Nick just pinged me to let me know he and Ian Bogost have a website up for their upcoming book series Platform Studies.

Platforms have been around for decades, right under our video games and digital art. Those studying new media are now starting to dig down to the level of code to learn more about how computers are used in culture, but there have been few attempts to go deeper, to the metal ó to look at the base hardware and software systems that are the foundation of computational expression.

Platform Studies investigates the relationships between the hardware and software design of computing systems and the creative works produced on those systems.

I was a reviewer for their proposal, which looked really good – so I’m thinking this’ll be an interesting book series. Nick and Ian are writing the first book, which will look at the Atari platform, and they will edit the series, recruiting other authors for other platforms.