Grand Text Auto

In 1974, the cover of Ted Nelson’s Computer Lib / Dream Machines proclaimed, “You can and must understand computers NOW.”

Nelson’s book (mentioned earlier in this chapter’s discussion of Expressive AI) wasn’t a response to the ubiquity of computers. In fact, Nelson’s book was published the year before the first personal computer kit — the Altair — became available. At that time the number of computers was tiny by comparison with our present moment. Those that existed were carefully tended by teams of professionals (what Nelson called the computer “priesthood”) and determining their uses was considered the province of specialists. It seemed a long way from everyday life. (more...)

My second meaning for “expressive processing” is rather different — and itself has two elements.

First, it encompasses the fact that the internal processes of digital media are designed artifacts, like buildings, transportation systems, or music players. As with other designed mechanisms, processes can be seen in terms of their efficiency, their aesthetics, their points of failure, or their (lack of) suitability for particular purposes. Their design can be typical, or unusual, for their era and context. The parts and their arrangement may express kinship with, and points of divergence from, design movements and schools of thought. They can be progressively redesigned, repurposed, or used as the foundation for new systems — by their original designers or others — all while retaining traces and characteristics from prior uses. (more...)

Figure 1.1: Authoring data and process.

A few paragraphs ago I said that the possibility of creating new simulated machines, of defining new computational behaviors, is the great opportunity that digital media offers. Seizing this opportunity requires a bit of a shift. It is common to think of the work of authoring, the work of creating media, as the work of writing text, composing images, arranging sound, and so on. But now one must think of authoring new processes as an important element of media creation. (more...)

A computer is a strange type of machine. While most machines are developed for particular purposes — washing machines, forklifts, movie projectors, typewriters — modern computers are designed specifically to be able to simulate the operations of many different types of machines, depending on the computer’s current instructions. (more...)

Expressive Processing is the name of my forthcoming book about digital fictions and computer games, scheduled for publication next year by the MIT Press. Now is the time, in traditional academic publishing, when the press sends the manuscript out for peer review — anonymous commentary by a few scholars that guides the final revisions (and decisions). As Jeff Young reports in the Chronicle of Higher Education today, we’ve decided to do something a little different with Expressive Processing: asking the Grand Text Auto community to participate in an open, blog-based peer review. (more...)