Hello my Interwebs!

How have you been? Good? Good.

I am literally the laziest person to ever walk to earth right now cause I’m attempting to complete work from week 6. Don’t hate me for posting this so late and for it popping up on your reading list-thing (I dunno). Plus it took me a solid 5 minutes to dig up posts from that week, so there we go! That’s my punishment right there.

Marcus talks about how despite those who think that books will “disappear” he thinks that they will continue to live in our lives. I agree, I have always been a book person and I’ve never enjoyed ebooks or audio books for that matter, I think it’s because I’m a visual person I prefer the comfort of reading rather than looking at a screen. Each to their own I say.

Monique writes an entire post composed of all three aspects that we need completed per week – because she’s clever and not lazy, unlike me – she agrees that the “possibilities are unless” when it comes to the untapped world of hypertext and the plethora of things that we can achieve. I am, personally still coming to grips with the way hypertext and hyperlinks work, so I honestly can’t begin to imagine what we can achieve with it.

Claudia after completing the reading asks the question:

When do you decide that you are at the end?

Does the reader become the author?

Once you’re finished, what happens if you pick up the book again and are in a different mood? Won’t that change the ending you have created?

Which are some pretty top-notch questions if you’d ask me, when I read the book I usually accept the ending that the author has given me, and I only ever re-read the book so I can experience the same feeling I gained from when I first completed the book. I mean for those who’ve read Harry Potter, don’t tell me that you’ve never skipped to the end of The Deathly Hallows just so you can experience that tearful moment when Harry, Ron and Hermione end their tale and that they’ll never be another book again. *tears*

Here’s an hilariously adorable picture so no one can get mad or annoyed at me for being so behind –>

Mwah~

Allo my little Interwebs,

I’m the worst student in the world, because I have about 3 blogs to write and about an hour to write them. Joy. Time to start smashing them out like candy I guess. (But shhh, don’t tell my teachers!!). During week 6 our readings talked about the restraints of print literacy and how we interact with stories and/or books.

One main point that stood out to me was “interactive literacy” and that books were “primitive” because they “restricted” us. It got me thinking about how much literature has changed over the past few years just because on the internet and technology developments. Apple came out with iBooks and along with that some interactive textbooks for students to use. A couple of years back I came across a story about a young girl who was raised to be a sacrifice in a Pagan-cult town, purely printed online and free (It was a strange story, I’m not sure if you could find it again). Even these days at uni I prefer to type my notes and read my readings online rather than printing them out, however if you were to place my laptop in front of my parents the first they would request would be a pen, paper and a print out copy of my notes. But then, to us, that’s restrictive, if we write in pen, we’ve made a possibly permanent error on our page and cleaning it up would just be a bigger hassle.

Another thing it made me think about was video games, yep, those small cartridges that hold so many hours upon themselves. I am personally a HUGE fan of video games, especially those with a good storyline. So after reading the two chapters it got me thinking: are some video games a form of storytelling? There are even games where you’re forced to make decisions and then your ending will be based upon those choices you make, which can be fun… unless you’re indecisive. I mean for goodness sakes there’s even dating sims!! In Japan there are literally games where you make choices and attempt to gain the attention of a partner within the game, which, if it wasn’t for the fact that some creepy guy married his DS is actually a rather good testament for how far we’ve come from day to day books.

Hey Interwebs,

So during this weeks symposium/lecture we once again like the past many weeks answered the questions provided for us by another class:

• Can technology progress independently of art and culture?
• What is the untapped potential of hypertext?  Will we ever be satisfied with it?
• Have internet users lost a sense of privacy?  Is blogging a form of narcissism?

These questions sparked a large amount of debate, especially between Adrian and Betty who seemed to “agree to disagree” as they explained to us. The first question was already borderline “philosophical”, it brought us the idea of what differentiated art and culture with technology? Was there a culture out there that doesn’t have technology? The Ancient Egyptians had highly sophisticated forms of medicine, economy and art which allowed them to thrive for a long period of time. Whilst the Greeks were beyond their years when it came to mathematical and scientific discovery. These cultures definitely lived alongside not only art but technology, without it neither they or us would have the theories and knowledge we have today.

Then there comes the discussion of tools and technology. Is a tool a piece of technology? Are they the same thing? Well it depends, Betty said that she firmly believed that they were not the same thing, a tool can be used to create art, such as a paint brush, pen or pencil however that does not make it a technology and therefore technology and art are independent. (Wow this is getting so complicated…)

Anyways, the next question revolved around the idea of the potential of hypertext, now I’m still a little iffy about what EXACTLY hypertext, it’s kinda like I know but I don’t know the specifics of it? But it was argued that some guy called Ted Nelson (whom I just did a reading on) was a little annoyed because the link between two texts were only a one way street rather then a communication line. Therefore is one text is deleted then the whole link itself is… as oppose to?? I mean, even if it were a two way street if one side of the link was destroyed then what would happen to the link itself? Either way the link would disappear, would it not? Or maybe I’ve just missed something along the way (probably…).

Moving on… After this week I’ll have my mid-semester break! Can you believe it? Already halfway through the semester!!