Once again, the conglomerates are missing the point. Folks, we are not the criminals, and I’m tired of buying hardware that comes to me broken.

Case in point: I hate my iPod Shuffle. It seems like every time I decide to plug it into my MacBook Pro — the only computer I have ever used with my Shuffle — it tells me that iPod can only used with one iTunes library. The only options I have are “Cancel” or erase the iPod. Huh? Now this wouldn’t be such a big deal if it didn’t take so bloody long to put music back on the thing. And, sheesh, it’s only a gigabyte! How much music could I possibly steal?!

I’ve said it before: I liked Apple better when they were not so successful.

To me, this is what the Interenet should be: slick applications and plenty of server space, especially for applications that have bridged the gap between the world of paper commnication and digital networks. It seems that programmers and those web 2.0 startups are finally starting to get it. While a word processor used to be where I spent most of my time on a computer, Firefox now occupies the front position on my monitor. With sites/applications like Flickr, Wikipedia, Del.icio.us, YouTube, Digg, FeedBurner, and all those Google resources — Gmail, Calendar, Analytics, Notebook, Videos, Reader, Bookmarks, Help (thanks for the link) — using the Internet is actually exciting again. In fact, I can’t remember the last time I launched a word processor, and I’m an English professor!

I’m happy to say that my Mac has been Microsoft-free for over a year now. Much of this I credit to Apple, but lately, Google and those others I’ve just mentioned have eclipsed Apple as the true software innovators. Apple, what have you done for me lately? .Mac? Pluh-leese. Google might have replaced Apple as my favorite tech company. A shame, but damn they deserve it.

Writely is presently not taking new members until they’ve moved to Google servers, but you can bet I’ve asked to be notified.

We are not stopped by the technology, folks, just the backward looking companies that are afraid that progress will mean the collapse of their mighty empires. Lohr sees some hope, but progress will come slowly — at least until the powers-that-be can find a way to make a buck and keep it.

Murray’s Hamlet seeks to align humanity’s literary past with our need to push beyond the boundaries of linear storytelling (29). Central to her discussion is the current manifestation of what might one day become the holodeck: the personal computer. Murray sees as representing the promise for a narrative entertainment of pullulation — one that could represent multiple and even contradictory realities — that our current media cannot (33). We are facing a unique time when our demand for multiple representations of reality is pushing the borders of our artistic representations, resulting in a convergence of formats that only a computer can facilitate (64).

One criticism leveled at Murray — and, in fact, most of the proponents of narrativism — is that she borrows theoretical language and approaches from other disciplines and applies them to what they see as a unique genre: the computer game. I discuss the ludologists a bit later, but Murray’s approach does borrow from other disciplines, namely literature; however, she seeks to remain in a tradition of artistic production, and her study begins with the two-thousand-plus years of literary tradition. Since my training is in literature, I must admit my bias here. And let’s face it: if Murray wrote about video games, her book probably would not have held the weight it does today.

In order to talk about a new genre, Murray defines the essential properties of digital environments. They are: procedural, participatory, spatial, and encyclopedic. The former two represent what is popularly known as “interactive,” while the latter two further nuance “immersive” (71). She spends much of the book defining and illustrating these essential properties of the computer in an effort to develop a poetics of cyberdrama, to learn what the characteristic pleasures of digital media and just what truths it suggests about our unique time (Murray 94).

Murray places her cyberdrama between the goal-driven maze and the open-ended rhizome, suggesting that users do not want to totally give up a authorial voice, but want to participate more in a narrative than just turning the pages of a book (134-35). This desire, seemingly born of our relationship with computers, Murray suggests, could provide us with opportunities to role-play in ways never before possible, giving users more agency in mini-dramas that can be rehearsals for life (144). In this way, Murray envisions the computer as the defining device of our time that holds the potential to express our unique truths and beauties, like Shakespeare’s soliloquies did for his (274). In this way, too, the artistic expressions that utilize the computer align themselves in an artistic tradition of storytelling:

In our ordinary lives, we turn to stories of every kind, again and again, to reflect our desires and sorrows with the heightened clarity of the imagination. We will bring these same expectations to digital narrative.

