Books

Electronic Art+Design and Related Areas

Note: This list is a starting point rather than an exhaustive assay. In particular, it does not include key thinkers such as Michel Foucault, Noam Chomsky, Luce Irigaray, Nicolas Bourriaud, and others, whose work informs many of the listed books but who focus primarily on other topics.

Bolter, J.D. Writing Space: The Computer, Hypertext, and the History of  Writing

Cassell, Justine, and Henry Jenkins, eds., From Barbie to Mortal Kombat

Cherny, Lynn, and Elizabeth Reba Weise (eds.). Wired_Women: Gender and New Realities in Cyberspace

DeLanda, Manuel. War in the Age of Intelligent Machines (on the parallel development of technology and military might in Europe and America since the 18th century with chapters on cryptography and computerized war gaming)

Dibbell, Julian. My Tiny Life (insider’s view of MOO life; first chapter, “A Rape in Cyberspace” is one of the earliest well-informed articles on MOOs)
—. Play Money (account of a year spent as a gold farmer in the MMPORG Lineage)

Druckrey, Timothy. Electronic Culture (critical anthology including essays by Husserl, Flusser, Manovich, Turkle)

Eco, Umberto. Travels in Hyperreality

Giedion, Siegfried.  Mechanization Takes Command (focuses on pre-20th-century inventiont).

Gleick, James. Chaos: Making of a New Science (overview for nonspecialists)

Gray, Chris Hables (ed.).  The Cyborg Handbook (anthology ranging  from early NASA documents to cyborg fiction)

Haraway, Donna. “A Cyborg Manifesto” in Simians, Cyborgs, and Women (cornerstone text of the digital age)

Heim, Michael, The Metaphysics of Virtual Reality

Kelly, Kevin. Out of Control (early book by Wired magazine’s founding editor covering many key network-era subjects from a-life to e-money)

Kolko, Beth E., Lisa Nakamura, and Gilbert B. Rodman. Race in Cyberspace

Landow, George. Hypertext 2.0
—. Hyper/Text/Theory

Levy, Steven.  Artificial Life
—. ”Crypto Rebels” in Wired (May-June 1993) (general text on cryptography)

Malloy, Judy. Women, Art and Technology (landmark study)

Moser, Mary Ann, ed., Immersed in Technology

Paul, Christiane. Digital Art.

Plant, Sadie. Zeroes + Ones (feminist re-reading of digital culture and history)

Rheingold, Howard. The Virtual Community

Stafford, Barbara.  Artful Science analysis of Enlightment art-science)

Stafford, B., and Frances Terpak (eds.). Devices of Wonder: From the World in a Box to Images on a Screen (the catalogue of a Getty Museum exhibition spanning four centuries of European-American “media machines”; well illustrated, with images of rarely seen devices and works by artists as well as inventors)

Stone, Allucquère Rosanne. The War of Desire and Technology at the Close of the Mechanical Age (essay collection, several of which are about role-play and online community)

Tenner, Edward.  Why Things Bite Back  (study of the problem of unintended consequences of technological development)

Turkle, Sherry. Life on the Screen (early study of avatarism)

Wardrip-Fruin, Noah, ed. First Person (essays on games)
—. Second Person (esssays on playable media)

Wiener, Norbert.  Cybernetics

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