Paper Electronic Literature: An Archaeology of Born-Digital Materials

Reaching back to early experiments with digital writing in the mainframe era and then moving through the personal computer and Internet revolutions, I chronicle one vital but often overlooked aspect of the material history of computational creativity--paper. The book reveals that digital literature's old media elements have much to teach us about the cultural and physical conditions in which we compute; the creativity that new media artists have shown in their dealings with old media; and the distinctively electronic issues that confront digital artists. This book is quirky, nerdy, and definitely not for everyone, but it was a joy to compose.