In trying to imagine Hamlet on the holodeck, then, I am not asking if it is possible to translate a particular Shakespeare play into another format. I am asking if can hope to capture in cyberdrama something as true to the human condition, and as beautifully expressed, as the life that Shakespeare captured on the Elizabethan stage. (Murray Hamlet 274)

For Murray, the computer represents the machine that can hold the media through which humanity can “confront the unanswerable questions of human existence” (280). This seems like one of the functions of art: a process which engages like tragedy, rather than one that offers an escape, like Quake. I’m not suggesting that both aren’t integral to defining the human condition, nor do I think is Murray. Yet, it seems that her vision of cyberdrama allows humans a place where they can engage reality, not escape from it. We have the TV to do that already. The computer, she continues in “Game-Story to Cyberdrama,” is redefining both stories and games by allowing

us to tell stories we could not tell before, to retell the age-old stories in new ways, to image ourselves as creatures of a parameterized world of multiple possibilities. to understand ourselves as authors of rule systems which drive behavior and shape our possibilities. (8)

• critical, penetrating, challenging, engaging
• public: influential, inspiring, controversial
• historically positioned: technologically positioned/determined
• imaginative
• narrative
• mimetic: mirrors the human condition

I note that this definition seems not to address certain aspects of art that one might expect, like beauty, truth, pleasure, spectacle, emotion, agon, and other criteria traditionally ascribed to art. These omissions are, perhaps, problematic as several critics have observed in our course readings. More on that later. This course only cursorily touches aesthetics, so in order to progress, some criteria needed to be agreed upon.

We further limited our study’s purview to the production and presentation of art for which a computer is integral. This is our definition of “technology” in this context. This class explored the current, and incunabular, connections between art and the computer. Taking a cue from Janet Murray’s Hamlet on the Holodeck, we are interested in stories that cannot be told in other ways (9), ones for which the conventions are still evolving (28), ones which need a convergence of formats (64), ones that suggest play as an integral aspect of the aesthetic (61), and ones that push the boundaries beyond the linear in order to express parallel possibilities (37).

Carolyn Handler Miller’s Digital Storytelling addresses some of the practical concerns that storytellers working with computers must face. Miller stresses that digital storytellers should use both the strengths of the format and their individual strengths in a collaborative, interdisciplinary effort when authoring digital media (33, 46). She introduces several terms in an attempt to characterize the unique aspects of computers:

• Interactivity — Miller suggests that interactivity is what makes digital entertainment unique: users are directly involved. She calls interactivity an “active relationship” between the “user and the content” (56). This idea, she states, puts more responsibility on the creators to provide a rich and stimulating environment, and also requires them to give up some of the control traditionally ascribed to the author (58, 61).
• Convergence — A coming together of various media in a single package (40). She gives four elements necessary for convergence: (1) a communications delivery system, such as broadband or wireless; (2) hardware, such as a computer or wireless device; (3) digitized content, such as video or text; and (4) computerized technology with which to interact with the content (41). The content should use the medium best suited for it, like an iPod for listening to MP3s (46).
• Adaptation — Properties of one medium used in another in order to get more milage out of good material (47). For example, a video game made from a movie. This also suggests that media interconnect and influence each other in various ways: ways that the computer can take advantage of.
• Immersion — Miller posits that immersion envelops users in a rich, simulated environment that should stimulate all of the senses (58).
• Edutainment — An attempt to derive effective pedagogy through that which most engages and engrosses (Miller 136). “The challenge,” states Miller, “is to find the right balance between the serious stuff and the fun stuff — between the medicine and the sugar” (137).

Miller’s book, though not theoretically rigorous, provides a strong foundation for engaging in the consideration and authoring of hypermedia. Though, as her title suggests, her approach is in the tradition of storytelling: an epistemology of narrative. She emphasizes collaboration in an increasingly interdisciplinary field, suggesting that team members should use their individual strengths toward the efficacious completion of evermore complex projects. Miller introduces in popular lay terms the ongoing debate between narrative and play and the ambiguity between these practices that the computer presents.

Part two of this overview will address the key concepts from probably the most influential theorist of narrativism: Janet Murray.

