New Media Suggested Reading and Viewing

From Gerald R. Lucas

This collection of essays, articles, videos, and fiction explore the many facets of "new media". Use these suggestions as a basis for your investigation into these various topics that make up our current understanding of new media. This is an on-going project, so if you have suggestions for articles to include, please suggest them on the talk page or below.[a]

Anthologies

  • Gray, Chris Hables; Mentor, Steven; Figueroa-Sarriera, Heidi J., eds. (1995). The Cyborg Handbook. New York: Routledge. ISBN 0415908493.
  • Spiller, Neil, ed. (2002). Cyber Reader: Critical Writing for the Digital Era. Phaidon Press. ISBN 0714840718.
  • Wardrip-Fruin, Noah; Harrigan, Pat, eds. (2004). First Person: New Media as Story, Performance, and Game. Cambridge: MIT Press. ISBN 0262232324.
  • Wardrip-Fruin, Noah; Montfort, Nick, eds. (2003). The New Media Reader. Cambridge: The MIT Press. ISBN 0262232278.[b]

Defining New Media

  • Lucas, Gerald (Dec 23, 2013). "New Media". LitMUSE. Medium. Retrieved 2018-08-12. New media studies involve the digital technologies of human participation and communication, and the study of the social and cultural changes that these technologies precipitate. Includes presentation slides and audio.
  • Manovich, Lev. "New Media from Borges to HTML" (PDF). In Wardrip-Fruin; Montfort. NMR. p. 13–25. Retrieved 2018-08-11.
  • Murray, Janet H. "Inventing the Medium". In Wardrip-Fruin; Montfort. NMR. p. 3–11.
  • Spiller, Neil (2002). "Introduction". In Spiller. Cyber Reader. p. 6–19.

Fiction

  • Borges, Jorge Luis (1945). "The Aleph" (PDF). Sur. Translated by Di Giovanni, Norman Thomas. Buenos Aires.
  • — (1941). "The Garden of the Forking Paths". In Wardrip-Fruin; Montfort. NMR. Translated by Yates, Donald A. p. 29–34.
  • — (1998) [1941]. "The Library of Babel" (PDF). Collected Fictions. Translated by Hurley, Andrew. New York: Penguin. p. 112–118. ISBN 0670849707.
  • Di Filippo, Paul. "A Short Course in Art Appreciation". Babylon Sisters and Other Posthumans. Canton, OH: Prime Books. pp. 33–41.
  • Forster, E. M. (1909). "The Machine Stops". NCSA. Retrieved 2018-08-18. Paul Rajlich states: "Anybody who uses the Internet should read E. M. Forster's 'The Machine Stops'. It is a chilling, short story masterpiece about the role of technology in our lives. Written in 1909, it's as relevant today as the day it was published."
  • Liu, Ken (October 2001). "Staying Behind". Clarkesworld. Issue 61. Retrieved 2018-08-18. Audio version available.
  • Stephenson, Neal (1992). Snow Crash. New York: Bantam Books. ISBN 0553562614.
  • Sterling, Bruce (1999). "Deep Eddy". A Good Old-fashioned Future. New York: Spectra. pp. 141–187. In this techno-allegory, spec-wearing Eddy travels to Europe on a quest for love and enlightenment.
  • — (1999). "Maneki Neko". A Good Old-fashioned Future. pp. 1–19. A god-like, network panopticon guides the action in this near-future tale, but all people are not happy with its beneficence.

Foundational and Transitional Thinking

  • Babbage, Charles (1864). "Of the Analytical Engine". Passages from the Life of a Philosopher. London: Longman, Roberts, & Green. p. 112–141.
  • Benjamin, Walter (1936). The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction. Translated by Zohn, Harry.
  • Bush, Vannevar (July 1945). "As We May Think". The Atlantic. Retrieved 2018-08-12. A seminal essay that calls for a new way of organizing, accessing, and sharing an ever-increasing knowledge base. Bush's answer is the Memex.
  • Dixon, Chris (March 2017). "How Aristotle Created the Computer". The Atlantic. Retrieved 2018-08-12.
  • Englebart, Douglas (1962). "Augmenting Human Intellect: A Conceptual Framework". In Wardrip-Fruin; Montfort. NMR. p. 93–108.
  • Licklider, J.C.R. (March 1960). "Man-Computer Symbiosis". In Wardrip-Fruin; Montfort. NMR. p. 73–82.
  • McLuhan, Marshall (1964). Understanding Media: the Extensions of Man. New York: Routledge. ISBN 0415253977. Very important work. In particular, see "The Medium Is the Message" (chapter 2, reprinted in NMR) and "The Gadget Lover: Narcissus as Narcosis" (chapter 4, reprinted in Spiller).
  • Merchant, Brian (September 15, 2017). "The Father of Mobile Computing Is Not Impressed". Fast Company. Medium. Retrieved 2018-08-13. He influenced Jobs and dreamed up a digital future designed for learning and thinking. Fifty years on, Alan Kay is still waiting for his dream to come true. An interview with Alan Kay.
  • Mims, Christopher (November 26, 2017). "The Six Laws of Technology Everyone Should Know". The Wall Street Journal. Tech. Retrieved 2018-08-13. Professor who summarized the impact of technology on society 30 years ago seems prescient now, in the age of smartphones and social media.
  • Turing, Alan (1950). "Computing Machinery and Intelligence". In Wardrip-Fruin; Montfort. NMR (PDF). p. 49–64.
  • Wiener, Norbert (1954). "Men, Machines, and the World About". In Wardrip-Fruin; Montfort. NMR (PDF). p. 65–72 ref=harv.

Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, and Advanced Computing

Being Digital: Revolution and Democracy

  • Andrew-Gee, Eric (January 26, 1018). "Your Smartphone Is Making You Stupid, Antisocial, and Unhealthy. So Why Can't You Put It Down?". Globe and Mail. Digital Distraction. Retrieved 2018-08-13. Eric Andrew-Gee explores the growing body of scientific evidence that digital distraction is damaging our minds.
  • Barbrook, Richard; Cameron, Andy (1995). "The Californian Ideology". Imaginary Futures. Retrieved 2018-08-13.
  • Baudrillard, Jean (1972). "Requiem for the Media". In Wardrip-Fruin; Montfort. NMR (PDF). p. 277–288. A reaction to Enzensberger’s essay below.
  • Boal, Augusto (1974). "Theatre of the Oppressed". In Wardrip-Fruin; Montfort. NMR. p. 339–352.
  • Enzensberger, Hans Magnus (1970). "Constituents of a Theory of the Media". In Wardrip-Fruin; Montfort. NMR. p. 259–275.
  • Leonard, Andrew (August 16, 2018). "Meet the Man With a Radical Plan for Blockchain Voting". Wired. Backchannel. Retrieved 2018-08-18. A new movement says that crypto-voting can purify democracy—and eventually eliminate the need for governments altogether.
  • Negroponte, Nicholas (1996). Being Digital. New York: Vintage. ISBN 0679762906.
  • Nelson, Ted (1974). "Computer Lib / Dream Machines". In Wardrip-Fruin; Montfort. NMR.

Cyberdrama & Ludology

  • Aarseth, Espen (2004). "Genre Trouble: Narrativism and the Art of Simulation". In Wardrip-Fruin; Harrigan. First Person. p. 45–55. "Where is the text in chess?" asks Espen Aarseth. Rules, play, and semiosis are the (un)common ground between games and stories in "interactive narrativism" and the art of simulation.
  • Avent, Ryan (May 2017). "Escape to Another World". The Economist. Work. Retrieved 2018-08-14. As video games get better and job prospects worse, more young men are dropping out of the job market to spend their time in an alternate reality.
  • Bishop, Bryan (January 26, 2018). "I Just Saw the First Movie from Oculus, and It Is the Future". The Verge. Tech. Retrieved 2018-08-14. Hiding from robots while looking like a cyborg.
  • Jenkins, Henry (2004). "Game Design as Narrative Architecture". In Wardrip-Fruin; Harrigan. First Person. p. 118–130. Henry Jenkins uses narrative space to distinguish between different tale-ends.
  • Moulthrop, Stuart (2004). "From Work to Play". In Wardrip-Fruin; Harrigan. First Person. p. 56–70. Stuart Moulthrop (re)mediates the interpretation (narrativists) vs. configuration (ludologists) debate by going macropolitical.
  • Murray, Janet H. (1997). Hamlet on the Holodeck. New York: Simon & Schuster. ISBN 0684827239. A seminal work theorizing the cyberbard who can bring to bear yet-known talents in crafting the digital expression that will define our time.
  • Reagan, Andrew (July 6, 2016). "Data Mining Reveals the Six Basic Emotional Arcs of Storytelling". MIT Technology Review. Retrieved 2018-08-14. Scientists at the Computational Story Laboratory have analyzed novels to identify the building blocks of all stories.

