Reading 11

Another change of tack, partly looking back intensively where we have been but also looking forward to the sorts of methods, questions, and problems that the way we have tried to approach networks, media, practice, and theory, lead toward.

Galloway, Alexander R. Protocol: How Control Exists after Decentralization. The MIT Press, 2006. Print. (Extract from Introduction, PDF)

Gitelman, Lisa. Always Already New: Media, History, and the Data of Culture. Cambridge, Mass.; London: The MIT Press, 2008. Print. (Extract from the Introduction, PDF)

Reading 10

The big Lev Manovich: Manovich, Lev. “Database as Symbolic Form”. Database Aesthetics: Art in the Age of Information Overflow. Vesna, Victoria, ed. Minneapolis: University Of Minnesota Press, 2007. Print. 39-60. (pdf)

and

Seaman, Bill. “Recombinant Poetics and Related Database Aesthetics”. Database Aesthetics: Art in the Age of Information Overflow. Vesna, Victoria, ed. Minneapolis: University Of Minnesota Press, 2007. Print. 121-140. (PDF)

Reading 09

A continuing foray into the shapes of networks, particularly the sorts of shapes relevant to the internet. This is about power law distributions and small world networks. Which is a) why the internet has a different relation to size than the ordinary physical world, and b) why when you say something about someone else it is pretty simple for them to know about it.

“The 80/30 Rule”. Barabási, Albert-László. Linked: The New Science of Networks. Cambridge (MA): Perseus, 2002. Print. (extract, PDF)

Anderson, Chris. “The Long Tail.” Wired. N.p., Oct. 2004. Web. 23 Aug. 2013. (PDF, and Web)

Reading 08

Now we move to thinking about what sort of network the Web and Internet might be.

Watts, Duncan J. Six Degrees: The Science of a Connected Age. London: Vintage, 2003. Print. (Extract – PDF)

Barabási, Albert-László. Linked: The New Science of Networks. Cambridge (MA): Perseus, 2002. Print. (Extract, PDF)

Reading 07

Apologies, I had thought these readings were online before I went to London for a conference. (Ah, they were but there was a tag problem so looks like they didn’t appear under the reading heading. So you might have found them, you might not have. Treat the Shields addition below as very useful and important….)

But they weren’t, so here they are. The first two, which are from the same book, are a poor quality PDF scan, apologies for that. The third, from Shields, is not about digital media (it’s from a book that is about what we would call ‘creative nonfiction’) but what he writes about collage and nonfiction and story is very useful in relation to the broader conversations that have been happening around story, linearity and so on. The Shield’s book has been very influential, and note that it is an essay, but not as we usually think of an essay, and is also a demonstration of how you can write critically (making an evidence based argument) outside of the very conservative form of the ‘traditional’ essay – a form that is poor for thought, and good for proving what you already know (which I would have thought is the opposite of research, and learning).

Key Readings

Murphie, Andrew, and John Potts. Culture and Technology. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003. Print. ‘Theoretical Frameworks’ extract (PDF)

Shields, David. Reality Hunger: A Manifesto. New York: Vintage, 2011. Print. “Collage” extract, (PDF)

Secondary Reading

Murphie, Andrew, and John Potts. Culture and Technology. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003. Print. ‘Introduction’ extract (PDF)

Reading 07

We’ve looked at some earlier history, then the implications of hypertext, and partly based on the things happening in class and the blogs, I think it is useful to read a general survey about technology and culture….

Extracts from Murphie, Andrew, and John Potts. Culture and Technology. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003. Print.

(one, and two, both PDFs)

Reading 06

We are continuing for a bit on the hypertext, but shifting from the writing side to some introductory material on its implications for narrative, and readers. While this reading is about hypertext, the issues described here pretty much have relevance for all multilinear (nonlinear) media.

They are two extracts from:

Douglas, J. Yellowlees. The End of Books — Or Books Without End?: Reading Interactive Narratives. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2000.


(
First reading, and the second reading)

Reading 05

So we’ve looked at some prehistory, now the theoretical work around the first big mutlilinear shapeshifter, hypertext. Why hypertext?

It is about story and text and we already know a lot about that. It uses a nice set of post-something theories that are relevant to media, communication, cinema, radio studies. It has, theoretically, done an outstanding job of thinking about multilinearity, form, readers, and writing.

So:

Key
Extracts from: Landow, George P. Hypertext 3.0: Critical Theory and New Media in an Era of Globalization. Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 2006. Print. (low rez PDF)

Extra
Extract from: Bolter, Jay David. Writing Space: The Computer, Hypertext, and the History of Writing. Hillsdale (N.J.): Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1991. Print. (low rez PDF)

Reading 04

Now we turn towards the pre-history of the World Wide Web, with maverick genius Ted Nelson’s early self published work on hypertext (when Tim Berners-Lee wrote the first protocol for the Web he was familiar with some of Nelson’s ideas), the even earlier and very famous “As We May Think” from Vannevar Bush, which is of interest not so much for all the predictions but for thinking about a machine that lets connections to be made between media things, and then the much more recent, populist, writing of David Weinberger who outlines some simple ways to think about the Web and how it has inverted what there was before. The Weinberger extract is long, but not difficult, but I’d read the other two first as these have both directly influenced the vision of those who first built the things that the Web is, and relies upon.

Extract from: Nelson, Theodor Holm. Literary Machines 91.1: The Report On, and Of, Project Xanadu Concerning Word Processing, Electronic Publishing, Hypertext, Thinkertoys, Tomorrow’s Intellectual Revolution, And Certain Other Topics Including Knowledge, Education and Freedom. Sausalito: Mindful Press, 1992. Print. (PDF)

Bush, Vannevar. “As We May Think.” The Atlantic July 1945. The Atlantic. Web. 19 July 2013. (PDF)

Extracts from: Weinberger, David. Small Pieces Loosely Joined: A Unified Theory of the Web. New York: Perseus Books, 2002. Print. (PDF)

Reading 03

Another vanity moment for Adrian Miles:

  1. Miles, Adrian. “Network Literacy: The New Path to Knowledge.” Screen Education Autumn.45 (2007): 24–30. (pdf)
  2. “Chris Argyris: Theories of Action, Double-Loop Learning and Organizational Learning.” http://infed.org/mobi/chris-argyris-theories-of-action-double-loop-learning-and-organizational-learning/. N.p., n.d. Web. 18 July 2013. (pdf)
  3. Graham, Paul. “The Age of the Essay.” Paul Graham. http://www.paulgraham.com/essay.html N.p., Sept. 2004. Web. 11 Aug. 2013.(pdf)