Janet Murray

She is well known as an early developer of humanities computing applications, a seminal theorist of digital media, and an advocate of new educational programs in digital media.

Janet Murray design projects include a digital edition of the Warner Brothers classic, Casablanca. In addition she directs an eTV Prototyping Group, which has worked on interactive television applications for PBS, ABC, MTV, Turner, and other networks. She also works extensively as a member of Georgia Tech's Experimental Game Lab and is an advisor to Georgia Tech's Mobile Technology Group.

Murray's major book is Hamlet on the Holodeck: The Future of Narrative in Cyberspace, which asks whether the computer can provide the basis for an expressive narrative form, just as print technology supported the development of the novel and film technology supported the development of movies. She provides an optimistic answer. Murray’s analysis rests on an understanding of the computer as a medium of representation with a distinct set of properties. She argues that the computer is procedural, participatory, encyclopedic, and spatial, and that it affords three characteristic (but not unique) pleasures: immersion, agency, and transformation. She defines interactivity as the combination of the procedural and the participatory property which together afford the pleasure of agency. She connects research work on artificial intelligence with cultural forms such as games, movies, literature, and television. Murray’s main point is that the new computer formats expand the possibilities of expression available for storytelling. Read Less