The Computer as Medium (Learning in Doing: Social, Cognitive and Computational Perspectives)

✍ Scribed by Peter Bxgh Andersen (editor), Berit Holmqvist (editor), Jens F. Jensen (editor)

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Year: 2007
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 504
• Series: Learning in Doing: Social, Cognitive and Computational Perspectives
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

Computers are developing into a powerful medium integrating film, pictures, text, and sound, and the use of computers for communication and information is rapidly expanding. The Computer as Medium brings insights from art, literature, and theater to bear on computers and discusses the communicative and organizational nature of computer networks within a historical perspective. The book consists of three parts: The first part characterizes the semiotic nature of computers and discusses semiotic approaches to programming and interface design. The second section discusses narrative and aesthetic issues of interactive fiction, information systems, and hypertext. The final part contains papers on the cultural, organizational, and historical impact of computers.

✦ Table of Contents

Cover......Page 1
Frontmatter......Page 2
Contents......Page 6
Series foreword......Page 8
Preface......Page 10
Contributors......Page 14
Part I - Computer-based signs......Page 16
Introduction......Page 18
1 - A semiotic approach to programming......Page 25
2 - Structuralism, computation, and cognition: The contribution of glossematics......Page 77
3 - The shortest way between two points is a good idea: Signs, Peirce, and theorematic machines......Page 101
4 - Logic grammar and the triadic sign relation......Page 113
5 - Meaning and the machine: Toward a semiotics of interaction......Page 137
Part II - The rhetoric of interactive media......Page 150
Introduction......Page 152
6 - Narrative computer systems: The dialectics of emotion and formalism......Page 157
7 - Interactive fiction: Artificial intelligence as a mode of sign production......Page 178
8 - Plays, theaters, and the art of acting in the eighteenth century: A formal analysis......Page 195
9 - The meaning of plot and narrative......Page 218
10 - Face to interface......Page 231
11 - Drawing and programming......Page 245
12 - Hypermedia communication and academic discourse: Some speculations on a future genre......Page 272
Part III - Computers in context......Page 294
Introduction......Page 296
13 - Computer culture: The meaning of technology and the technology of meaning......Page 301
14 - One person, one computer: The social construction of the personal computer......Page 346
15 - Hi-tech network organizations as self-referential systems......Page 370
Comment: Disturbing communication......Page 393
16 - Dialogues in networks......Page 398
17 - Historical trends in computer and information technology......Page 431
Comment: The history of computer-based signs......Page 461
18 - A historical perspective on work practices and technology......Page 466
19 - Hypertext: From modem Utopia to post-modem dystopia?......Page 486
Index......Page 500