The Computer Culture Reader brings together a multi-disciplinary group of scholars to probe the underlying structures and overarching implications of the ways in which people and computers collaborate in the production of meaning. The contributors navigate the heady and sometimes terrifying atmosphere surrounding the digital revolution in an attempt to take its measure through examinations of community and modes of communication, representation, information-production, learning, work, and play. The authors address questions of art, reality, literacy, history, heroism, commerce, crime, and death, as well as specific technologies ranging from corporate web portals and computer games to social networking applications and virtual museums. In all, the essayists work around and through the notion that the desire to communicate is at the heart of the digital age, and that the opportunity for private and public expression has taken a commanding hold on the modern imagination. The contributors argue, ultimately, that the reference ?eld for the technological and cultural changes at the root of the digital revolution extends well beyond any specific locality, nationality, discourse, or discipline. Consequently, this volume advocates for an adaptable perspective that delivers new insights about the robust and fragile relationships between computers and people.
About the Author: Joseph R. Chaney is an Associate Professor of English and the Director of General Education at Indiana University South Bend. He has published articles on the history of rhetoric, Shakespearean drama, and eighteenth-century autobiography. For seven years he has chaired the Computer Culture Area of the Southwest/Texas Popular Culture and American Cultures Association. He is also an award-winning commentator for WVPE Radio, an NPR station. Judd Ethan Ruggill is an Assistant Professor of Communication Studies at Arizona State University and Co-Director of the Learning Games Initiative, a transdisciplinary, inter-institutional research group that studies, teaches with, and builds computer games. His scholarly work has appeared in a variety of books, journals, and periodicals, including Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies, M/C Journal, Works and Days, FLOW, TEXT Technology, The International Digital Media and Arts Association Journal, and The Chronicle of Higher Education. He is co-author with Ken McAllister of Fluency in Play: Computer Game Design for Foreign Language Pedagogy (CERCLL, 2008) and the forthcoming Defining Games: Coming to Terms With a New Medium (U. of Alabama Press). Ken S. McAllister is an Associate Professor of Rhetoric at the University of Arizona and Co-Director of the Learning Games Initiative. He has been Executive Director of Alternative Educational Environments, Co-Chair of the International Digital Media and Arts Association's Game Studies Special Interest Group, a Project Director for the Center for Educational Resources in Culture, Language, and Literacy, and is currently a member of the National Science Foundation's iPlant Collaborative. His book Game Work: Language, Power, and Computer Game Culture (U. of Alabama Press, 2004) is now in its second printing and received a Choice Outstanding Academic Title award in 2005.