Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

Will your idea turn into Dust or Magic? It's in your hands Many creative careers and financial fortunes rest on potentially breakthrough digital media projects - which can end in tears, or turn to magic. This innovative book examines, in depth, how to create that magic. In Dust or Magic, Bob Hughes delves deep beneath the gloss and the hype surrounding multimedia, to reveal the human beings who make the magic, and to show how it happens. The book draws together a wealth of knowledge and experience, with insights from recent science and older creative industries, and reveals the key to designing accomplished interactive computer-based media. It presents a simple, consistent and convincing paradigm for satisfying and successful creative work, and gives practical advice that will save designers from falling into old traps and re-inventing perfectly good wheels. Dust or Magic is for programmers, writers, artists, animators and interface designers, for the people who teach, lead and hire them, and also for people who simply want to know how human creativity fares in the new, digital age. If you are embarking on an adventure in multimedia, this great new source book will help you achi

Table of contents provided by Syndetics

• 1 Cyberia
• Introduction: The Emancipation of the Serfs
• The Computer as a “Medium.” The Computer as a Landscape
• Cyberia's Geological Past
• Bush, Engelbart, Nelson, and the Quest for Xanadu
• Early Explorations: From “Time-Sharing” to the Personal Computer
• The Beginnings of a Mass Medium: Interactive Video
• From the Mac to the Seedy ROM
• Cyberia Opened to the Masses, Then to the Corporate Bulldozers
• 2 Eminent Cyberians
• Introduction: “Tomorrow's Establishment is Today's Lunatic Fringe.” Voices from Nowhere
• Voyager: Cyberia's First Viable Community
• The Power of "Primary Evidence": Curtis Wong Develops the Voyager Vision at Corbis
• The "Book as Hero" in Romain Victor-Pujebet's “Le Livre De Lulu
• ” The Nationwide Building Society and its “Interact” Project
• 3 Working in Cyberia
• Introduction: Do We Really Have to “Get Real”? Crying All the Way to the Bank
• Microsoft's “Sendak” Saga
• Get Yourself a Theory, And Make It a Good One
• Audience: Who Are You Making This For - And Where Are You Taking Them?
• Emotion, Interaction, Participation, Carnival
• “Cognitive Dynamite”: Multi-Sensory Effects that Blow You Away
• “Cognitive Train Wrecks” and “User Expectations
• ” Storyspace: From The Path to the Landscape Itself
• Working in Cyberia: From Storyspace to the Real World
• Trust, and the Paradox of Self-Absorbed Work
• Conclusion: Rediscovering Workmanship
• Bibliography
• Index

Author notes provided by Syndetics