Stephen Ramsay begins the second chapter of Reading Machines: Toward an Algorithmic Criticism with an explanation of the origin and meaning of the word algorithm. The world algorithm, he explains, comes from the name of Persian mathematician Abū ʿAbdallāh Muḥammad ibn Mūsā al-Khwārizmī, the mathematician whose book Al-kitāb al-mukhtaṣar fī ḥisāb al-ğabr wa’l-muqābala (The Compendious […]

N. Katherine Hayles, usefully enough, begins the first chapter of Electronic Literature: New Horizons for the Literary by defining electronic literature, providing a survey of some of its major genres, and discussing some of the major critical, theoretical, and pragmatic challenges inherent in the production, distribution, reception, and study of electronic literature. In many ways, […]