a different kind of reading this week. this one didn’t go on for ever and make no sense. although, i can’t really say i understood this one much, it kinda seemed to ramble and be a little incoherent at times. but at least they were kind enough to break it up into 8 relatively short pages with pretty pictures on the side.

so, what did i learn from this reading. to be brutally honest, not much. but i’m still here so i shall soldier on! it was about databases…. i think. i never really got what it was actually about. but the heading of the thing said databases so i kinda assumed that that is what every point was talking about. below are some of the interesting points and quotes that i took from the reading

“While plot provides important tags (hero, villain), schemas (goals, obstacles) and navigation instructions (genre), it is ultimately the cognitive and emotional investment of the receiver of plot – the subjective associations, desires, visualizations, decodings and fast searches – that transforms a mere series of selected details into a story network that is always more than the sum of its parts.

“Paradigm, the multiple relational aspects of story elements, becomes visible in a database; and syntagm, narrative sequence, is suppressed.

“Interface design, like production design in movies, is an art to primarily guide attention as it flows through and around multiple elements on a screen.

“graphic devices are integral to reading and understanding all narrative texts. One begins a book by looking over the table of contents, assessing the length and count of chapters and sub-chapters

“Before social media, friends shared photo prints and videos, but they often did so as ritualistic forms of linear storytelling: narrators addressing an attentive audience. Now, online friends post tagged sets of travel photos to social networks, often as events happen, and hope for conversations to start. While both methods speak of the desire to shape and communicate experience, the former uses media as illustration (and mnemonic device) for linear storytelling and the latter presents media as an interface to the unfolding “story” of experience itself.