Suggested literature for UIAH Media Lab doctoral students

DRAFT - DRAFT - DRAFT
26th of February, 1999

The are very many potentially relevant research points of view on new media. Therefore, it may not be fruitful to list a collection of books and articles that all the researchers in the new media should be familiar with. However, the following books have been considered to be so central to the approach adopted in the UIAH Media Lab that they are strongly recommended.

Richard Buchanan and Victor Margolin (eds.): Discovering Design. Explorations in Design Studies. The University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1995.
Manuel Castells: The Information Age, Economy, Society and Culture. vols 1-3, Blackwell publishers, 1996-98.
Richard Coyne: Designing Information Technology in the Postmodern Age. From Method to Metaphor. MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1995.
Robert Jacobson and Richard Saul Wurman (eds.): Information Design. MIT Press, 1998.
Brenda Laurel (ed): The Art of Human-Computer Interface Design. Addison-Wesley, 1990.
Bonnie M. Nardi (ed.): Context and Consciousness. Activity Theory and Human-Computer Interaction. The MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1997.
Donald Norman: The Design of Everyday Things. Doubleday/Currency, New York, 1988.
Sherry Turkle: Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet. Weidenfeld & Nicholson, London, 1996.
Terry Winograd: Bringing Design to Software. ACM Press/Addison-Wesley, New York, 1996.

Choosing the literature

The research in new media is an emerging area. Related to this fact and even more generally, below some alternatives are listed that may be taken into account when selecting, for instance, which books to include in each doctoral student's curriculum.

Researcher's own interests and the area of the thesis. It is recommended, though, that not all the literature would be selected from the particular area of the thesis while a broader view on the field must be gained.
Synergy between researcher's interests and the supervisor's interests. The supervisor is able to guide most effectively in the area which is familiar for her or him. In addition, supervisor's motivation and the possibility to allocate time for the task is, in practice, considerably higher if an clear area of a common interest can be found. In such a case, the co-operation may also lead into co-authored articles which most often is beneficial considering the final thesis phase.
Relevance of the literature in the research context. There are some publication and discussion arenas in which the new media is in the focus and the terminology of the field is being established. However, depending on the particular research topic, it is often necessary to be or become familiar with the discourse and terminology of related fields of study. Selections of the books to be read should also serve this purpose. The supervisors and the Media Lab professors can give certain recommendations but, naturally, they cannot be experts in all the potentially relevant fields. With the possibilities of the WWW one can, for instance, check is there are reviews of the book under consideration, and in case of a "classic" on may study if the publication is being referenced frequently.
Suitability of the publication as a research reference. Even if books like "Gates: The Road Ahead" or "Negroponte: Being Digital" are interesting, they would rather become read as background material, not as an central part of the doctoral studies.

"How many credit points per book?"

There is no clear rule of thumb to determine how many credits each book would correspond. Each case should be considered individually taking into account the breadth, depth and form of the study. Writing a critical review of a relevant book in a journal can be considered to be more valuable than writing a short summary of the book only for the supervising professor.

Other similar activities are also recommended. Each student is advised to keep a diary of the relevant research-related activities and discuss about the potential inclusion of them in the formal studies. One example is participating in doctoral defenses or high quality new media art exhibitions and, importantly, writing a summary of the participation in order to document it properly. A mere description may not be sufficient: rather a reflective account that shows the writer's own position and conceptual thinking in the issue under consideration.

Prof. Tarkka's recommendations

Note! These books relate on the one hand to media design and culture and on the other, to aesthetic and social aspects of digital media. Due to its focus, the list excludes important but more general works in philosophy, social and cultural theory.

