Technology Platforms for 21st Century Literature

1. Michael Miller, editor-in-chief of PC Magazine, will summarize the major trends in technology today, especially as they regard interactive media. Designed to provide context for the more technically knowledgeable in the crowd, some catch-up for the less knowledgeable, and the beginnings of some common reference points for technologists and creative writers. 20 minutes, including Q&A.

2. Marc Canter of Broadband Mechanics will discuss Scalable Content and how it will help interactive fiction and poetry writers develop large and potentially continuously developed ("never" finished) work for the Web and CD-ROMs. Marc will also show several examples and prototypes of Broadband-based interfaces that feature animations, full screen video and high quality audio. Finally, he will demo a client-in-development from Frontier called The Control Panel for creating and managing very large numbers of variously related elements of a work of fiction or poetry -- work created by one or more authors.

a) the tradeoffs necessary in authoring in a cross-platform world;
b) enhancing the audience's experience with exciting, compelling interfaces full of rich, non-text elements; and blurring the edge between writing for the Web and creating multi-media for the Web;
c) the importance of XML for creating relationships between elements of a Web site;
d) facilitating collaboration;
e) and minimizing the distance between the author and the elements of the work he or she is creating and relating to each other.

3. Shelley Hayduk of Natrificial will show us The Brain, a tool for establishing interlocking parent, sibling, and child associations between many types of files in a work of fiction or poetry. With the relationships established the work can be published map interface that mutates as the reader approaches the work from different perspectives. Emphasis on association vs. hierarchy, multiple entry points to a work, the work as a perpetual work-in-progress. 30 minutes including Q& A.

4. Miko Matsumura of BusinessTone will discuss and demonstrate the power that massively distributed computing via Java brings to the creation and publishing of interactive fiction and poetry. By packaging and distributing data and applications together with software like that from Marimba, the author's relationship with the reader can be come more like that of a magazine editor to a subscriber than a novelist to a book reader. Ongoing, both in terms of the work delivered to the reader, but also the evolving functionality for "reading" the work. Emphasis on distributing function with content, the "push" dynamic, the increasing one-to-one relationship between author and reader. 30 minutes, including Q&A.

5. Dan Farber, editor-in-chief of ZDNet, will present the ZDNet-built front end to Vignette and how it works with Vignette's back end to separate content from its presentation and deliver it dynamically to users according to who they are and what they do inside a work of interactive fiction or poetry. Emphasis on the "disambiguation" of content types and templates, the personalization of a large work, and the presentation to the audience of constantly recreated and re-related paths. 30 minutes, including Q&A.

6. Jim Louderback of ZDTV will demo the latest in portable storage and display technology for interactive fiction and poetry. Rocketbook and other handheld devices that preserve some of the experience of a book for the digital reader, while bringing with them all the interactive capability of a computer on a network. Emphasis on the reading experience -- both tactile and visual, the business model for this form of "book" distribution, and any speculation on how "dedicated" these devices are or are likely to remain. 20 minutes, including Q&A.