Papers

Reasoned thinking and rants on media theory and narrative.

Seeing Things: The human search for meaningful patterns and the media ecology of computer-generated text
Paper accepted for presentation at Media Ecology Conference, July, 2022
Speculations on the origins of the categorical errors that complex, computer-generated texts engender in humans, and how media ecology can offer a balancing perspective.
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Narrative in the Information Society
Published Spring, 2000
Okay, maybe I really only have one idea. Something about digitality and narrative. This is an updated and refocused take from a class at NYU's ITP in 2000.
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Halting, Sphexishness, and Analysis, Terminable and Interminable
Published in the ACM SigWeb Newsletter, 2000
The image of the Sphex wasp, which I picked up from Hofstader, braided in with loosely relevant observations about psychoanalysis and the origins of writing in Sumer.
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Luddism, SF, and the Aesthetics of Electronic Fiction
Published in The New York Review of Science Fiction, May 1994
In the yeasty early '90s, there was a lot of interest in hypertext as a new mode of writing. This piece, from the NYRSF, was pitched at science fiction reader/writers.
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The Virtue of Modelessness: From Object Oriented Text to Quantum Indeterminacy
Published on ArtCom Digest, December, 1992
A very loose exploration of digital text through some scientific metaphors which appeared on The Well's ArtCom Digest. Without the sponsorship — and prodding — of Abbe Don this never would have seen the light of day.
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Reanimating the Logos: Computers and Electronic Orality
Conference on College Composition and Communications, March 1987
My very first conference presentation, from the 4Cs meeting in 1987. Of some historic interest for early ideas about multimedia interactive fiction. I had just met Jay Bolter and seen Storyspace a couple of weeks prior to writing this.
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