Espen Aarseth: Cybertext. Perspectives on Ergodic Literature. Johns Hopkins Press, Baltimore and London, 1997.
Wiebe E. Bijker, Thomas P. Hughes and Trevor Pinch (eds.): The Social Construction of Technological Systems. The MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass., 1989.
Timothy Druckrey (ed.): Electronic Culture.
Norman Fairclough: Miten media puhuu. Vastapaino, Tampere 1997. (In English: Media Discourse)
John Fiske: Television Culture. Routledge, 1996.
Keith Grint, Steve Woolgar: The Machine at Work. Technology, Work and Organization. Polity Press, Cambridge, 1997.
Donna Haraway: Simians, Cyborgs and Women. The Reinvention of Nature. Free Association Books, 1991.
Douglas Kellner: Media Culture. Cultural Studies, identity and politics between the modern and the postmodern. Routledge, 1995.
Malcolm McCullough: Abstracting Craft. The Practiced Digital Hand. The MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1996.
Mary Anne Moser and Douglas McLeod (eds.): Immersed in Technology: Art and Virtual Environments. MIT Press, 1996.
Janet Murray: Hamlet on the Holodeck. The Future of Narrative in Cyberspace. The Free Press, New York, 1997.
Donald Schön: The Reflective Practitioner. How Professionals Think in Action. Basic Books, New York, 1983.
Fay Sudweeks, Margaret McLaughlin and Shizaf Rafaeli (eds.): Network and Netplay. Virtual Groups on the Internet. AAAI Press/The MIT Press, 1998.
Judith Wajcman: Feminism Confronts Technology. Polity Press, Cambridge, 1993.
Magazines
- Communications of the ACM (ACM Press)
- Digital Creativity
- Interactions (ACM Press)
Netzines
- theory www.ctheory.org
- Rhizome www.rhizome.org
- The Voice of the Shuttle

Prof. Honkela's recommendations

The following books and articles are recommended by Timo Honkela. The recommendations are related to rather specific interest areas among which Prof. Honkela is able to provide the strongest support (e.g., applications of neural and evolutionary computation, natural language processing, learning and intelligent systems, pragmatics and computer-aided interaction, and cognitive modeling, human-centered information systems design).

W. Bechtel and A. Abrahamsen: Connectionism and the Mind. Basil Blackwell, Cambridge, MA, 1991.
P.A.V. Hall and R. Hudson (eds.): Software Without Frontiers: A Multi-Platform, Multi-Cultural, Multi-Nation Approach, Wiley, 1997.
H. Hendriks-Jansen: Catching Ourselves in the Act: Situated Activity, Interactive Emergence, Evolution, and Human Thought, MIT Press, 1996.
T. Kohonen: Self-Organizing Maps, Second Extended Edition, Springer Series in Information Sciences, Vol. 30, Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, New York, 1995, 1997 (see http://www.cis.hut.fi/nnrc/new_book.html ) The article "Keinotekoisen ja luonnollisen ajattelun eroista" by Kohonen in the book "Kognitiotiede" is recommended for Finnish readers.
G. Lakoff: Women, Fire and Dangerous Things. University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1987. (see, e.g., http://www.cis.hut.fi/~tho/paris/paris3.html )
S.A. Levinson: Pragmatics. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1983.
R.W. Picard: Affective Computing , MIT Press, Cambridge, 1997. (see also http://www.media.mit.edu/affect/)

In addition, articles of the following researchers are recommended. Details to be confirmed with Prof. Timo Honkela.

Peter Gärdenfors, Professor of Cognitive Science, University of Lund
http://www.lucs.lu.se/People/Peter.Gardenfors/
Potentially relevant articles include "Evolving Social Constraints on Individual Conceptual Representations", and "Symbolic, conceptual and subconceptual representations".
Brian MacWhinney, Professor of Psychology, Carnegie Mellon University
http://psyling.psy.cmu.edu/brian/
Potentially relevant articles include "Emergent Language", and "Psycholinguistics: Language and Thought".
Risto Miikkulainen, Associate Professor of Computer Sciences, the University of Texas at Austin and his Neural Nets Research Group
http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/nn/pages/publications/abstracts.html

In request, also any of the articles by Prof. Timo Honkela ( http://mlab.uiah.fi/~timo/publications.html ) can be included in the study programme.

Additional collections

The collection by Philip E. Agre contains references among which the students may find publications that are relevant for them. See below and http://dlis.gseis.ucla.edu/people/pagre/recent-books.html.

Philip E. Agre, Computation and Human Experience, Cambridge University Press, 1997
Bryce L. Allen, Information Tasks: Toward a User-Centered Approach to Information Systems, Academic Press, 1996.
Joey Anuff and Ana Marie Cox, eds, Suck: Worst-Case Scenarios in Media, Culture, Advertising, and the Internet, Hardwired, 1997.
Nader Azarmi and Hyacinth Sama Nwana, eds, Software Agents and Soft Computing: Toward Enhancing Machine Intelligence: Concepts and Applications, Springer Verlag, 1997.
Sara Baase, A Gift of Fire: Social, Legal, and Ethical Issues in Computing, Prentice Hall, 1997.
James Bailey, After Thought: The Computer Challenge to Human Intelligence, Basic Books, 1996.
Hugh Beyer and Karen Holtzblatt, Contextual Design: A Customer-Centered Approach to Systems Designs, Morgan Kaufman, 1997.
Peter Bradford, ed, Information Architects, Graphis Press, 1996.
Jeffrey M. Bradshaw, ed, Software Agents, MIT Press, 1997.
Sandra Braman and Annabelle Sreberny-Hohammadi, eds, Globalization, Communication and Transnational Civil Society, Hampton Press, 1996.
Richard Collins and Cristina Murroni, New Media, New Policies: Media and Communications Strategies for the Future, Polity Press, 1996.
Betty Collis, Tele-Learning in a Digital World: The Future of Distance Learning, International Thomson Computer Press, 1996.
Thomas E. Cyrs, ed, Teaching and Learning at a Distance: What It Takes to Effectively Design, Deliver, and Evaluate Programs, Jossey-Bass, 1997.
John S. Daniel, Mega-Universities and Knowledge Media: Technology Strategies for Higher Education, Kogan Page, 1996
Thomas H. Davenport, Information Ecology: Mastering the Information and Knowledge Environment, Oxford University Press, 1997.
Boyd H. Davis and Jeutonne P. Brewer, Electronic Discourse: Linguistic Individuals in Virtual Space, State University of New York Press, 1997.
Judith Wagner DeCew, In Pursuit of Privacy: Law, Ethics, and the Rise of Technology, Cornell University Press, 1997.
Janet M. Dixon, Predicting Seniors' Use of Cyberspace, Garland, 1997.
Stephen Doheny-Farina, The Wired Neighborhood, Yale University Press, 1996.
Jon Dovey, ed, Fractal Dreams: New Media in Social Context, Lawrence and Wishart, 1996.
Karamjit S. Gill, ed, Information Society: New Media, Ethics and Postmodernism, Springer Verlag, 1996.
Donna J. Haraway, Modest Witness @ Second Millennium: Female Man Meets Oncomouse -- Feminism and Technoscience, Routledge, 1996.
Susan C. Herring, ed, Computer-Mediated Communication: Linguistic, Social, and Cross-Cultural Perspectives, Benjamins, 1996.
Carol A. Hert, Understanding Information Retrieval Interactions: Theoretical and Practical Implications, Ablex, 1997.
David Holmes, ed, Virtual Politics: Identity and Community in Cyberspace, Sage, 1997.
Steven Holtzman, Digital Mosaics: The Aesthetics of Cyberspace, Simon and Schuster, 1997.
Peter Hoschka, ed, Computers as Assistants: A New Generation of Support Systems, Erlbaum, 1996.
Tharon W. Howard, A Rhetoric of Electronic Communities, Ablex, 1997.
Yasmin Kafai and Mitchel Resnick, eds, Constructionism in Practice: Designing, Thinking, and Learning in a Digital World, Erlbaum, 1996.
Badrul H. Khan, ed, Web-Based Instruction, Educational Technology Publications, 1997.
Joseph Migga Kizza, Ethical and Social Issues in the Information Age, Springer, 1998.
Morten Kyng and Lars Mathiassen, eds, Computers and Design in Context, MIT Press, 1997.
Mary Anne Moser and Douglas MacLeod, eds, Immersed in Technology: Art and Virtual Environments, MIT Press, 1996.
Thomas A. Ohanian and Michael E. Phillips, Digital Filmmaking: The Changing Art and Craft of Making Motion Pictures, Focal Press, 1996.
Greg M. P. O'Hare and Nick R. Jennings, eds, Foundations of Distributed Artificial Intelligence, Wiley, 1996.
Celia Pearce, The Interactive Book: A Guide to the Interactive Revolution, Macmillan, 1997.
Lynnette R. Porter, Creating the Virtual Classroom: Distance Learning with the Internet, Wiley, 1997.
Wolff-Michael Roth, Designing Communities, Kluwer, 1997.
Alan J. Rowe and Sue Anne Davis, Intelligent Information Systems: Meeting the Challenge of the Knowledge Era, Quorum, 1996.
Dale Spender, Nattering on the Net: Women, Power and Cyberspace, Spinifex Press, 1996.
Richard A. Spinello, Case Studies in Information and Computer Ethics, Prentice Hall, 1997.

UIAH Media Lab, Minna Tarkka and Timo Honkela, 26.2.1999