On a Silver Platter: CD-ROMs and the Promises of a New Technology - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0814780806 ISBN 13: 9780814780800

Publisher: NYU Press, 1998

Synopsis

When the new medium of CD-ROMs emerged, industry figures and critics alike proclaimed their virtually unlimited potential. Adapting material from well-established media like television and film, CD-ROMs have quickly transformed genres such as science fiction and horror. At the same time, the realities of actual CD-ROMs often fall short of their utopian visions.

On a Silver Platter marks a "coming of age" for CD-ROMs as a commercially and aesthetically significant medium demanding critical attention. Greg Smith brings together media scholars such as Lisa Cartwright, Henry Jenkins, Janet Murray, and Scott Bukatman to analyze how CD-ROMs offer alternatives to familiar places―to museums, to cities, and especially to classrooms. Examining specific CD-ROM titles, including, Sim City, Civilization, and Phantasmagoria, the contributors argue that CD-ROMs are complex texts worthy of close consideration, both for how they have changed our understanding of space and genre, and for how they will impact the development of future media.

By examining particular CD-ROM texts and contexts, On a Silver Platter probes this new medium for insight and understanding into the current state of multimedia and into the future of technology.

About this title

About the Author:

Greg M. Smith teaches media studies at Carlow College in Pittsburgh, PA. He is coediting Passionate Views: Thinking About Film and Emotion.

Review:

"An outstanding biography of the most unusual and controversial king of the 20th century. Highly recommended."-"CHOICE",

"Vivid and atmospheric, but based on solid and scrupulous research, this is an outstanding account of one of the most intriguing figures in twentieth-century Balkan history. Non-specialists will read it with pleasure and fascination, and even specialists in Albanian history will find much to learn here from Jason Tomes's marvelously lucid analysis of the politics and diplomacy of the period."-Noel Malcolm, author of Bosnia: A Short History" and Kosovo: A Short History"

"Very well researched, critical yet balanced, this is the best book about Zog to have appeared in any language." -Bejtullah Destani, Director of the Centre for Albanian Studies

About this edition

• Publisher: NYU Press
• Publication date: 1998
• ISBN 10: 0814780806
• ISBN 13: 9780814780800
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 256
• Editor: Greg M. Smith