Comments on: EP 1.1: Media Machines

By: Todd

Todd — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 14:05:38 +0000

“This is what modern computers (more lengthily called “stored-program electronic digital computers”) are designed to make possible…”

Is it? This makes it sound like you are defining the intention of the people responsible for designing modern computers. Is that what you are trying to do?

By: Todd

Todd — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 14:01:26 +0000

“and even collaborative authoring by large, dispersed groups (as with projects like Wikipedia)” – This may be nit-picky, but this example is not just talking about a computer on it’s own, but a network of machines. It doesn’t necessarily fit with your other examples.

By: Grand Text Auto » The Expressive Processing Review Discussion at HASTAC II

Grand Text Auto » The Expressive Processing Review Discussion at HASTAC II — Fri, 23 May 2008 17:07:45 +0000

[...] Q: Is this site still up and running? A: Yes. (Otherwise, how would I be typing this? But the person asking the question had trouble finding the chapters themselves. Here’s section 1.1.) [...]

By: noah

noah — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 21:25:19 +0000

Wow — it would be great if the outcomes of the blog-based review of this manuscript included finding a home for another manuscript!

By: noah

noah — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 21:23:42 +0000

Well, certainly what you say is hard to argue with, but it seems like it leads away from the main point of this section. These paragraphs are about what computational processes can do with media, not about social processes that make us want those things to happen. But if you think there’s an audience that will be distracted by wondering which I’m talking about, maybe I should clarify?

By: nick

nick — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 12:56:38 +0000

Indeed, Mark, Platform Studies does take this perspective, and Ian and I are seeking proposals for books in the series. Thanks for noting that.

By: mark

mark — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 02:13:07 +0000

Is the MIT Press book series on platform studies close enough to the sort of thing you're looking for? If so, they seem to be actively soliciting book proposals.

By: Matt Barton

Matt Barton — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 15:22:43 +0000

I agree very much with this paragraph. My friend Bill and I were recently trying to publish a book that examined how gaming hardware has influenced/determined the gaming industry over the decades, starting with the old mainframes and moving into more modern eras (Intellivision, NES, CP/M, etc.) However, the publishers we talked to insisted that people would only be interested in the games (i.e., the “output”) rather than the machines. We insisted that an understanding of the machinery was crucial, but, alas, our pleas fell on deaf ears.

By: Mark M.

Mark M. — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 05:45:48 +0000

This is why a computer can simulate a movie projector: showing a set of images frames in quick succession.

The fact that computers can simulate machines does not explain why computers do simulate the particular machines that they do (movie projectors, slide projectors, etc.).

The fact that computers can (meaning do) simulate those now is the result of a set of cultural, consumer, and producer priorities.

For me, in those sentences, the meaning of “can” slips from “potential purpose” to the “contemporary functionality” that we are familiar with.

Does that help?

By: noah

noah — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 05:10:24 +0000

It’s true — this probably isn’t the clearest way to use “ethnography.”

By: noah

noah — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 05:06:23 +0000

I’m not sure what you mean. Can you expand?

By: Mark Marino

Mark Marino — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 19:26:45 +0000

Also, would this be a good time to footnote some of the texts that do look at the insides? I know you are in your intro and probably don’t want to break stride here, but it could situate your book more.

By: Mark Marino

Mark Marino — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 19:24:57 +0000

Is “ethnography” the field or sociology or anthropology? Isn’t ethnography a methodology?

By: Mark Marino

Mark Marino — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 19:20:44 +0000

Hi, Noah, I’m finally getting to my par. by par. notes. Hopefully they won’t be too picky. I’m having trouble with the causality implied in this sentence.

By: Julius Valsson

Julius Valsson — Sat, 09 Feb 2008 00:06:34 +0000

“able to simulate the operations”

I would say: “..able to simulate and preform the operations “

By: noah

noah — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 16:20:10 +0000

What I’m trying to get at is the design of the system’s processes. Such designs are very much in dialogue with the physical machinery on which they are intended to operate. For example, the textual output of Tale-Spin/Mumble (coming up in a later chapter) is produced by a set of processes that had to be kept deliberately simple (more simple than other natural language generation work from the same lab at the same time) in order to co-exist with the world simulation on the available computer hardware. Or, to take a more contemporary example, the graphics-focused hardware design of consoles like the PS3 and Xbox 360 make a smaller amount of their processing power easily available for AI-style processes. But, on the other hand, I’m not trying to consider the physicality of how, say, the hardware storage operates. For a good example of that, see Matt Kirschenbaum’s new book (Mechanisms).

