Book Review: New Media's Next Revolution

Stan Diehl

In the age of hypertext, cybersurfing, and interactive virtual environments, we sense ourselves at the cusp of something revolutionary, and yet, at the same time, we feel somewhat underwhelmed. For many users, the reality of the Internet falls short of its possibilities. If we are to fill the gap between promise and reality, it will take visionaries who understand the technical hurdles and the new structural and aesthetic mechanics to transform the media rather than simply recompose it.

Janet Murray, who explores the rich possibilities of new electronic media in her book Hamlet on the Holodeck , is uniquely qualified to elucidate the challenges ahead. In addition to holding a Ph.D. in literature from Harvard, she is a senior research scientist in the Center for Educational Computing Initiatives at MIT and teaches interactive fiction in MIT's Film and Media Studies Program. Murray broaches the technical changes needed, such as interfaces designed to fully exploit an interactive/interconnected world, advanced authoring tools for developing "immersive" environments, and a more robust infrastructure to deliver the goods. She also d iscusses the artistic flourishes required to make the new technologies sing. She argues eloquently for a new genre of interactive narrative, not just for gaming and entertainment but to propel us into a new media age, an age as significant as the one brought about by moving pictures and the widespread acceptance of television.

Murray describes an environment where clicking on a character changes the perspective of the interactor, shifting the viewpoint and even the values and judgements of the narrator, where moving to a different room triggers completely new storylines or interface m odes, where interactive television shows develop fully realized worlds beyond a single episodic slice. She also cites real-world experiments, from the MIT Media Lab and other sources. At MIT, for example, a 12-foot computer screen acts as a "magic mirror," reflecting the interactor's image among virtual characters.

An intimate account of her experiences at Sony's IMAX Theater in New York, a 3-D theater with a screen eight stories high and a hundred feet wide, describes an environment where characters from the past become "a resurrection of the dead; we are given the ability to see them and to see the world through their eyes with stunning immediacy." Such piquant examples animate the possibilities of the new media and make us hunger for more accessible technologies.

As the title suggests, the book is steeped in references to literary and popular culture. Just after detailing a sequence from the Star Trek holodeck, the author grapples with moral implications of Aldous Huxley's Brave New World and Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 , two seminal works about the de-humanizing propensities of immersive technologies. She seems equally comfortable citing Shakespeare, Joyce, or Babylon 5 while displaying a firm grasp of the technology's historical development.

But this is not simply a book about 3-D games and Dungeons and Dragons across the Internet. Hamlet on the Holodeck resonates best when it reaches beyond the scope of interactive narrative and encompasses the global possibilities of emerging technologies. As we develop technologies and interfaces that are more interactive, more immersive, and more compelling, every aspect of the computing experience is enriched. It is toward this future that Murray draws us, a future where seamless interfaces, robust architectures, and new interactive genres enable computing environments that we cannot now envision.

---

Where to Find

Hamlet on the Holodeck........
...............$25.00

by Janet H. Murray
The Free Press, a division of Simon and Schuster, 1997
324 pages (hardcover)
ISBN: 0-684-82723-9
Internet: 
http://www.SimonSays.com


HotBYTEs
 - information on products covered or advertised in BYTE

---

Stan Diehl is a frequent contributor to BYTE. He used to be the director of the BYTE Lab.