New Media Reader 443 - 514

From Literary Machines: Proposal for a Universal Electronic Publishing System and Archive

Ted H. Nelson proposes an idea for a hypermedia network called Xanadu. It is a network where anyone can produce their own documents and connect them with other public documents. What it sounds like he’s proposing is exactly like Wikipedia; a place where versions of documents can be changed by anyone as long as it’s public. There will be a version tracker so anyone will be able to see what it was before it was changed. This design is intended to work with any imaginable form of media. I think Nelson was a great visionary in that he was able to foresee all these problems with fragmented information on the Internet and also a way to propose a solution.


Will There Be Condominiums in Data Space?

Bill Viola is the first video artist to create “70 millimeter” video art; which means he was able to transcend the cheap aspects of video production. In this essay he writes about the poetic nature of video art. It was much easier to understand this article after seeing the documentary on him. I really like his introduction paragraph about memory, and how it’s a filter. Then goes on to say, “Life without editing, it seems, is just not that interesting”. This is to say, that as we go through our continuous existence, our memory is constantly editing our perception, but if we were to simply video tape our existence it would be incredibly boring.


The Endless Chain

Ben Bagdikian’s “The Endless Chain”, articulates the relationship of the dominance of new media over old media; video games are now bigger than movies, the web is reducing the amount of books sold, etc. Bagdikian notices a relationship between old and new media, and through press accounts he sees that old and new media systems seem to be integrating into a single system. He says that new media is no longer a marginal phenomenon, but I think he’s just looking at the emergence of certain new media becoming mainstream. I think there will always be new media in the margin, and only a few will actually become mainstream. He also discusses the influence that major media broadcasters have, and how they dominate the media industries.


Direct Manipulation: A Step Beyond Programming Languages

Shneiderman proposes a new type of communication, one that is not based on words, but a visual language. His justification is that words are just representations of things, so why not be able to carry around a new way to visually represent ideas. He describes a direct manipulation system that doesn’t rely on a programming language, but relates the computer to an ordinary action. The benefits of this is with the interface design; Photoshop being a good example of direct manipulation. I’m not quite sure I understand the importance of this article. He seems to simply be making a statement about good user interfaces, as opposed to the ones that don’t work.


Video Games and Computer Holding Power

Turkle, in her article, approaches computing and video games from a psychoanalytical standpoint. She noticed the major force video games had on our culture, and analyzed how the computer enables us to enact personae that are different from non-computing situations. Instead of the common conception that video games are a bad influence, her research discovered that they allowed people to take on different roles that are important to them psychologically. Computers influence the way we interact with the world and ourselves. I really like reading about this analysis, it gives video games more justification, and gives good insight into the psychoanalysis of it.