By: Barbara

Barbara — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 09:17:53 +0000

No – then computational machine is better.

I am not accustomed to your language. There are some commonalities between your concepts and mine – but maybe some differences too. I just ask to find out.

Regarding your understanding of process: is process for you the functioning of the abstract machine?
the functioning without any physicality?

If so and it seems so – you can leave your paragraph unchanged.

By: noah

noah — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 06:02:32 +0000

Ah — this is probably poor word choice on my part. In the last part of this paragraph it might be clearer if I said “the simulated machines that make digital media possible.” I don’t mean “computational machines” here in the sense of CPU, memory, etc. Rather, I mean something like “machines defined in terms of computation.” In this sense, the computational machines and the processes are the same thing.

By: Dennis G. Jerz

Dennis G. Jerz — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 23:09:28 +0000

Matt Kirshenbaum’s Mechanisms focuses on storage — which seems to be an important part of the computational process. (I’ve just started reading my copy.)

By: Barbara

Barbara — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 19:44:07 +0000

the last sentence is important – you point to the core issue of your book, but it is not clear for me; what do you mean?
the processing of the computational machine – but not the use of the machine? or do you mean both the use including the processing?

you talk about about “the actual processes that make digital media work” and than about “the computational machine”
process and machine is not the same.

By: Julius Valsson

Julius Valsson — Mon, 28 Jan 2008 19:54:20 +0000

Thanks Noah!

By: noah

noah — Mon, 28 Jan 2008 17:28:03 +0000

There's a little more discussion of this in the next section, including a mention of the potential numerousness, repetition, and complexity of computational processes carried out during the time of audience experience.

By: Julius Valsson

Julius Valsson — Mon, 28 Jan 2008 11:27:16 +0000

The real strength of a modern computer lies in its ability to repeat certain tasks with a great speed and to execute multiple tasks simultaneously.

By: Julius Valsson

Julius Valsson — Mon, 28 Jan 2008 01:36:23 +0000

lies in it’s ability to repeat certain tasks with a great speed and to execute multiple tasks simultanously.

By: Dega Lancaster

Dega Lancaster — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 22:22:54 +0000

I think it is amazing how alot of the games that would typically be a singular activity are now digitally interactive with the computer as well as people connected through the Internet. Previously, I read about literary moos which are interactive chat rooms created like the settings of a particular book. Chat room participants take on the roles of characters via living in the book. I would love to see this technology available to all combining games with learning… edutainment.

By: Announcement: An experiment in blog-based peer review » P2P Foundation

Announcement: An experiment in blog-based peer review » P2P Foundation — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 12:38:09 +0000

[...] – Noah Wardrip-Fruin’s introduction to the experiment – The Institute for the Future of the Book’s introduction – Coverage in The Chronicle of Higher Education – First section of Expressive Processing [...]

By: Lord Yo

Lord Yo — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 16:27:44 +0000

This paragraph touches upon the interesting and mindboggling topic of recursivity (systems within systems within systems…), also present within reproduction through DNA. Douglas Hofstadter wrote an excellent book about it (Gödel, Escher, Bach).

By: noah

noah — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 03:58:41 +0000

Yes, and I realize that this paragraph doesn’t yet point to the fact that — of course — combinations of these different forms, cutting across levels of technical complexity, can be quite effective.

By: Expressive Processing « Emily Short’s Interactive Fiction

Expressive Processing « Emily Short’s Interactive Fiction — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 01:13:56 +0000

[...] on Grand Text Auto, Noah Wardrip-Fruin is running an interesting experiment in peer-reviewing: a blog-based peer review. Visit the site to read portions of his text and comment on [...]

By: Networked_Performance — Expressive Processing: An Experiment in Blog-Based Peer Review

Tue, 22 Jan 2008 22:03:10 +0000

[...] Expressive Processing peer review experiment begins today (the first actual manuscript section is here) and will run for approximately ten weeks and 100 thousand words on Grand Text Auto, with a new [...]