Eskelinen, the most outspoken and intractable of the group, suggests that most “dominant user function” in video games is not interpretative, but configurative. He begins to explain: “in art we might have to configure in order to interpret, whereas in games, we have to interpret to be able to configure, [ . . . ] consequently, gaming is seen here as a configurative practice, and the gaming situation as a combination of ends, means, rules, equipment, and manipulative action” (38). Moulthrop nuances this idea a bit more by explaining that configuration allows a user to influence a virtual environment in such a way as to change it in potentially significant ways (60). His definition suggests that the more user understand the game system, the more she is able to manipulate the world in ways she desires. Moulthrop pushes this configurative practice further by suggesting that this type of play does not only help within the gaming environment, but could have implications on the “conditions of other rule-systems such as work and citizenship” which may impact a player’s ability to “resist immersion” (66).

Moulthrop’s theory seems similar to de Certeau’s notion of tactic, i.e., a local resistance to the powers-that-be. This, too, reminds me of a hacker, or bricoleur, who takes technology and changes it suit her local interests, thus using the technology in such a way as to resist the original intentions of those that created it. Moulthrop sees the cultural context in which games are developed, encompassing the narratives that inform them. He suggests that “we might want to think beyond games in their most literal sense, or rather to see them as elements of a larger process” (67). This cultural approach allows games and the technologies that drive them to become transparent: it opposes immersion and allows us to retain the critical capacities to oppose those powers that attempt to control, like government and commercial interests (Moulthrop 68).

Aarseth adds that if you want to understand a system, you have to understand how its parts work together (“Genre Trouble” 52). I’m reminded of my tenure as a system administrator of a Linux machine. Any new service, like a web server, mail server, or a wiki, would require me to download, configure, make, and install new software from source code. The configuration would take place before I made the binaries, which are the actual programs that run the service, like Apache. In order to configure the source code properly, it would have to be built for my particular hardware and software, and I would have to determine just what I wanted to software to do. After the software is configured to the computing environment, I could also tweak my “config” file, allowing even more control over the software. I think the major point is this: in order to get the software to run securely with the proper services, you would have to configure it properly. This entails anywhere from a cursory to an intimate knowledge of the language of configuration. The more I wanted my web server to do, for instance, the more familiar I have to be with the language of the web server. Put another way, this configuration is like knowing the rules of the world in a game: the more intimate one’s knowledge is, the better one will be able to play, yes, but also the better one might be able to manipulate and possible bend and break those rules. Here’s Moulthrop’s “possibility of opposition” (67).

Read with the notion of simulation in mind, Moulthrop’s piece takes on a more poignant weight. Aarseth, in his essay “Genre Trouble: Narrativism and the Art of Simulation,” suggests that the best way to understand the configuration of a system is by making a simulation; he states that “all computer games contain simulation” (52). Indeed, maybe this speaks to their popularity and the ever-increasing development of them toward realism. Aarseth recognizes its importance in any theories involving games: “It is time to recognize simulation and the need to simulate as a major new hermeneutic discourse mode, coinciding with the rise of computer technology, and with roots in games and playing (53).

If Aarseth positions simulation as so important in both the conception and realization of computer games, more consideration should be given to the ethics centered around simulation, at least according to Simon Penny in “representation, enaction, and the Ethics of Simulation.” Penny opines quite persuasively that simulation is a powerful tool in training the body, and computer simulated environments are very good at this (74). Penny argues that simulations have a direct and important roles in preparing the body for rapid response, beyond thought (82). Through repetitive drilling of the body in a simulation and exposure to the likely results of actions, both soldiers’ and pilots’ bodies are more likely to translate those actions in the real world during times of crisis. While pictures and many games metaphorize human action, Penny sees immersive video game simulations at that much closer to the literal. Therefore, “whatever the power of images, interactive media is more” (80). With the obvious real-world ethical implications, Penny also sees that the design of these simulations limits choice, action, and behavior. The user of these systems — one that that has been trained — become determined by them; i.e., their actions are limited by their newly acquired instinctual response toward a moment of crisis.

What, then does this do for configuration? Moulthrop would argue that these simulated environments are to persuasive, perhaps limiting or eliminating that “possibility of opposition” by creating a too transparent environment. It seems that configuration only remains possible when the play is understood as play — when one’s head can tell the difference between reality and game. Are we back to Murray’s “thinking woman”?

Now, all they need is programming better then what’s currently available. I mean, would you really want to smell your favorite sit-com?

