I’m feeling thoroughly confused about hypertext the more I read about it. To me it seems like it is one of those things that you have to be enveloped in to understand – from the examples I’ve read online I feel I have an understanding of what hypertext is, however the theory surrounding it is exhausting.
I gather the non-linear aspect and the challenging of the narrative and the literary form – something I find quite interesting and amazing: how can people make these beautiful and intricate stories that can be read like a pretzel and still make sense?! But personally I’m still drawn to the story as a having a distinct thread, a definitive sense of change and growth, however I’m willing to admit that that may be simply because that’s all I’ve ever been taught before: the linear is ingrained just as the essay, just as the one size fits all approach to education.
A big design fiction-esque question raised in Landow‘s piece on hypertext is how it might affect the literary form. Blogs may be a perfect form to me at the moment. I love the idea of being able to read a piece with a definitive beginning and ending, yet also given the option to explore within the story. I can come back to the section I was up to, or I can read from start to end and then go through the 57 tabs I opened.
I like the idea that “hypertext … makes certain elements … stand out the first time” – going back to the blog example, there’s something about the blue underlined text that encapsulates the same way the yellow highlighted section in a reading does.
“Hypertext story space is multidimensional and theoretically infinite.”
Sometimes I finally feel like I understand hypertext, then go on a website devoted to a hypertext story and all I feel is welling rage and fury because I DON’T UNDERSTAND.
I’m trying to remember that it’s not broken just because it’s uncomfortable, to make it relevant, and just because I don’t get it doesn’t mean it’s ‘bad’, but this is a hard practice when my precious scaffolding of beginning, middle, end is taken away. I’m acknowledging I like the scaffolding.
Ok breathe Zo, breathe. Douglas‘ explanation of the Titanic choose-your-own-adventure actually sounds really cool: “It is 9.30PM: you have slightly more than four hours to wend your way through a series of tortuous plots and subplots, deciding which to follow and which to bypass, before the ship begins her plunge to the ocean floor.”
Hmm, perhaps hypertext has a place in theme park type scenarios? What if that Titanic CD-ROM could be played out in a theme park inside a huge ship, with its “elegiac music,” “eight decks of public rooms” and “well-written characters”.
I’m intrigued by Douglas’ question of whether future readers will read print works differently to how they do now with the increase in interactive mediums. This is very interesting, and now I am recalling my feelings of inadequacy at predicting the future. I’m sure it’s true that I listen to a vinyl record differently to how my father would have in the 70s – I can pick the differences between the vinyl and an mp3, which I am accustomed to, with ease. I too wonder what specifics will be picked up when future readers read a print text, just as I can get transfixed on the sound of the needle being placed on a record, or that unique sound of dust that doesn’t exist in a digital rendering.
I’ve been a bit slow on the uptake this week with my readings and lecture posts, but they are coming I swear! This subject has caused me to stew endlessly about topics I didn’t realise I was interested in but then ultimately just re-post interesting things I find online as my thoughts are stars I cannot fathom into constellations. (Ie, I spend too much time on Tumblr.)
I’ve been looking back over the first couple of weeks of this course, and I’m struck at how simple but profound it is to make the content relevant. In one of my typical mid-semester uni meltdowns about the future and whyyyyy is life so hard, I was brought some kind of solace in Adrian’s words from week three (possibly not verbatim, please forgive my note-taking skills): We are invited to dance. We don’t know how the dance goes; we don’t even know the first steps. But this is not a reason not to dance.
So with these words and a constructivist perspective in mind, really all that is left to do, is do. We learn by doing, we learn by making. In making we show our thinking, and fwock all I do is think/overthink. The only way to learn to ride a bike is by riding a bike. <Insert more cliches that are actually insightful and helping me with my life here>
How am I supposed to know what I want to do or at least in what direction I want to take my life and career without experimenting and trying out different things? We considered in the first week why we are at university, and I think that might be a big factor: the opportunities for experimenting and playing with different fields are almost endless. RMIT definitely know what they are doing in that regard.
The last few weeks have also seen me ask myself ‘What if’ more times than I care to admit, and outside of a design framework this question is easily applied to life. What if I joined this club, or wrote this article, or posted this clip I’ve been sitting on for months, too embarrassed about what might come of it. Embarrassment is overrated. There’s no time like now to be brave, and what is the worst that could happen? Yes, publishing online is permanent and media professionals success and failure is largely based on reputation, but who is going to fault someone for trying something new, taking a risk. There’s nobody I admire more than those willing to put themselves out there, take the fall, laugh at themselves when it all goes wrong.
I’ve had a few projects on the back-burner for a while and I’ve been inspired to bring them out. I hope you don’t judge me too harshly. What if we all just took the leap? Why shouldn’t we just do it?
Life is a mess. But I don’t think that’s necessarily, or even at all, a negative thing.
Here is a thing I did – from my current scrapbook/ideas/notebook: my original ‘blog’
Reading Weinberger’s ‘Small Pieces Loosely Joined’ I’m drawn to the idea of the internet allowing you to “‘try on’ a personality.” Although AOL’s golden era of 1999 has passed, we’re still able to ‘try on’ different personas, or even simply act/write/share differently depending on the audience the medium might afford. Personally I have two Tumblrs, both anonymous, with one themed and one that is basically used to waste time scrolling, reblogging gifs and over-sharing my at least 12 feelings late at night. In contrast, different personas are experimented with over other platforms: Twitter, Facebook, different blogs. Similarly, .Zannah has her two web pages, which Weinberger fittingly describes as “the views two different friends might have of her.”
a majestic stealthy cold blooded killer
This idea of experimentation and play threads back to design fiction, and could prove a useful tool in these diegetic prototypes.
