The New Media Reader: 54.

54. The World-Wide Web by Tim Berners-Lee, Robert Cailliau, Art Luotenen, Henrik Frystyk Nielsen, and Arthur Secret, 1994


I think that this essay really rounded out the end of The New Media Reader. It is fascinating to me that W3 was “developed to be a pool of human knowledge,” because it has become so much more! Not only does is serve as a resource for knowledge for me, but for emailing, chatting, and even wasting time reading blogs and doing endless Google image searches! This essay gives a basic understanding of URI, HTTP, and HTML, which was useful to learn. The “The Future” section towards the end of the essay was interesting to me because a lot of the developments that the authors looked forward to seeing have already happened. Their predictions were correct.

I truly enjoyed reading The New Media Reader and have learned a great deal about new media from it. I find myself constantly inserting my NMR knowledge into conversations I’m having with friends, because it all relates to the lives we are living now!

The New Media Reader: 53.

53. Nomadic Power and Cultural Resistance by Critical Art Ensemble, 1994


In this essay, the Critical Art Ensemble basically calls the nomad and the rhizome “figures of corporate power, rather than of liberation.” The Critical Art Ensemble argued that the “power elite” was the main recipient of the benefits of network technologies. I really enjoyed the tone with which this essay was written, how they ended a paragraph with the sentence, “Roll the dice.” I also liked the CAE’s discussions of Baudelaire and Andre Breton.

The New Media Reader: 52.

52. Nonlinearity and Literary Theory by Espen J. Aarseth, 1994

Espen J. Aarseth noticed, through his reading of texts shown or created through computer software, that they followed a nonlinear form. He defines a nonlinear text as one that does not follow a fixed sequence, but an arbitrary non-sequence. In this essay, Aarseth spends some time describing the typology of nonlinear texts, but also makes comparisons between hypertext fiction, interactive fiction works, and conversational characters, (like Eliza). He finally questions, what will the study of nonlinearity and cybertextuality do to literary theory? I think that this is a serious question that we need to consider; as the opportunities in literature multiply, it is important to study all of them. Hopefully, this study will bring new perspectives on literature.

The New Media Reader: 51.

51. Surveillance and Capture: Two Models of Privacy by Philip E. Agre, 1994

In this essay, Philip Agre presents the “capture model” which he developed through study of computer systems design. Agre believes that, like Bentham’s Panopticon, (Inmates in the Panopticon could not see the guards, but knew that the guards could possibly see them and thus internalized their surveillance.), the “informed organization internalizes capture – reordering their behavior so that it is more amenable to capture models.” I think it is interesting to think about this considering our use of the web today. I wonder, would anybody put something on their website that they did not want anybody else to see? No! I believe that we have internalized our own surveillance.