New Media Suggested Reading and Viewing

See also: Writing on New Media

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.

 note: Many texts below are available to students, but they must request access.

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.

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.CS1 maint: Missing pipe (link)

Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, and Advanced Computing

• Chen, Sophia (March 15, 2017). "What if Quantum Computers Used Hard Drives Made of DNA?". Wired. Science. Retrieved 2018-08-13.
• Lewis-Kraus, Gideon (December 12, 2016). "The Great A.I. Awakening". The New York Times Magazine. Feature. Retrieved 2018-08-13. How Google used artificial intelligence to transform Google Translate, one of its more popular services — and how machine learning is poised to reinvent computing itself.
• McAfee, Andrew; Brynjolfsson, Erik (March 16, 2016). "Where Computers Defeat Humans, and Where They Can't". Op-Ed. Retrieved 2018-08-13.
• Miller, Carl (August 21, 2018). "God Is in the Machine". The Times Literary Supplement. Cultural Studies. Retrieved 2018-08-29. Truth is dead; there is only output.
• Parrish, Shane (September 1, 2016). "A.I. Expert Pedro Domingos on The Rise of The Machines". The Knowledge Project (Podcast). Farnam Street. Retrieved 2018-08-13. A good overview and introduction to artificial intelligence.
• Santens, Scott (March 16, 2016). "Deep Learning Is Going to Teach Us All the Lesson of Our Lives: Jobs Are for Machines". Basic Income. Medium. Retrieved 2018-08-13.
• Stolzoff, Simone (September 11, 2018). "Could AI allow you to live forever?". Quartz. Retrieved 2018-09-13.
• Vlahos, James (July 18, 2017). "A Son's Race to Give His Dying Father Immortality". Wired. Business. Retrieved 2018-10-01.
• Weinberger, David (April 18, 2017). "Our Machines Now Have Knowledge We'll Never Understand". Wired. Backchannel. Retrieved 2018-08-13.

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

• Boyle, James. "Enclosing the Genome: What the Squabbles over Genetic Patents Could Teach Us" (PDF). Duke University. Retrieved 2018-08-15. What can the debate over gene patents teach us about the structure of our discipline, about our pattern of inquiry?
• Carr, Nicholas (August 2008). "Is Google Making Us Stupid?". The Atlantic. Technology. What the Internet is doing to our brains.
• Dwoskin, Elizabeth (August 15, 2016). "Putting a Computer in Your Brain Is No Longer Science Fiction". The Washington Post. The Switch. Retrieved 2018-08-15.
• Haraway, Donna (1985). "A Cyborg Manifesto". In Wardrip-Fruin; Montfort. NMR. p. 515–5227. See also A Cyborg Manifesto, “A Cyborg Précis,” and “Haraway Revisited”.
• Gray, Chris Hables; Mentor, Steven; Figueroa-Sarriera, Heidi J. (1995). "Cyborgology: Constructing the Knowledge of Cybernetic Organisms". In Gray, Chris Hables. The Cyborg Handbook. p. 1–14.
• Nutt, Emily Ellis (October 13, 2016). "In a Medical First, Brain Implant Allows Man to Feel Again". The Washington Post. To Your Health. Retrieved 2018-08-16.
• Piore, Adam (May 26, 2016). "The Immortality Hype". Nautilus. Health. Retrieved 2018-08-16. Despite the hyperbole, private funding is changing the science of aging for the better.
• Wallace, Benjamin (August 23, 2016). "An MIT Scientist Claims That This Pill Is the Fountain of Youth". The Cut. New York. Retrieved 2018-08-16. Leonard Guarente is certain he’s succeeded where doctors (and quacks) before him have failed. His pill will either extend lives or tarnish his career.

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.

• Gates, Bill (February 3, 1976). "An Open Letter to Hobbyists". Blinken Lights. Retrieved 2018-08-16. As the majority of hobbyists must be aware, most of you steal your software.
• Moore, J.T.S. (Director) (2001). Revolution OS (video). Retrieved 2018-08-16.
• Perens, Bruce. "The Open Source Definition". Open Source. Retrieved 2018-08-16.
• Raymond, Eric S. (1999). The Cathedral and the Bazaar. O'Reilly Media. ISBN 1-565-92724-9.
• Stallman, Richard (1985). "The GNU Manifesto". GNU. Retrieved 2018-08-16.

Participatory Culture & IP

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

• Allingham, Philip V. (January 5, 2001). "Nineteenth-Century British and American Copyright Law". Victorian Web. Retrieved 2018-08-16.
• Boyle, James (2003). "The Second Enclosure Movement and the Construction of the Public Domain" (PDF). Duke University. Retrieved 2018-08-16.
• Jenkins, Henry (2006). Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide. New York: NYU Press. ISBN 0814743072. Introduction (PDF) available.
• — (March 6, 2010). Participatory Culture (Speech). TEDxNYED. TEDx Talks. Retrieved 2018-08-18.
• Lessig, Lawrence (March 2007). Laws that Choke Creativity (Speech). TED 2007. TED Talks. Retrieved 2018-08-18.
• — (2008). Remix: Making Art and Commerce Thrive in the Hybrid Economy. New York: Penguin. ISBN 1594201722.
• Love, Courtney (June 14, 2007). "Courtney Love Does the Math". Salon. Retrieved 2018-08-18. The controversial singer takes on record label profits, Napster and 'sucka VCs.'
• Pogue, David (December 17, 2009). "Should E-Books Be Protected?". The New York Times. Pogue's Posts. Retrieved 2018-08-18.
• Rostama, Guilda (June 2015). "Remix Culture and Amateur Creativity: A Copyright Dilemma". WIPO. Retrieved 2018-08-18. A brief glance at human history reveals that [remix] is in fact nothing new.
• Shirky, Clay (2012). Cognitive Surplus. East Rutherford: Penguin. ISBN 9781594202537.
• — (2009). Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations. New York: Penguin. ISBN 1440632243.

