Writing a textbook of media's forefront

When Noah Wardrip-Fruin realized that his creative writing class lacked a usable textbook, he decided to create his own -- with the help of one of Penn's graduate students. Wardrip-Fruin, a creative writing fellow at Brown University, co-edited The New Media Reader with Nick Montfort, who is currently a first-year doctoral student at Penn, and has created an innovative media anthology. "Most of the things I was interested in having my students read were out of print," Wardrip-Fruin explained. "Basically, it started with a direct need in the classroom. [The anthology] would give people a rounded view of the field." According to Montfort and Wardrip-Fruin, The New Media Reader is a collection of articles, essays, stories and other works about the development of the computer as a means of expression. "It is an anthology of texts that have all been previously published between World War II and the start of the Web... and we have written introductions to each of the 54 chapters," Wardrip-Fruin said. The book comes with a CD-ROM that contains a collection of video documentation and video games, as well as other visual aids. "Although it is true that The New Media Reader is being used as a textbook, it's meant as a resource for... writers and artists, those in new media businesses," Montfort said. "Digital production is a first-class, cultural production. We should take it seriously. "It isn't just a nice way of connecting people -- it's a way of producing interesting works.... However, that could mean 'Grand Theft Auto,'" Montfort added with a laugh. According to Montfort, new media studies is an emerging discipline that views "the computer as an expressive medium." "My actual interest is to be a faculty member in a new media [studies] program," said Montfort, who already boasts two undergraduate degrees in computer science and liberal arts from the University of Texas at Austin, as well as a master's degree in creative writing from Boston University. While Montfort and Wardrip-Fruin were both working in New York City in 1999, they happened to cross paths at the Digital Arts and Culture Conference in Atlanta. "Noah had already seen a need for a collection like this," Montfort said. "He contacted me, and we got to work on a proposal." Wardrip-Fruin brought freelance multimedia developer Michael Crumpton on board to design the textbook. "Noah and I worked together at the [New York University] Center for Advanced Technology, basically a new media think tank," Crumpton said. "I did whatever graphic design stuff was necessary. When we saw the volume of material, I started thinking about how to make it easy to jump around throughout the book." Crumpton subsequently developed a highly complicated system of cross-referencing -- involving carefully placed numbers and arrows on page margins -- to make it easy for the reader to find relevant information quickly in the book. According to Wardrip-Fruin, the anthology is important in teaching about the use of the computer as a means for creative expression, rather than solely as a tool for number-crunching. And, the textbook has already been worked into course curricula. "A small number of classes have adopted it for this semester," Montfort added.

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