The first Unlecture back since the mid-semester break had a disappointing turnout. I really don’t understand why people enrol in the course if they aren’t going to turn up. Sure there are acceptable reasons as to why you miss some sessions but could that many people have had the flu? Then again, if I’m being completely honest, I am intending to miss an Unlecture on Tuesday 24th September for “Comm Ball related reasons” (It takes a girl like me a whole day to get ready for a 7pm dinner party!)

I took conscious note of Adrian’s point that we need to stop instantly describing hypertext as ‘create your own adventure’, which I have been doing a lot of. When you think about it, those stories have limited possibilities. Hypertext is more than that. It has possibly endless routes. The example Adrian bought in was a childrens’ book ‘, with 10 pages and 3 flaps on each page. Apparantly this book can make 1000 combinations (10 x 10 x 10). And would take a really long time to read! And that’s only a childrens’ book. I was thinking what could be comparable in adult literature?

Adrian introduced us to some software that allows authors to create several folders if you like, which can have inexhaustable links between them. This sounds really cool! A great way to store all your information, and link it to other information completely sparse in time and location but connected by one key idea for example. This sounds like my kind of thing. I really like having recorded and archived all of my thoughts, ideas, lists etc. But when I am limited to chronological order, I can forget things. I think this thing was called TinderBox. Is this right Adrian Miles?

The second key idea I was thinking about after this Unlecture was that authors can’t control the minds of the readers. As I said in a post last week, but I feel so strongly about it now, why in high-school are we instructed to right to “create a sense of… in the reader”? When we can never actually confirm that this is how it will be taken on at the receiving end. I understand that we can definitely try, and many things just seem to have certain reactions among people, i.e. babies are cute, chocolate is yummy, you can trick people into answerring a really easy question with an obviously incorrect answer… but I’d like to explore this further… I’m still not satisfied. Like Adrian said, ‘What is communications without intent?’, where does this leave me when I graduate my Bachelor of Professional Communication. There are 2 very strong sides to this and I’d like to settle my opinion on 1, but I need to ponder some more.

Lastly, the idea of the interactive documentary. Haven’t watched one. Would like to. My Mum thinks I’m weird because I quite enjoy documentaries. (Particularly about animals and really really old things). Maybe I’ll look into that 🙂