"Computers as Theatre" - a Book (p)Review
Created by Henry E. Schaffer (North Carolina State University) on June 14, 2008
At the urging of two very well informed colleagues (Sarah & Hall, who are more involved in the arts than I am) I've started reading this 1991 book by Brenda Laurel.
Given that the IT horizon is only 3-5 years off - this book was written a very long time ago (e.g. pre-our web.) Still, I'm amazed by how relevant are the issues presented! This gives me a clue that the book is going to be very much worth reading.
I'm sufficiently excited that I'm writing this before I've finished even 20% - so this can't be a "review" (although I have my suspicions that a lot of book reviews are written after reading less than 20% :-) - so I'm suggesting that I can fairly call this a Book Preview.
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It's a short book and I wish more application programmers/designers would read it! :-)
Well, I did that a couple of days ago - and found it both interesting, and also it was interesting that Hal and I differed in how we perceived the exposition.
Brenda Laurel first discusses the concepts quite thoroughly, and then introduces the term "Wedge" in conjunction with a diagram.
I said to myself, okay - that's a nice representation of what I've already understood from previous pages.
Hal thought the term and diagram were a very important part of the exposition.
This may be an illustration of "learning styles". I know, from extensive discussion of the years, that Hal is more visually oriented than I am - and I think that I'm more text oriented than average.
Of course all of this is relevant to the consideration of human-computer-interfaces! :-)
P.S. I may say something more about the Wedge in my Review.