Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
CHAPTER 2
A brief overview of the
Narrative Intelligence Reading Group
Marc Davis and Michael Travers
University of California at Berkeley; Afferent Systems, Inc. San Francisco
Introduction
In the fall of 1990 at the MIT Media Laboratory, we started a weekly, student-
run reading group to explore topics at the intersection of artificial intelligence
and literary theory. The group, which we named Narrative Intelligence (NI),
quickly took on a life of its own and became a forum in which ideas from phi-
losophy, media theory, and psychology could combine with current research
in computational theories of mind and media. Meeting in the basement of
the MIT Media Laboratory (so we were both literally and figuratively under-
ground), the group grew to include a local membership of students and faculty
from the Media Lab, other MIT departments, Harvard University, and Brown
University. The group's mailing list included a large cadre of remote mem-
bers including luminaries in the fields of human computer interaction, artifi-
cial intelligence, and film analysis. Narrative Intelligence became a vital hotbed
of interdisciplinary thinking and exploration for its members. It brought to-
gether humanists and engineers in the creation of a new cross-disciplinary ac-
tivity connecting insights from artificial intelligence, media studies, and human
computer interaction design. What started out as an attempt to create common
ground between two Media Lab students eventually influenced the culture and
curriculum of the Media Lab and MIT through the students and faculty that
participated in this unofficial, multi-year, interdisciplinary seminar. In this ar-
ticlewedescribetheformationoftheNarrativeIntelligenceReadingGroup,its
goals, the core texts and issues it engaged with, reflect on lessons learned, and
talk about the future of narrative intelligence.
