Archive for the 'Criticism' Category



An upcoming issue on theories and practices of blogging requests submissions of papers/projects/manifestos by October 6, 2006 to guest editors Michael Benton and Lauren Elkin of the journal Reconstruction: studies in contemporary culture. From the CFP:

We are especially interested in the experiences, theories and perspectives of those who actually blog. We are looking for longer […]

What I bought, was a game; what I found was a authorware in a game. “The Movies” by Lionhead Studios falls into the grey area between authorware and video game. Players of the game can use it to make and share content. What can we as electronic authors make of this new genre?

“Literatronica” is an adaptive hypertext system that transforms the delivery and experience of literary hypertext. Earlier in the year, WRT posted about the system. Now it offers this interview with Literatronic programmer Juan B. Gutierrez, who is also author of the literatronic adpative hypertext Condiciones Extremas or Extreme Conditions.

I have to confess I’m moonlighting in another world. I’ve started working in the virtual world Second Life as an “embedded journalist”. SLATE Magazine (Second Life Arts & Total Entertainment Magazine) is a new Second Life magazine that covers the arts in SL. There are 14 authors in the collective so far and we’re a […]

Some of electronic literature is detritus. Residue. Trails of conversations that have become destinations in themselves. Debris that has taken on a kind of historic importance. No doubt the same has been true throughout literary history, like the Person from Porlock who knocked at Coleridge’s door in such an untimely fashion….

What follows is a recap of a discussion that can be found on the discussion blog of that singluar futurist Ray Kurzweil’s KurzweilAI.net. It took place 2/10/2003-2/10/2004. The thread also stretches across the Ai-forum.org (2/13/2003-3/28/2003). Call it reality Internet, call it Internet history, call it eavesdropping, but what I see is a piece of collaborative internet writing that proves to have powerful reverberations with the tension between the myths of AI and authenticity on the internet. What results is a curious chapter (or unit) in the development of chatbots. (I recommend reading the conversation on your own, but I will recount as I go.)

In 2003, ELDRAS shot himself. You can read about here. Jennifer Grizzle announced as much on the Kurzweil A.I. site:

subject: ELDRAS shot himself
posted on 02/10/2003 9:56 AM by jennifer grizzle

I read it on a philosophy post site.

he left a note saying he believe he would be resurrected in less than one minute’s subjective time in the future by human A.I.

RIP

The post comes out of nowhere. It appears in the Mind Exchange (MindX) Forum, “an open forum with a focus on emerging trends in technology and related fields.”