Grand Text Auto

Over at Game/AI there’s a discussion among game AI developers about strategies for innovation, and the need for AI implementers and game designers to work much more closely together. Good stuff!

Because sometimes the scheme that works for baf’s guide is not enough: M.D. Dollahite offers IFMES (Interactive Fiction Metadata Element Set), derived from the Dublin Core Metadata Element Set, and invites comments on this proposal. The plan is to use this system to create a Mozilla-based IF organizer application, one that is already in development and sounds similar to the “iFiction” front-end that Andrew Hunter’s Zoom interpreter provides on the Mac. For compatibility with the Semantic Web and to foster the re-use of work, Dollahite has offered this proposal for an open metadata standard, rather than just making up something ad hoc to suit a particular program.

Christopher Strachey is rightly viewed as a pioneer of modern computing. He’s not usually, however, viewed as the creator of the first work of digital literature. Research toward my submission for DAC, however, has lead me to believe that he was — and that his initial digital literature project was also, quite probably, the first piece of digital art. I’d be quite interested to hear any thoughts (or refutations) from GTxA readers.

To begin with, however, I should explain that when I use the terms “digital literature” and “digital art” I mean something in particular by them.

Of course, a phrase like “digital literature” could refer to finger-oriented literature (fingers are “digits”) or numerically-displayed literature (numbers are “digits”) — but I mean “digital” in relation to computers, specifically as it appears in phrases such as “stored program digital computer.” I mean literary work that requires the digital computation performed by laptops, desktops, servers, cellphones, game consoles, interactive environments, or any of the other computers that surround us. I think that’s what most of us mean.