Weinberger does raise the question that may well keep me up all night tonight though:
The very basics of what it means to have a self-identity through time – an “inner” consistency, a core character from which all else springs – are in question on the Web.
What is my online identity when I have so many facets online, or even day-to-day? I know I act differently around different audiences, my parents versus my best friends versus strangers for example, just as I post different content on distinct platforms.
This reading also alludes to four key ideas which I find quite interesting that disconnects the Web from ‘the real world’:
Space – the Web is a space that occupies no space.
Time – we determine when and how long we will participate based solely on what suits us.
Self – as mentioned above, we adopt names, identities and personas.
Knowledge – the lively plurality of voices sometimes can and should outweigh the stentorian voice of experts.
_________
The article also explores if the internet is making us more or less social, which reminded me of a post I made in early 2012 on Media Musings. I’ll post it below:
It’s a little bit (or a lot) one-sided at the moment, but you have the ability to reply to what I say, and I can respond back again in the comments section. I can find my peers’ blogs, and we can converse and share our opinions there.
“We are tempted to think that our little “sips” of online connection add up to a big gulp of real conversation. But they don’t. E-mail, Twitter, Facebook, all of these have their places — in politics, commerce, romance and friendship. But no matter how valuable, they do not substitute for conversation.”
“The internet connects us to the entire world, but it is a world bespoke, edited, deleted, sanitised. … There is no time for the thesis, antithesis, synthesis of Socratic dialogue, the skeleton of true conversation.”
It’s a concept that’s been around for a while: The Week’s 2010 blog laments that “twenty-somethings are just illiterate in the nonverbal language that much of our social and workplace lives runs on” because of iPhones and Facebook, while Socrates even had an aversion to the newest technology of the time: ”[It] destroys memory [and] weakens the mind, relieving it of…work that makes it strong. [It] is an inhuman thing.” (Socrates was talking about writing!)
The apparent long lost art of conversation courtesy of Search Engine People Blog via Flickr
It seems every so often an, dare I say it, ‘older’ person, perhaps a generation or two above the generation they are criticising, will bemoan the technological devices of the present day and idealise the past. There’s always the “good old days,” the “back in my day,” the pre-text, pre-email, pre-writing era.
But I think what they look past is that the internet is a whole different world for everyone, and is especially beneficial for those who need an outlet of expression or support not afforded to them in the physical world.
Forums allow everyone from students to transgender people to those living with mental illness to converse, perhaps in a way that is impossible in the ‘real’ world. To say these conversations are less fulfilling and important than face-to-face ones, ignores and dismisses the reality and worth of these people’s lives.
Modern day “conversation”? Courtesy of Bright Meadow via Flickr
Personally, I feel increasing portals of social media (ironic it’s called “social” media, no?) herald the death of connection over conversation.
Social media means the conversation never stops, never sleeps. It’s being connected to someone on a real and deep level that seems to have been misplaced.
I’m talking connecting, not in the technological sense, not in the weird Avatar connecting your hair to a tree/animal/other person sense (unless you’re using that metaphorically, then that could be quite nice), but in the deeply humanistic sense.
As much of a dork as I sound, I mean on the mind, body and soul level.
I can count my close friends on my hands, and most of them are the people I went to school with and saw every single day for five years, while my Facebook friends number into the hundreds.
Heaps of Facebook friends, how many real ones? Courtesy of dan taylor via Flickr
I never find myself stumped for conversation with these Facebook friends, or with the people I follow on Twitter or Tumblr, but I don’t feel truly connected with any of them.
Here she is, the ‘CLAY KNOWLEDGE‘. (All capital letters, thank you very much. As Gaga would say, it’s about the details.)
I hope Adrian doesn’t mind as I’ve taken this concept directly from his own post about the knowledge of clay, and I think it’s a pretty accurate representation of what this blog will be: thickly messy.
Spin it, pound it, fire it, paint it. Use tools, fingers, hands, palms, fire, water, colour. It is thickly messy. That is knowledge. Information? That’s the clay, as a lump and not anything yet. The potter, well, there’s knowledge there, and in the hands, and in the clay.
Smack your clay. Throw it firmly from hand to hand, smacking it into a ball shape.
Dry your wheel. This will help the ball of clay adhere to the wheel once it starts spinning. The last thing you want is a ball of wet clay flying across the room.
Have some water. Place a bucket of water where you can easily reach it to wet your hands while you work.
Throw the clay. Throw down the ball of clay as close to the center of the wheel as you can, then press it down into a conical shape.
Start spinning. As you build up speed, wet the clay, and with one hand on the side of the clay lump, and the other side on top of it, ease the clump towards the middle. Use the upper hand to keep the clay from flying out of control.
You can tell the clay is centered when it no longer looks like it’s wobbling, but sitting stationary in the center of the spinning wheel. Don’t stop spinning.
Wet your hands. Then work the clay into a cone, then press it down into a thick disk. Repeat this step a couple times.
Push a thumb into the middle of the spinning mass.
Push 4 fingers into the hole, and work them around until the hole is as big as you would like. Continue working the hole, using a hand on the outside of the clay to shape your pot.
Work slowly. Gradually pull the clay up with even pressure, until it’s the desired height.
Spread the top. If you want it a bit wider at the neck, just pull back with your inside fingers. Don’t do it too hard.
Remove the finished pot from the wheel. Wet the wheel (not the pot) and using a stiff wire or fishing line, and holding it with both hands, pull it from the back the pot towards you until the pot is separate from the wheel.
Follow the manufacturer’s instructions for finishing and firing your clay pot.
