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Divination Engines
Natural Language Processing, Artificial Intelligence, and the Making of Algorithmic Culture
Xiaochang Li
University of Chicago Press
A revealing and surprising origin story, showing how attempts to render human speech and language computable led from the era of big data to today’s AI.
 
Since the advent of computers, society has fantasized about conversing with machines. In this eye-opening book, technology expert Xiaochang Li shows readers how that dream both fueled the demand for data and set the stage for today’s generative AI. With original research and clear explanations, Li elucidates the origins of what’s known as natural language processing (NLP) and the heated twentieth-century debates between computer scientists, linguists, and communication engineers that shaped today’s technology. Starting with early devices that recorded, analyzed, and attempted to interpret human speech, she demonstrates how computer speech recognition, particularly efforts led by Bell Labs and IBM, advanced technology by deemphasizing linguistic meaning in favor of statistical prediction. In other words, researchers gradually abandoned systems that sought to understand human language, opting instead for workarounds that simply predicted patterns in speech and text data. That solution became incredibly and surprisingly adaptable. As Li reveals, transforming linguistic questions into engineering ones ushered in the routine operation of search engines, spam filters, and the varied content sorting and recommendation mechanisms that regulate the access, circulation, and legitimacy of information across every platform. But this has all come at the cost of forever requiring copious and ever-growing amounts of new data.
 
At its core, Divination Engines illuminates how the artifacts of human communication—speech, text, and images—have become both the fodder for and products of computers. This connection, between communication and computation, Li shows, has given rise to data-driven analytics, machine learning, and today’s algorithmic culture.
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Narrative Interplay in the Digital Era
Generative AI, Alternate Reality Games, and the Future of Interactive Pedagogy
Edited by Andrew Klobucar
Intellect Books, 2025
How AI, games, and interactive fiction are transforming storytelling, learning, and play.

In Narrative Interplay in the Digital Era, leading scholars and artists explore how digital narratives, alternate reality games, and AI-driven storytelling reshape how we create, experience, and teach interactive fiction. This collection moves beyond traditional analysis and examines the social and artistic dimensions of interactivity, highlighting how narratives unfold dynamically through player engagement and machine collaboration.

Organized into three sections—alternate realities, digital interactive fiction, and the politics of gaming—this book reveals the evolving role of play and interactivity in contemporary education, creative expression, and online culture. Contributors offer insights from inside the creative process, centering the perspectives of game designers and artists to shed light on how interactive stories emerge at the intersection of technology and human imagination.

A practical resource for researchers in game studies, electronic literature, and digital storytelling, this collection also speaks to educators and creators eager to explore how AI and interactivity are redefining the future of narrative.
 
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