Academic Work
McDaid's scholarly work sits at the intersection of media ecology, digital narrative theory, and the emerging field of electronic literature. He did doctoral work in Media Ecology at New York University and holds an MFA in fiction from the Newport MFA at Salve Regina University. He teaches media theory courses at Roger Williams University.
Current Work
-
Seeing things: The human search for meaningful patterns and the media ecology of computer-generated text RecentMedia Ecology Association, 2022Human brains, by evolutionary design, find pattern and impute agency (Foster and Kokko, 2009, Churchland, 2019). Computer-generated texts (in particular, narrative) have reached a level of complexity such that we experience them in everyday contexts without interrogating their way of coming to presence, raising concerns that echo critiques by both philosophers and media theorists. A machine “finished” Beethoven’s 10th Symphony; gamers are immersed in an entirely computer-generated text adventures, and computer “poetry” and chatbots have proliferated across the Web. Our inbuilt assumptions about pattern and agency are triggered by such experiences. This raises important questions for those studying the communication technology as an environment—what Marshall McLuhan called media ecology (Media Ecology Association, 2021)—about understanding and managing the implications of human interaction with such computer-generated texts.Download pdf
Selected Publications & Presentations
-
"Uncle Buddy's Phantom Funhouse" — subject of TraversalsMIT Press, 2017 · Dene Grigar and Stuart Moulthrop, authorsTraversals: The Use of Preservation for Early Electronic Writing devotes extended scholarly analysis to Uncle Buddy's Phantom Funhouse, situating it in the history of digital literature. The project grew out of a 2013 National Endowment for the Humanities grant to the Electronic Literature Organization for the preservation of early digital texts.
-
"We Knew The Glass Man" — ACM Conference PresentationAssociation for Computing Machinery, Hof, Germany, September 2019Invited speaker; read from and was interviewed about the interactive fiction work built in Twine and published in Cream City Review.
-
ACM Hypertext Conference Program Committee1999, 2000Served on the program committee for the Association for Computing Machinery Hypertext conferences.
-
TINAC Collective — Digital Narrative Writing and ScholarshipVarious venues, 1990s–presentAs a member of the TINAC collective, McDaid wrote on digital narrative and spoke at dozens of colleges and conferences. [TK — additional titles and venues to be added]
-
Mary Shelley Award for Outstanding Fictional Work AwardMedia Ecology AssociationAwarded for "Keyboard Practice, consisting of an Aria with diverse Variations for the Harpsichord with two manuals" (F&SF, January 2005), which was also a Nebula Award and Sturgeon Award finalist.
-
Coordinator of Computer Composition, NYU Expository Writing ProgramNew York University, 1988Helped create one of the first hypertext writing programs within Expository Writing at NYU. Taught writing and communication courses at NYU, Adelphi University, and the New York Institute of Technology during seven years in academia.
-
[Additional publications and conference papers TK]Various venuesAdditional bibliography to be added.
Research Interests
McDaid's research focuses on the ecology of media forms — how different media environments shape cognition, narrative, and culture. His work draws on the McLuhan–Postman tradition of media ecology, digital humanities methodology, and the practical experience of writing literary fiction and hypertext in multiple forms.
Current and ongoing interests include: the phenomenology of interactive narrative; the cultural history of hypertext; the relationship between constraint and creativity in songwriting and fiction; and the political economy of attention in contemporary media environments.
He attended Syracuse University and the New School University, and did doctoral work in Media Ecology at NYU.
For scholarly correspondence: jmcdaid@johnmcdaid.com