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Overview
What matters in understanding digital media? Is looking at the external appearance and audience experience of software enough—or should we look further? In Expressive Processing, Noah Wardrip-Fruin argues that understanding what goes on beneath the surface,the computational processes that make digital media function, is essential.
Wardrip-Fruin looks at "expressive processing" by examining specific works of digital media ranging from the simulated therapist Eliza to the complex city-planning game SimCity. Digital media, he contends, offer particularly intelligible examples of things we need to understand about software in general; if we understand,for instance, the capabilities and histories of artificial intelligence techniques in the context of a computer game, we can use that understanding to judge the use of similar techniques in such higher-stakes social contexts as surveillance.
Editorials
From the Publisher
"I highly recommend this book to digital media — games, movies, and fiction —creators, AI students, and engineers." Irtaza Barlas Computing Reviews"In Wardrip-Fruin"s Expressive Processing, the field of"interactive entertainment" comes of age; its theories and methods are native to its medium, rather than borrowed from literature, film, or history....Required reading." Annette Vee JAC
"Through insightful examinations of media ranging from simulations to computer games,the author presents an intriguing and cogent argument.... Recommended." Albert Chen Choice
"Wardrip-Fruin has given us an arsenal of rhetorical firepower and a powerful set of examples for how one might teach algorithmic literacy across the curriculum without delving into the syntax of any particular programming language." Doug Reside Digital Humanities Quarterly