Hamlet on the Holodeck
The future of narrative in Cyberspace
Janet Murray
The Free Press (1997)
(p. 27) ... merging previously disparate technologies of communication and representation into a single medium.
The networked computer acts like a telephone in offering one-to-one real-time communication, like a television in broadcasting moving pictures, like an auditorium in bringing groups together for lectures and discussion, like a library in offering vast amounts of textual information for reference, like a museum in its ordered presentation of visual information, like a billboard, a radio, a gameboard and even like a manuscript in its revivalof scrolling text.
interactive
- procedural -- 'programmed media' ...
- participatory -- offering agency
immersive
- spatial -- explorable in (state) space
- encyclopedic -- with (partial) information closure
- narrative format
- procedural authorship
remember the holodeck
- prototypical storyteller
- formulaic characters
centralized storyteller vs decentralized (multi-agent) narrative system
video -- point to 'align with' MIT, Interacyive Cinema Group, Davenport
cyberdrama -- immersive pull (enchantment) vs (pull) of open-ended agency
imaginative engagement, juxtaposition, authored 'story?'
compelling entertainment -- force and originality we associate with original art ?
(C) Æliens 04/09/2009
You may not copy or print any of this material without explicit permission of the author or the publisher. In case of other copyright issues, contact the author.