The study of what is collectively labeled -New Media---the cultural and artistic practices made possible by digital technology--has become one of the most vibrant areas of scholarly activity and is rapidly turning into an established academic field, with many universities now offering it as a major. The Johns Hopkins Guide to Digital Media is the first comprehensive reference work to which teachers, students, and the curious can quickly turn for reliable information on the key terms and concepts of the field.

The contributors present entries on nearly 150 ideas, genres, and...

The study of what is collectively labeled -New Media---the cultural and artistic practices made possible by digital technology--has become one of the most vibrant areas of scholarly activity and is rapidly turning into an established academic field, with many universities now offering it as a major. The Johns Hopkins Guide to Digital Media is the first comprehensive reference work to which teachers, students, and the curious can quickly turn for reliable information on the key terms and concepts of the field.

The contributors present entries on nearly 150 ideas, genres, and...

Is there a significant difference between engagement with a game and engagement with a movie or novel? Can interactivity contribute to immersion, or is there a trade-off between the immersive -world- aspect of texts and their interactive -game- dimension? As Marie-Laure Ryan demonstrates in Narrative as Virtual Reality 2, the questions raised by the new interactive technologies have their precursors and echoes in pre-electronic literary and artistic traditions.

Approaching the idea of virtual reality as a metaphor for total art, Ryan applies the concepts of immersion and...