Computers linked to networks have created the first broadly used systems that allow individuals to create, distribute, and receive audiovisual content with the same box. They challenge theorists of digital culture to develop interaction-based models to replace the more primitive models that allow only passive use.The Digital Dialectic is an interdisciplinary jam session about our visual and intellectual cultures as the computer recodes technologies, media, and art forms.
Unlike purely academic texts on new media, the book includes contributions by scholars, artists, and entrepreneurs, who combine theoretical investigations with hands-on analysis of the possibilities (and limitations) of new technology. The key concept is the digital dialectic: a method to ground the insights of theory in the constraints of practice. The essays move beyond journalistic reportage and hype into serious but accessible discussion of new technologies, new media, and new cultural forms.Contributors : Florian Brody, Carol Gigliotti, N. Katherine Hayles, Michael Heim, ErkkiHuhtamo, George P. Landow, Brenda Laurel, Peter Lunenfeld, Lev Manovich, William J. Mitchell, BobStein.
| Series Foreword | ||
| Acknowledgments | ||
| Contributors | ||
| Introduction | ||
| Screen Grabs: The Digital Dialectic and New Media Theory | ||
| I | The Real and the Ideal | |
| 1 | Unfinished Business | 6 |
| 2 | The Cyberspace Dialectic | 24 |
| 3 | The Ethical Life of the Digital Aesthetic | 46 |
| II | The Body and the Machine | |
| 4 | The Condition of Virtuality | 68 |
| 5 | From Cybernation to Interaction: A Contribution to an Archaeology of Interactivity | 96 |
| 6 | Replacing Place | 112 |
| III | The Medium and the Message | |
| 7 | The Medium Is the Memory | 130 |
| 8 | Hypertext as Collage-Writing | 150 |
| 9 | What Is Digital Cinema? | 172 |
| IV | The World and the Screen | |
| 10 | "We Could Be Better Ancestors Than This": Ethics and First Principles for the Art of the Digital Age | 198 |
| 11 | Musings on Amusements in America, or What I Did on My Summer Vacation | 214 |
| Notes | 236 | |
| Recommended Readings in New Media Theory | 270 | |
| Index | 284 |
Overview
Computers linked to networks have created the first broadly used systems that allow individuals to create, distribute, and receive audiovisual content with the same box. They challenge theorists of digital culture to develop interaction-based models to replace the more primitive models that allow only passive use.The Digital Dialectic is an interdisciplinary jam session about our visual and intellectual cultures as the computer recodes technologies, media, and art forms.
Unlike ...