Regina has an excellent discussion about the importance of the ‘gap’. Where something isn’t quite explained enough or isn’t explained at all. Even in very easy to understand stories there are gaps (how did the character get from their home to the hotel?), but gaps are fundamental. One measure of how sophisticated a work is simply in how large (or vague) the gaps are. Poetry is more ‘gappy’ than prose, and James Joyce is more ‘gappy’ than Bryce Courtenay.
Still Just Things?
Jake on subscription services versus owning the ‘real’ thing. Ideally you would like to have both options, wouldn’t you? One for die hard collectors, the other for those that just enjoy access and to have the stuff ‘follow’ you around on your devices (the cloud + ubiquitous network).
Intent
Abby with notes from unsymposium 0.2, picking up that intent (and context) is no guarantee of anything, and that hypertext (and I’d add other poststructural ways of writing) willing embraces this.
Oyster 2
Patrick writes about the Oyster service and wonders why it might not be available to an ereader like the Kindle. The simple answer is that Kindle is a very closed platform, there is no app store for kindle, it is in that sense a one trick pony. The better answer though is that by tying it to iOS (I’d expect android to follow) then, unlike the Kindle, a whole slew of social services become available in the future. Want to remember where you read, that book. Done. Want to share what books you’ve read? Done. Want to share passages from a book through the service, or via Twitter? Done. Want to let your friends know what you’re reading, or even share, on the train, what others on the train are reading? Done. That’s the quick obvious list…
Oyster 2
Patrick writes about the Oyster service and wonders why it might not be available to an ereader like the Kindle. The simple answer is that Kindle is a very closed platform, there is no app store for kindle, it is in that sense a one trick pony. The better answer though is that by tying it to iOS (I’d expect android to follow) then, unlike the Kindle, a whole slew of social services become available in the future. Want to remember where you read, that book. Done. Want to share what books you’ve read? Done. Want to share passages from a book through the service, or via Twitter? Done. Want to let your friends know what you’re reading, or even share, on the train, what others on the train are reading? Done. That’s the quick obvious list…
The Long Tail
Lina has a nice dot point summary of the points. The next step is to think about the significance of this, as it turns out that this is the characteristic of what are known as ‘scale free networks’ of which the web is one. Lina, again, who enjoyed the Watts’ reading, with more notes and comments. Arthur has some ramblings on the Watts reading too, and yes, socially we have strong and weak connections, and there are dense clusters which is how the world becomes small (the six degrees scenario).
Oyster, Unlimited Books on your Phone
Relevant to recent discussions here, oyster is a service that let’s you subscribe for $10 a month and it works like a book library. Get as many books as you like. It is like last.fm or spotify for books, haven’t looked at it yet but the design experience looks good. The article on wired is worth a read.
Things to notice. It is not selling books, it is selling a service. It relies on mobile media, it is not selling ‘things’, it is subscription based which means an ongoing revenue model.
07 Reading (for week 8)
All of this week’s readings come from the one source, network scientist Laszlo Barabasi. The thread here continues the last lot of readings as we learn about loose ties, small world scale free networks, and the power law distribution. This is science about the ‘network’ in general, and the ‘laws’ or rules described I believe apply all the way from an individual hypertextual work (including the video works you are likely to make next year), through to a network like Facebook, and the Web in general. In other words the ideas and principals described here work at different structural levels.
Key Readings
Barabási, Albert-László. “The 80/20 Rule”. Linked: How Everything Is Connected to Everything Else and What It Means for Business, Science, and Everyday Life. New York, NY: A plume book, 2003. Print. (PDF)
Barabási, Albert-László. “Rich Get Richer”. Linked: How Everything Is Connected to Everything Else and What It Means for Business, Science, and Everyday Life. New York, NY: A plume book, 2003. Print. (PDF)
Optional Reading
This is from earlier parts of the same book. Back story if you’re interested.
Barabási, Albert-László. Extracts Linked: How Everything Is Connected to Everything Else and What It Means for Business, Science, and Everyday Life. New York, NY: A plume book, 2003. Print. (PDF)
Unsymposium 0.4
The questions that one of the Thursday classes has raised (they’re an interesting set of questions by the way) are:
- What kind of genre is an interactive documentary? Is it still a documentary, or would you say that it is a new genre because of the hypertextual interface?
- If, “Interactive narratives have no singular, definitive beginnings and endings,” then what would be the constraints for an author of interactive media to control the interpretation of a narrative?
- What benefits and drawbacks does the ability for the user to determine narrative progression create?
- Can video games be considered hypertext narratives? How/why?
- How do you actually write a hypertext narrative?
- Why is hypertext considered influential in the future development of media making and storytelling?