Privacy and Security

• Barbar, Benjamin R. (March 1992). "Jihad vs. McWorld". The Atlantic. Global. Retrieved 2018-08-18. The two axial principles of our age — tribalism and globalism — clash at every point except one: they may both be threatening to democracy.
• Brin, David (August 4, 2004). "Three cheers for the Surveillance Society!". Salon. Retrieved 2018-08-18. In the brave new future, Big Brother will watch our every move. But that's OK, because we’ll be watching him too.
• Crawford, Susan (March 16, 2016). "The Law Is Clear: the FBI Cannot Make Apple Rewrite Its OS". Wired. Backchannel. Retrieved 2018-08-18.
• Oliver, John (March 13, 2016). "Encryption". Last Week Tonight. HBO. YouTube. Retrieved 2018-08-18. John Oliver discusses the debate over privacy and security.
• Rheingold, Howard (October 1, 2018). "On quitting Facebook". Medium. Retrieved 2018-10-02. Rheingold discusses dataveillance and surveillance capitalism, and he explains why he is deleting Facebook.

The Future & the Singularity

• Chessen, Mark (March 16, 2017). "The Future Called: We're Disgusting and Barbaric". Wired. Backchanel. Retrieved 2018-08-18.
• Diamandis, Peter (February 28, 2017). "Within the Next 30 Years: Humanity Will Be Transformed by Exponential Growth". Medium. Singularity University. Retrieved 2018-08-18. Today’s extraordinary rate of exponential growth may do much more than just disrupt industries. It may actually give birth to a new species, reinventing humanity over the next 30 years.
• Friend, Tad (April 3, 2017). "Silicon Valley's Quest to Life Forever". The New Yorker. A Reporter at Large. Retrieved 2018-08-18. Can billions of dollars' worth of high-tech research succeed in making death optional?
• Humphries, Courtney (October 18, 2018). "Digital immortality: How your life's data means a version of you could live forever". MIT Technology Review. Rewriting Life. Retrieved 2018-10-26. Your family and friends will be able to interact with a digital 'you' that doles out advice—even when you're gone.
• Joy, Bill (April 1, 2000). "Why the Future Doesn't Need Us". Wired. Ideas. Retrieved 2018-08-18. Computer scientist Bill Joy works us that our current trajectory might obsolete humanity. An important essay on biotechnology, nanotechnology, and robotics. A counterpoint to the more optimistic views of thinkers like Ray Kurzweil and Hans Moravec.
• Kurzweil, Ray (1999). The Age of Spiritual Machines: When Computers Exceed Human Intelligence. New York: Viking Penguin. ISBN 0670882178. The primary political and philosophical issue of the next century will be the definition of who we are. One of the first proponents of the technological singularity.
• O'Connell, Mark (March 25, 2017). "'Your Animal Life Is over. Machine Life Has Begun.' The Road to Immortality". The Guardian. The Observer: Science. Retrieved 2018-08-18.
• Popper, Ben (October 22, 2012). "Rapture of the Nerds: Will the Singularity Turn Us into Gods or End the Human Race?". Verge. Retrieved 2018-08-18. A gathering of experts on artificial intelligence becomes a search for deeper meaning.
• Statt, Nick (March 27, 2017). "Elon Musk Launches Neuralink, a Venture to Merge the Human Brain with AI". Verge. Retrieved 2018-08-18.
• Sterling, Bruce (2003). Tomorrow Now: Envisioning the Next Fifty Years. New York: Random House.

Social / Cultural / Educational Media

• Allen, Christopher (October 13, 2004). "Tracing the Evolution of Social Software". Life with Alacrity. Retrieved 2018-08-18.
• Bowles, Nellie (October 26, 2018). "The Digital Gap Between Rich and Poor Kids Is Not What We Expected". The New York Times. Retrieved 2018-10-30. America's public schools are still promoting devices with screens — even offering digital-only preschools. The rich are banning screens from class altogether.
• Dixon, Chris (August 18, 2016). "Eleven Reasons To Be Excited About The Future of Technology". Medium. Retrieved 2018-08-18.
• Falck, Libby (March 16, 2017). "6 Tips on the Future of Learning from Actual Teenage Exponential Thinkers". Singularity U. Medium. Retrieved 2018-08-18.
• Lucas, Gerald (March 28, 2015). "The Liberal Arts Are Dead". The Synapse. Medium. Retrieved 2018-08-18. Should we educators just face the music and accept the fact higher ed is now just for job training?
• Sax, David (November 18, 2017). "Our Love Affair with Digital Is Over". The New York Times. Opinion. Retrieved 2018-08-18.
• LaPlante, Logan (February 12, 2013). Hackschooling Makes Me Happy (Speech). TEDx. University of Nevada: TEDx Talks. Retrieved 2018-08-18.