Expressive Processing – Digital Fictions, Computer Games, and Software Studies - Hardcover

Wardrip–fruin, Noah

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0262013436 ISBN 13: 9780262013437

Publisher: MIT Press, 2009

Synopsis

What matters in understanding digital media? Is looking at the external appearance and audience experience of software enough -- or should we look further? In Expressive Processing, Noah Wardrip-Fruin argues that understanding what goes on beneath the surface, the computational processes that make digital media function, is essential.

Wardrip-Fruin looks at "expressive processing" by examining specific works of digital media ranging from the simulated therapist Eliza to the complex city-planning game SimCity. Digital media, he contends, offer particularly intelligible examples of things we need to understand about software in general; if we understand, for instance, the capabilities and histories of artificial intelligence techniques in the context of a computer game, we can use that understanding to judge the use of similar techniques in such higher-stakes social contexts as surveillance.

About this title

About the Author

Noah Wardrip-Fruin is Professor in the Department of Computer Science at the University of California, Santa Cruz. He is the coeditor of four collections published by the MIT Press: with Nick Montfort, The New Media Reader (2003); with Pat Harrigan, First Person: New Media as Story, Performance, and Game (2004), Second Person: Role-Playing and Story in Games and Playable Media (2007), and Third Person: Authoring and Exploring Vast Narratives (2009).

Edition details

• Publisher: MIT Press
• Publication date: 2009
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0262013436
• ISBN 13: 9780262013437
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 480