Personally, I hate e-books. No matter the hours a day I spend on a computer without my eyes hurting, the minute I try to get down to some serious reading, my eyes start to scream. Books were made to be held, to have the pages rustle as you flip them, to have that sweet heady, old, back-in-time, scent, and to be treasured, swapped, given, but never lost. You can give a book for a present, but would you give someone a USB with a bunch of PDFs on it for their birthday? I don’t think so!

Doesn’t that just prove to you the value of books?

But of course, I like the idea of e-books. The idea that we’re able to carry an entire library in the palm of our hands, and never having to deal with the discomfort of having dog-eared pages. It’s smart, compact, convenient… I get it. And it’ll probably take over as the main source of reading distribution. But much like the vinyl record, the book is never going away.

similarly to the spaces in a comic book, all work relies on “the gap”- the space between action in which an audience needs to assume what happens. These assumptions are based on past experience and cultural context, so it would make sense that we read “not with the intent of the author”. We apply our own learnings to these situations- say in one frame, we see someone holding a gun, then the screen goes to black, and we hear a gunshot- we can only assume who was shot, and we make these assumptions based on our knowledge of our surroundings.

This is used frequently in drama television; Grey’s Anatomy, Gossip Girl, and all the other typical girl shows I watch. Then again, it also happens at the end of GTA III. Luckily, in TV shows, we are given closure when the next episode comes out and we finally see what happened.

And that’s how hypertext works too, hypertext leaves way for recurrence, and takes away the linearity of text- because we are the active audience, we make the narrative choices, we [somewhat] control the story, just reducing “the gap”.

In this video, Sir Ken Robinson suggests that we are born as artists, and we are “educated” out of creativity. He also comments on the hierarchy of subjects in schools; how writing and arithmetics are seen as the most important, and arts is seen as the least important. Even within arts, visual arts and music are seen as more important than dance or drama.

It’s an interesting concept, and I agree completely. That mainstream education puts a heavy focus on the 3 R’s (reading, writing and arithmetic) rather than subjects that require a creative input, such as vis-comm, arts, drama and even home-ec.

I know this was a serious issue in my high school. When I was in year 11, we had a big group of students leave to pursue more specialised fields of study including cheerleading, dance, electrical, theatre studies, and music production/composition. When I was still in primary school, my high school stood as one of the best in the state, in terms of achieving the highest VCE results. But now, my old school doesn’t even make the top 50. It’s probably because there has been a huge pressure from students to cater to the creative needs of students. With shows like “Glee” and “MasterChef” that encourage creativity, students are more inclined to explore and discover the arts.

I remember vividly in year 8, when choosing my electives for year 9, I so desperately wanted to pick Media, Textiles and Visual Communication as my electives, but my parents strongly suggested I pick commerce, or advanced maths. However, I ended up compromising. Over the course of years 9 and 10, I studied advanced english, maths and science, media, commercial design, food technology, commerce, and LOTE. Of course, I understood the importance of my english, maths and science, as I needed to get the foundation right if i wanted to do well in VCE, so i worked hard on them, and enjoyed my creative subjects as a “hobby”. But that’s the thing… I focused on my english and maths because apparently in life, that’s what counts. Notice how maths subjects such as Methods and Specialist scale up when you get your ATAR? and how any of the Arts and Humanities scale down?

We are brought up to believe that certain subjects are more important; that certain skills are more important, and if we don’t strive in these categories, we will not be successful in life. That’s a little unfair, isn’t it?

Something that caught my attention from the 4th week lecture was the idea that a humanities person is trained to “talk about dead things”. We address all the things that are dead, and of the past, and brainstorm what isn’t dead; what is unborn, and what is yet to arise. Adrian proposed that design is a practice that is future-oriented. I can form the links between these two statements and the past readings on double-loop learning and design fiction. It’s like a more comprehensive way of saying “think outside the box”. This also ties in with the statement that Adrian made about design being “fashionable”. Think about it.

Fashion goes through phases. Platform disco shoes, flared pants, halter-necked, tie up tops, jeans and runners (ugh), gladiator sandals, leopard print, etc. Now think about the current trends- khaki anoraks, metallic studs, disco pants, creepers, button-up shirts, skater dresses, velvet everything, chunky-heeled shoes. All of these things that come in and out of fashion are remakes of past trends. Fashion designers recycle trends. They bring up old fashion statements and re-dress them. But it’s not considered recycling. It’s revolutionary. It’s an upgrade. And that’s what design is. It’s an upgrade. A change, an improvement, and a refreshing take to further society. Like a smart phone. It’s an upgrade in comparison to an actual phone. Something that has been around for years. But what is considered old news, is tweaked. It’s changed, improved, and is a refreshing take on phones, in order to push society. And it was considered revolutionary. So what’s to say that the next “big thing” is actually going to be that revolutionary? It’ll probably be a take on something that already exists. But duh, how do you think we got plasma screen TV’s? How did we get new seasons of 90210? How did we get Macbooks and MP3s and even toe-socks? Design fiction. Like Brian suggested, design fiction won’t solve all the world’s problems in one go. Design is also a slow process. Things evolve bit by bit, and nothing is ever “perfect”. And I agree with the suggestion that the focus of design fiction should be more centred around the changes in society rather than the developments of new technologies.