I believe the author of “Five Elements of Digital Literature” from Reading Moving Letters, Noah Wardrip-Fruin, wanted to make a specific point. The process should be interpreted in digital literature after separating the process from the surface. This point is, I’m guessing, the answer to his question in the beginning of the reading: “Why do we need to read, to interpret, when we read digital literature?” Interpreting the process will let us better understand and read digital literature.

Except I never would’ve thought that was going to be Wardip-Fruin’s conclusion, and I’m still confused about what exactly the process is. The confusion might stem from my disbelief in his terminology. He claims that digital literature is in relation to computers, specifically found in computer engineering phrases that require the digital computation performed by laptops, servers, game consoles, etc. Furthermore, “digital information, as opposed to analog information, is represented by discrete rather than continuous values.” Fruin takes the word digital directly from the word digit. When I think of the word digital, I think involving or relating to the use of computer technology. When asked why we need to read and interpret digital literature, I internally reply “because it’s literature.”  No matter the type of literature, we still read and analyze it.

This is where I don’t follow his argument. He refers literature to fiction, poetry, and drama like I do. So why does he present this question? With all the references and too many points made (1, 2, 3, 4, a, b, c from pages 40 and 41), I’m confused to what this digital literature and process actually is.

I feel like I’m on to something when Chris Crawford says that “Processing data is the very essence of what a computer does” and Fruin explains that processes are optional for digital literature. But then I’m lost again when I imagine the difference between email narratives (that don’t require processes) and other “digital literature.” I’m not convinced that both types should be considered literature.

Moreover, I’m offended at Fruin’s notion that “writers innovate on the surface level, on the reading words level – while computer scientists innovate at the process level, the algorithm level, perhaps without words at all.” While perhaps not intentionally, Fruin suggests that computer scientists are more evolved authors than the basic writer. I however, disagree. Instead, I propose that computer scientists and writers stay in separate categories with their digital and non digital literature.