Personal Dynamic Media	391	(14)
Alan Kay
Adele Goldberg
From A Thousand Plateaus	405	(8)
Gilles Deleuze
Felix Guattari
III. Design, Activity, and Action
From Mindstorms: Children, Computers, and Powerful Ideas	413	(20)
Seymour Papert
``Put-That-There'': Voice and Gesture at the Graphics Interface	433	(8)
Richard A. Bolt
Proposal for a Universal Electronic Publishing System and Archive (from Literary Machines)	441	(22)
Theodor H. Nelson
Will There Be Condominiums in Data Space?	463	(8)
Bill Viola
The Endless Chain (from The Media Monopoly)	471	(14)
Ben Bagdikian
Direct Manipulation: A Step Beyond Programming Languages	485	(14)
Ben Shneiderman
Video Games and Computer Holding Power (from The Second Self)	499	(16)
Sherry Turkle
A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century	515	(28)
Donna Haraway
The GNU Manifesto	543	(8)
Richard Stallman
Using Computers: A Direction for Design (from Understanding Computers and Cognition)	551	(24)
Terry Winograd
Fernando Flores
Two Selections
Brenda Laurel
The Six Elements and the Causal Relations Among Them, 1991 (from Computers as Theater)
Star Raiders: Dramatic Interaction in a Small World, 1986	563	(12)
Towards a New Classification of Tele-Information Services	575	(12)
Jan L. Bordewijk
Ben van Kaam
IV. Revolution, Resistance, and the Launch of the Web
Mythinformation	587	(12)
Langdon Winner
From Plans and Situated Actions	599	(14)
Lucy A. Suchman
Siren Shapes: Exploratory and Constructive Hypertexts	613	(12)
Michael Joyce
The Work of Culture in the Age of Cybernetic Systems	625	(18)
Bill Nichols
The Fantasy Beyond Control	643	(6)
Lynn Hershman
Cardboard Computers	649	(14)
Pelle Ehn
Morten Kyng
The Lessons of Lucasfilm's Habitat	663	(16)
Chip Morningstar
F. Randall Farmer
Seeing and Writing (from Writing Space)	679	(12)
J. David Bolter
You Say You Want a Revolution? Hypertext and the Laws of Media	691	(14)
Stuart Moulthrop
The End of Books	705	(6)
Robert Coover
Time Frames (from Understanding Comics)	711	(26)
Scott McCloud
Surveillance and Capture: Two Models of Privacy	737	(24)
Philip E. Agre
Nonlinearity and Literary Theory	761	(20)
Espen J. Aarseth
Nomadic Power and Cultural Resistance Critical Art Ensemble, 1994	781	(10)
The World Wide Web	791	(8)
Tim Berners-Lee
Robert Cailliau
Ari Loutonen
Henrik Frystyk Nielsen
Arthur Secret
Permissions	799	(4)
Index	803