Week 6 reading.. Hypertexts – The safari of Narrative.

When someone says the word hyperlink to me, I immediately think back to primary school. It was about 2002 when I was taught to embed a hyperlink into text, on this new and exciting program called ‘Microsoft Word’, have you ever heard of it?

The way in which hyper linking allowed me to network my stories about my favourite TV shows on ABC Kids to pictures on the web of the bananas in Pyjamas and Mixy the bunny, was an exhilarating concept for me that was quite peculiar compared to just the straight forward typical ‘write a narrative on a piece of paper’ type task.

As we have progressed not only in growth and age since 2002 but technologically this once modernistic cont of Hyper linking has developed even further into a whole new realm – Hyper texts and Hyper fiction.

Hypertexts basically add more complexity to the ideal of texts, and reveal a new organization of the typical narrative. These are some of the concepts that stood out for me in this weeks reading by Landow;

Hypertext redefines not only beginnings and endings of the text but also its borders – its sides, as it were.

That whilst indulged in a hypertext linearity becomes subjective to the reader, because narrative byted do not follow a typical narrative ‘page turning’ format.

To me, the way in which a reader is to follow a hypertext resembles a safari – an online safari! The way in which it encourages you to Explore the realms of a story and all different nooks and crannies of its content; just as I would imagine myself exploring a jungle.

I can only imagine what the world of ‘Hyper’ (links, texts..) will bring in the future, and perhaps looking back on this reading in years to come I will be baffled by the simplicity of a once  complex notion of Hypertexts.

READ LANDOWS COMPLEX IDEALS NOW. YOU WILL BE PERPLEXED

Reading #1- Dingle Souble looping learning.. wait, PARDON ?

Okay, I don’t know about you- but when it comes down to analyzing psychological processes, recognizing your brain cognitions and well essentially Thinking about thinking, it tends to leave me quite flummoxed and perplexed.

But then again, even pondering about my existence leaves me feeling like im drowning in my own brain activity. Lucky I’m studying media and not psychology or physics ey!

So when I was practically forced to read an article about this random dude Chris Argyris, and his ideals regarding theories of action, double-loop learning and organisational learning, I knew understanding his knowledgeable words wouldn’t exactly be a walk in the park, but rather a marathon situated in a foam pit (that would be a bloody challenge to say the least!).

In trying aid myself to grasp Argyris’ wisdom which in my experience felt like trekking through an infinitely vast pool of foam, I had to figure out a way in which I could not only get through to the other side of this foam pit, but also to discover a way to strategize, retain and understand this info as I trekked along- I first thought that My goal was fixed- I just get to physically read the words on the paper and then write a blog post about it. But the comprehension of the words that I read did not come along as easily as I expected and therefore the inspiration for a enlightening Blog post to impress my witty tutor Elliot (oh hey Elliot!), was hard to come by.

First of all, i thought ugh well I guess ill just read it again, and maybe after the second read I will become inspired and cover some distance in the foam pit! So reading it again I did. This approach sounded logical in theory, but it didn’t exactly hit the nail on the head when it came to understanding the intricate mind-boggling words and concepts on the screen in front of me. So, as my goal was to basically get to this other side of the reading or foam pit, I just kept smashing out this approach of reading Argyris’ words over and over and over again- reading it out load, singing it, stopping at every single word I don’t understand and pretty much operationalizing this method to make it work for my planned and fixed goal to reach the end of this bloody foam marathon.

After hours of multi tasking between talking on the phone to Mog, trying to read and watch the latest Offspring episode I suddenly realised… what am I actually doing? This approach obviously isn’t working for me. I have not even covered half of the distance to the end of the foam pit, I’m all sweaty iv pulled a hammy and have nothing to show for it. I still did not understand what on earth double and single loop learning were, and thus this blog post was not getting any easier to write.

Then I had an epiphany! It suddenly occurred to me that maybe I was being slightly lazy in my learning and quite narrow minded on how I was to achieve what I set out to do. I questioned my method- why isn’t it working? Why don’t I understand the words on the page? And honestly, why have I made such a big marathon out of such an insignificant task that ultimately is not a big deal? So, I came up with this ideal that maybe its not me that has to conform to the language of this reading, but rather the reading needs to be transformed into an easier and less intimidating format AKA ‘Georgia language’. So, as I am an extremely visual and dramatic being, I thought of this outrageous idea of comparing the reading to trekking through a foam pit! And the methods to getting to the other side were the concepts of Single and Double looped learning! CRAZY DAYZ.

Wait a second, did I just understand Argyris’ reading and write a blog post about it? Did I just feel the edge of the foam pit on the tip of my finger? Did I reach my goal? How Ironic!

This is the most confusing and paradoxical blog post in the history of blog posts.

Have a lovely day.

CLICK HERE TO GO ON A MARATHON IN A FOAM PIT YOURSLEF!