I introduced Murray to the audience:

Good evening. On behalf of the Artists & Lecturers Committee, the Arts Festival Committee, the Office of Student Life, and the Division of Humanities, I would like to thank everyone for attending the second night of our annual Arts Festival. For those who don’t already know, I’m Dr. Jerry Lucas, and it is my privilege to introduce one of the most important and well known scholars in the field of new media today. Janet H. Murray’s work includes a recent introduction to the New Media Reader, directing Georgia Tech’s Masters Degree Program in Information Design and Technology and Ph.D. in Digital Media, and contributing to Tech’s GVU Center. But she is best known for her 1997 work Hamlet on the Holodeck, in which she synthesizes the issues surrounding new media into an accessible and entertaining format, for both scholars in the field and a popular audience.

Further distinguishing Janet Murray’s work is its concern about the impact of computers on the future of literature. Hamlet on the Holodeck speculates about the future of narrative fiction as our microprocessing technologies become more sophisticated and increasingly ubiquitous. She argues that our narrative demands have outgrown traditional literary forms, and she sees the computer as the natural medium to facilitate the convergence of various media — like film, video games, music, and the novel — into an immersive literary experience. Her work asks “How can we make this powerful new medium for multiform narrative as expressive of the writer’s voice as is the printed page?” She attempts to provide some answers by using current trends to theorize the creation of a cyberbard who will do for computer-based narrative what Homer did for epic poetry, what Shakespeare did for the theatre, and what James Joyce did for the novel.

Her work is a mixture of literary criticism, film theory, gaming trends, interactive design, and technoculture. Her thoughtful approach to these complex topics remains critical, yet accessible and optimistic. She states that we are drawn to new media just like we are drawn to art “because we need to understand the world and our place in it.” That the computer “is first and foremost a representational medium, a means for modeling the world that adds its own potent properties to the traditional media it has assimilated so quickly. [. . .] We should hasten to place this new compositional tool as firmly as possible in the hands of the storytellers.” It’s observations like this that keep me returning to her work and why she remains at the forefront of such an important field. Please join me in welcoming Janet H. Murray.

Thanks, again, to those who made it possible for me to bring such a wonderful scholar and person to Macon State College.

At times knowledge brings merely an enlightened impotence or paralysis. One may know exactly what to do but lack the wherewithal to act. (Winner “Mythinformation” 594)

Janet H. Murray, in her work Hamlet on the Holodeck, discusses the future of narrative within digital environments, and she suggests the importance of “author” to narrative in particular and cyberspace in general:

We like to know that there is a ruling power in control of an imaginary universe, and it makes us uncomfortable if the author seems to abdicate that role. (Murray 275)

Granted, we don’t want that “author,” or controlling presence, in everything we do. One of the reasons the internet, and much built around the computer, is so appealing is the feeling of decenteredness: the idea that no one voice dominates where anyone can have a presence. Getting this voice is becoming increasingly easier as software becomes more powerful and less technical. The more voices being heard means the less that one dominates and controls the conversation, the flow of ideas, and the developing cyberworld.

However, this decenteredness also contributes to our anxieties. In not having a central authority to turn to for comfort and safety, the Internet can often leave us in a vertiginous state of flux: too many voices often leads to inaction. The “old” media (re)assures us by its authority: i.e., we know when a book is finished, how to watch a movie, and what to expect of a poem. Yet, these media — patterns, orders, conventions, structures — were the best at delivering the meaning and asking the questions when the are situated historically, but their usefulness is waning in the face of the digitality of new media. The authority of old forms is being questioned by the media of postmodernity: the computer.

However, as any critic of new media will tell you, the computer does not mean the instant death of the old ways. On the contrary, we remain nostalgic angels — to use a phrase from Johndan Johnson-Eilola — who long to fly toward a future of technological promise while our wings get caught in the cables of our past. We are not ready to give up our old media, nor should we be willing. However, as Murray points out in Hamlet on the Holodeck, we need to find a middle ground between the old authority and the new freedom (267).

I suggest that the same is true for education. I have doubts that our current educational system prepares our students to meet the challenges that new media presents in education. Instead of the “new order — an age of equality, justice, and emancipation” that the Internet promised for educators and students alike, Langdon Winner observes that these myths do not adequately account for the practical realities that any meaningful use of computers in education requires. Winner calls this faith in the utopian promise of computers “mythinformation: the almost religious conviction that a widespread adoption of computers and communications systems along with easy access to electronic information will automatically produce a better world for human living” (592).

