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The New Media Reader
A sourcebook of historical written texts, video documentation, and working programs that form the foundation of new media. 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, 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.
840 pages, Hardcover
First published February 14, 2003
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
November 15, 2021
A mind-expanding journey through thinking; writing that has transformed our century and even more that has yet to. If you care about the impact of computation on our lives, our media, and our minds, this book is a must read (or at the very least, a must-skim).
January 10, 2008
I read most of these readings as part of a multimedia class. Some were more readable than others... I really enjoyed Borge's Garden of Forking Paths and Bush's Memex, Computer Lib/Dream Machines, the Burroughs, and much more. McLuhan was hard to grasp or maybe just hard to agree with. The introductions to each reading do a great job of putting it into context. The reader in general has a broad range of selections that relate to new media in many different ways - a lot of the book is about theory, especially how socialist theory can be applied to new media. Other topics include feminism, the arts, gaming, and identity. For me, the reader put into context so many things I experienced as a kid. If, like me, you ever tried to swear at ELIZA or spent hours trying to figure out the exact two-word command you needed to type in order to get something done in Adventure, you will find some great insights here. Even Pac-Man is theorized. The 2004 edition is already out of date - some context about Wikipedia, social networking, Google Earth and such are lacking now. Coming to this book as a novice to media theory but with a somewhat geeky past, I filled in a lot of gaps in my knowledge.
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November 1, 2008this is full of essays and other works influential in the history and development of new media theory. awesome, interesting stuff, including the GNU manifesto, works by Borges, Engelbart, McLuhan, Baudrillard and Berners-Lee, to name a few. it comes with a CD that has lots of other important and interesting works like Doug Engelbart's demonstration of the mouse, early Atari and Apple II games, Hunt the Wumpus :-) and all kinds of early interactive essays, poems and stories.
I'm far from experiencing everything in this collection, but everything i *have* checked out is sweet.
I'm far from experiencing everything in this collection, but everything i *have* checked out is sweet.
April 2, 2008
Some very interesting essays and some not so much. A few essays were too esoteric and just plain boring, some were quite intriguing. I particularly liked reading the ideas of future computing from the mid-50's to early-60's. Surprisingly, they weren't too far off on a lot of things like relational databases, desktops, and personal computing.
December 6, 2015
This collection of essays shows us where new media came from. Understanding the thinking behind those who made technology possible helps us understand just how far we have come in such a short time. This was required reading, and most of the essays were interesting from a historical context, although an updated version to better connect the past with modern day examples would be nice.
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February 19, 2010This is an interesting all background/influence book for a history of new media.
December 18, 2015
this is a great nerds resource, especially if you are like me and at the juncture of art and tech, also a favourite book of mine just for its design and operation,
April 3, 2013
can be heavy going - it's more of a reference book really I think - but does give you a good sense of history - a history that a lot of people who work in new media either don't know about or ignore.
December 3, 2013
Many of the chapters are dense and difficult to understand.
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews