If you haven't yet done that activity, head over there first. It's okay. This file will wait.
Lev Manovich (whose ideas we've encountered through Madeline Sorapure) isn't the only one theorizing about what makes digital media new. According to Janet Murray, author of Hamlet on the Holodeck and Inventing the Medium,
Everything made of electronic bits is potentially:
- procedural (composed of executable rules)
- participatory (inviting human action and manipulation of the represented world)
- encyclopedic (containing very high capacity of information in multiple media formats)
- spatial (navigable as an information repository and/or a virtual place)
"These affordances," she writes, "make up the designer’s palette for representation in any digital format or genre."
How well do these prominent potentialities, or affordances, line up with Manovich/Sorapure's "five principles"? Discuss as a group. When you're ready, edit this file, and in the section below try to articulate which terms seem to correspond, and which terms from each author resist merging. What do the stand-out terms help you to see anew? In what contexts might each term in a pair be most useful?