Winner’s point is not lost on educators. With the proliferation of computers and networks increasingly replacing the analog tools of yesterday’s education — remember the chalkboard? the card catalog? — we have not changed our approach to education to accommodate these wonderful new tools. Now don’t get me wrong; I am no Luddite. I had a web site that contained rudimentary course information before many had even heard of the World Wide Web. I am an advocate of progress, but this progress must not only come in the form of new tools, but in how we work with and think about those tools.

Education, like all other ways of using computers, is in an incunabular state. That is, we have yet to develop conventions for the use of computers. We think they are neat. Administrators love to see them in our classrooms, students busily typing away, smiling as they fill their minds with the wonders of the Information Superhighway. Yet, as we all are by now well aware, just having the tools does not mean we have the desire or the knowledge to use them effectively. A two-year-old with a pen and paper can successfully scribble, but she needs guidance in order to begin to use those tools meaningfully.

Like all other colleges out there, our library system has adopted a series of online catalogs. The dead and long-since-buried card catalog has been replaced by those beige boxes that have improved our ability to do research tenfold. Yet, almost every time I go to use our library’s electronic resources, I need a refresher course. Progress comes at such a rapid pace that even someone as computer-savvy as I often feel overwhelmed — if only momentarily — when going to look up current articles in the MLA database. Did I say the “MLA database”? Forget about that: there are now databases that link to full-text articles so I don’t even have to get up to read the latest scholarly research on Beowulf or James Joyce. And with projects like the Perseus Digital Library, Project Gutenberg, the Voice of the Shuttle, the American Humanities Index, and Project Muse, I may never have to pick up another paper journal for the rest of my academic career. With all of this information available, surely students are at more of an advantage today than ever before.

Why, then, do my students’ blogs and wiki assignments all cite random and tenuous sites, usually because they felt lucky Googling, rather than taking advantage of the resources available through their campus library? Part of this has to do with getting paid. Many of these databases are expensive, and are therefore protected — or hid — behind barriers so only registered users have access. This makes it difficult for students to even get to these databases, much less use them. One cannot find an entry from the MLA database from Google. This pay-per-use system is indicative of the current trend to protect intellectual property rights, like the DMCA; this system is part of the reason that research is still relegated to those who have access under the aegis of institutionally deep pockets. It seems that information is still a closely guarded, exclusive club in most cases.

While the lawyers and copyright holders hammer out these issues, we are still stuck with the problem of computers in education. The way I see it: we want students to take advantage of these new tools toward an efficacious education, yet still allow them the freedom to acquire their own knowledge. It seems increasingly clear to me that our current educational system teaches students that knowledge is something that is passively absorbed by listening to a lecture, and maybe writing down a point or two — that education can be accomplished through a minimum of web browsing, cutting and pasting, and maybe regurgitating what Nelson calls the “official angle” about the subject on the exam (308). As Nelson points out, education is as much about indoctrination as it is about knowledge. That is, their ability to do what they are supposed to is perhaps more important than the subject at hand. This practice, Nelson opines, destroys a student’s motivation by making him “orient himself to the current topic” only by understanding the “official angle” (308). Nelson suggests that the human mind is born free, but education imprisons and destroys “intelligence, curiosity, enthusiasm, and intellectual initiative and self-confidence” (309). The implication here is that if students are given access to the resources they require and the proper encouragement, they will be able to learn on their own.

Nelson’s argument is, in itself, utopian and radical. Yet, that does not mean he doesn’t make sense. Like Murray, he seems to suggest that students need the appropriate mixture of directed guidance or motivation — that “authority” — and the freedom to explore knowledge for any angle that interests them: a “golden mean,” if you will. I have noticed that the most effective way of approaching this is through encouraged research and response; the former using the collaborative environment of the wiki, the latter the individual expression of the blog. A commitment to giving just enough guidance — like how to use the wiki and blog; how to use the college databases; how to cite research; selecting primary texts — to allow students to have the ability to pursue any aspect they want about Homer might be a strong approach to teaching literature successfully online.

Indeed, how can I make an online literature experience successful for students that have had all of the autonomy and agency trained out of them by their educational history? How do I help students embrace the power of the technology and at the same time helping them get over their anxieties about it: enough to cure their inaction, but not enough to stifle their own desire to learn? How do I avoid having to answer the same question several times a semester: “How do I post to the blog again, Dr. Lucas?” Are these things related? I think so.

More on this to follow.