The New Media Reader

I spent most of this morning reading selections from The New Media Reader, edited by Noah Wardrip-Fruin and Nick Montfort, which will be published by MIT Press in 2003. This book is an wonderful collection of essays, articles, and a bit of fiction from the 1940s until the early 1990s which altogether comprises the best introduction to new media, and new media writing, that I've seen so far. Although the book won't be published until next year, students in my hypertext and new edia studies courses will be reading selections from it in our course packet. Nick and Noah and the folks at MIT Press have given us special permission to use selections from it in the Stockton Literature Program's New Media track courses prior to its publication. The book is both the most comprehensive volume produced in the field to date, and also intelligently edited and designed (as a “print hypertext” with glosses and highlights in the margins and intertextual “links” within the text). It should benefit the curricula of many programs in electronic literature and new media studies worldwide. The product of about five years worth of work, its publication will be a major event for the field. Students in my new media studies class will also get the opportunity to meet one of its editors, Nick Montfort, who will be dropping in our class this fall. Congrats to Nick and Noah on their outstanding work editing the book.