I must admit that, as it is Tuesday afternoon, I’ve only read the first third of Noah Wardrip-Fruin’s Expressive Processing (2009). Thus far, I’ve attempted to absorb some definitions (“operational processing” and “ideology machine,” for example), and developed a better understanding of Joseph Weizenbaum’s ELIZA, the psychotherapist chat bot that Ian Bogost prompted me to engage with a few weeks ago. I realized, through Wardrip-Fruin’s explanation of the Eliza Effect, that I’m the type of user who provokes nonsense from Eliza. In other words, I’m an uncooperative collaborator. I want to coax her into unwittingly revealing her machinic, non-comprehending self. However, I’ve also realized that I underestimated Eliza. Reading about the Eliza Effect and its inherent weaknesses certainly made me gain a greater appreciation for Weizenbaum’s machine. As the author reveals, the machine’s flaws actually provide insights about the underlying system processes (as described on p. 38).

Implementation, Nick Montfort and Scott Rettberg

Conversely, I was particularly intrigued by how digital fictions confront the issue of the Eliza effect by explicitly revealing underlying mechanisms. Rather than try to perpetuate the illusion of seamless cognition and appropriate response (Eliza), these fictions embrace the notion of exposing the messy processes that occur during the creation and delivery of narrative. I was reminded of so-called cell phone novels when I read about Nick Montfort and Scott Retberg’s Implementation Project. As excerpts are printed and posted in random locations, the story unfolds in a compelling way…yet the intrinsic processes (of printing and pasting, for example) are very straightforward and immediately recognizable. Interestingly, the project has now been published as a book (2012) with a linear narrative that was intentionally absent from the original novel.

Anyway, let’s return to the cell phone novel, or “keitai shosetsu,” popularized in Japan. This novel, frequently distributed in text messages, represents an intimate type of digital fiction that, similar to Montfort’s project, is serialized and encountered without context. Just as models of the world are represented in video games, and Turing’s “imitation game” is still discussed in this regard (as reiterated by Wardrip-Fruin), cell phone novels are often like folktales in that they convey familiar narratives in new ways (I found this article, I *heart* Novels in the New Yorker to be helpful in understanding this genre of writing). As we discussed last week, some aspects of this new use of cell phones…or this skewing of our media ideologies may seem threatening to the “traditional” author, as these novels are often published anonymously or under pseudonyms. However, these novels are seen as an extension of oral storytelling rather than an intrusion on literature.

Perhaps I’ve strayed too far from computer games, but when I read Wardrip-Fruin’s call to action regarding moving beyond the rigidness of quest flags and dialogue trees, this struck me as one medium that seems to continually captivate users. However, these users are not necessarily responding to the novel–I’d be curious to learn more about how readers suggestions are incorporated into new additions to cell phone novels.

I must finish the rest of the book, but will also just mention this lecture that Wardrip-Fruin gave at UC- Santa Barbara because it is helping me better understand certain concepts as I read about them in the book: Saying it with Systems.