The Institute for the Future of the Book is pleased to announce a major networked book experiment with McKenzie Wark, author of A Hacker Manifesto (Harvard 2004). Wark has shared a draft of his next book, GAM3R 7H30RY (Gamer Theory), in an open web-based environment designed to gather feedback and spark discussion. GAM3R 7H30RY 1.1 envisions a new kind of book that evolves over time and brings authors and readers into conversation.

http://www.futureofthebook.org/gamertheory/

In GAM3R 7H30RY, Wark turns his attention to video games, the emergent cultural form of our times. He is interested in two main questions:

1. can we explore games as allegories for the world we live in?
2. can there be a critical theory of games?

Readers of GAM3R 7H30RY 1.1 have two ways to respond to the book and to discuss these larger concerns. Inside the book itself, comment streams are situated directly alongside each individual paragraph,
eschewing the usual top-down hierarchy of blog-based discussion and allowing readers to respond to the text on a fine-grained level.
There is also a free-fire discussion forum where readers can start their own threads about the games dealt with in the book and the experience of game play in general. The gateway to this forum is a
graphical topic pool in which conversations float along axes of time and quantity, giving a sense of the shape of the discussion. Both sections are designed to challenge current design conventions of
online discourse, and to generate thoughtful exchange on the meaning of games, along with meta-questions about the future of books and the design of virtual spaces. Wark will actively participate in these
discussions, and draw upon them in subsequent drafts of his book. The current version is published under a Creative Commons license.

GAM3R 7H30RY 1.1. is the latest in a series of "thinking out loud" experiments devised by the Institute to explore new forms of creative
labor in the networked commons. 

http://www.futureofthebook.org/gamertheory/

http://www.futureofthebook.org/mitchellstephens