Cyberspace, VR/RL, Augmented Reality

  • Alter, Alexandra. "Is This Man Cheating on His Wife?". Wall Street Journal. Technology. Retrieved 2018-08-15. Alexandra Alter on the toll one man's virtual marriage is taking on his real one and what researchers are discovering about the surprising power of synthetic identity.
  • Barlow, John Perry (February 8, 1996). "A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace". Electronic Frontier Foundation. Retrieved 2018-08-14. We will create a civilization of the Mind in Cyberspace. May it be more humane and fair than the world your governments have made before.
  • — (April 30, 2015) [1990]. "Virtual Reality and the Pioneers of Cyberspace". Wired. Backchannel. Retrieved 2018-08-14.
  • Berners-Lee, Tim (March 11, 2014). "On the 25th Anniversary of the Web". Official Google Blog. Retrieved 2018-08-14. The web has generated trillions of dollars of economic value, transformed education and healthcare and activated many new movements for democracy around the world. And we’re just getting started.; Commentary: Finley, Klint (March 12, 2014). "Inventor of the Web Is Right: We Need an Internet Bill of Rights". Wired. Retrieved 2018-08-14.
  • Dibbell, Julian (1998). "A Rape in Cyberspace". My Tiny Life: Crime and Passion in a Virtual World. New York: Owl. p. 11–30. ISBN 0805036261. How an evil clown, a Haitian trickster spirit, two wizards, and a cast of dozens turned a database into a society. Dibbell's classic article about LambdaMOO.
  • Evans, Claire L. (July 20, 2018). "A Mansion Filled With Hidden Worlds: When the Internet Was Young". Undark. Books. Retrieved 2018-08-15. Before the emergence of Warcraft, and the PlayStation, Pavel Curtis created LambdaMOO. Players used text, not images, and imaginations ran wild.
  • Gefter, Amanda (April 21, 2016). "The Evolutionary Argument Against Reality". Quanta. Retrieved 2018-08-15. The cognitive scientist Donald Hoffman uses evolutionary game theory to show that our perceptions of an independent reality must be illusions.
  • Gross, Daniel A. (March 10, 2016). "When You Listen to Music, You're Never Alone". Nautilus. Retrieved 2018-08-15. Technology hasn't diminished the social quality of listening to music.
  • Jamison, Leslie (December 2017). "The Digital Ruins of a Forgotten Future". The Atlantic. Technology. Retrieved 2018-08-15. Second Life was supposed to be the future of the internet, but then Facebook came along. Yet many people still spend hours each day inhabiting this virtual realm. Their stories—and the world they’ve built—illuminate the promise and limitations of online life.
  • Kelly, Kevin (April 2016). "The Untold Story of Magic Leap, the World's Most Secretive Startup". Wired. Retrieved 2018-08-15. The technology forces you to be present — in a way flatscreens do not — so that you gain authentic experiences, as authentic as in real life. People remember VR experiences not as a memory of something they saw but as something that happened to them.
  • Turkle, Sherry (1994). "Constructions and Reconstructions of Self in VR". In Spiller. Cyber Reader. p. 208–214.

Cyborg(ology), Transhumanism, Posthumanism

Digital Humanities

  • Kirschenbaum, Matthew G. (2010). "What Is Digital Humanities and What's It Doing in English Departments?" (PDF). ADE Bulletin (150). Retrieved 2018-08-22. [DH] harbors networks of people who have been working together, sharing research, arguing, competing, and collaborating for many years.... a culture that values collaboration, openness, nonhierarchical relations, and agility.
  • Lucas, Gerald (September 3, 2013). "Defining Digital Humanities". Digital Humanities. Medium. Retrieved 2018-08-19. DH stands at the intersection of art and science; it makes technology explicit in our understanding and interpretation of culture. DH makes clear that the humanities and technology are inseparable.
  • Presner, Todd; Schnapp, Jeffrey; Lunenfeld, Peter (June 22, 2009). "The Digital Humanities Manifesto" (PDF). Todd Presner. 2.0. Retrieved 2018-08-22.

HCI, Information Architecture, Hypertext, and the (e)Book

How does the digital influence the way we think? Or, is the medium truly the message?

  • Coover, Robert (1992). "The End of Books". In Wardrip-Fruin; Montfort. NMR. p. 705–709.
  • Harris, Tristan (May 18, 2016). "How Technology is Hijacking Your Mind — from a Magician and Google Design Ethicist". Thrive Global. Medium. Retrieved 2018-08-16. When using technology, we often focus optimistically on all the things it does for us. But I want to show you where it might do the opposite.
  • Lucas, Gerald R. (Fall 2011). "Norman Mailer and the Novel 2.0" (PDF). The Mailer Review. 5 (1): 248–263. Retrieved 2019-01-06.
  • Moulthrop, Stuart (1991). "You Say You Want a Revolution? Hypertext and the Laws of Media". In Wardrip-Fruin; Montfort. NMR. p. 691–704.
  • Rosenberg, Scott (April 11, 2017). "How Google Book Search Got Lost". Wired. Backchannel. Retrieved 2018-08-16.
  • Winner, Langdon (1986). "Mythinformation". In Wardrip-Fruin; Montfort. NMR. p. 587–598.

Open Source, Free, and Proprietary Software

Software and code determines how we work and play.

Participatory Culture & IP

Issues in open, free, and proprietary culture and its creation and consumption.

Privacy and Security

The Future & the Singularity

Social / Cultural / Educational Media

Notes

  1. I try to link all sources if they are available online, even if the reference points to a book.
  2. NMR refers to Wardrip-Fruin and Montfort. If an online version is available, I will supply the direct link. Other references are linked directly.

References