Playful Intelligence : Digitizing Tradition

This is a guide, in theory and in practice, to how current technological changes have impacted our interaction with texts and with each other. Henry Sussman rereads pivotal moments in literary, philosophical and cultural modernity as anticipating the cybernetic discourse that has increasingly defined theory since the computer revolution. Cognitive science, psychoanalysis and systems theory are paralleled to current trends in literary and philosophical theory.

Chapters alternate between theory and readings of literary texts, resulting in a broad but rigorously grounded framework for the relation between literature and computer science. This book is a refreshing perspective on the analog-orientated tradition of theory in the humanities – and offers the first literary-textual genealogy of the digital.

“Playful Intelligence exemplifies the encouragement that interdisciplinary thinking can provide to critics who still believe in the salutary potential of humanistic endeavors.” – Journal of Modern Literature

“There is, I think, nothing out there truly comparable to Playful Intelligence in terms of focus, insight, scope, cross-disciplinary applicability, theoretical urgency, and learning.” - Christian Moraru, University of North Carolina, USA, American Book Review