TIMELINE (CONTD.)

In his 1986 essay titled, Mythinformation, Langdon Winner takes to task the issues of the inevitable computer revolution, asking what the social goals of this revolution will be and whether regular elections will be held. He refutes the ideas that "information is knowledge, knowledge is power, and that increasing access to information enhances democracy and equalizes social power."

A year later, in 1987, Lucy Suchman made a fundamental critique of practices within artificial intelligence and presented a different concept of how people seek to accomplish goals. In her book, Plans and Situated Actions, Suchman makes the distinction between the planning and situated action perspectives as well as outlines what interactivity means and how the AI version of it can be seen in a historical context.

In Michael Joyce's 1988 Siren Shapes, he makes a distinction between two types of hypertext environments; exploratory: those that are former constructive hypertexts, now being explored b y a user/author, and constructive: those that are in the process of creation by the user/author.

Also in 1988, Bill Nichols updated Walter Benjamin's famous essay, The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, discussing a shift between the time Benjamin published his piece, when film was a new technology, and the time that Nichols wrote his essay, The Work of Culture in the Age of Cybernetic Systems, when video games were young. He outlines how it represents a shift from a fetishization of the object to fetishization of the process of interaction, or simulation.

Lynn Hershman's Lorna is considered the first interactive video art installation (1979-1983). In 1990 she wrote Illuminating Video: An Essential Guide to Video Art.