Lesson 1.2 – Question 7
Digital technology is an amazing advancement that is completely altering the way we experience literature. In this medium, words are no longer just marks on a page. Instead they can be portals to just about anything: other webpages, pictures, or even a musical accompaniment. Beyond this, moving GIFs, recorded videos, or unique page layout can completely alter the reader’s experiences and impressions. In this sense, there can be a whole new world hidden in the text of another.
Hypertext has also had a massive effect on the unique quality of digital literature. Through hypertext, words can carry multiple meanings or provide more information. With the click of a mouse or the tap of a finger on a touchscreen, hypertext adds an entirely different dimension to our literature. Hypertext can be an incredible learning tool. When I was in fourth grade, I discovered one of my favourite books of all time, Watership Down, in my school’s library. I remember when I read the book I had no idea what a cowslip was. I figured it was a plant of some kind, but I assumed that it was just a special type of grass. If I could have clicked on the word cowslip and be taken to a picture of an actual cowslip, as has just happened here, I would have known instead that cowslip was a small bulb of yellow flowers and my visualization of the novel would have been quite different. In the future, I would love to see digital children’s stories that include this use of hypertext.
References:
Adams, Richard. Watership Down. Google Books.
Cowslip Image. PlantLife. PlantLife.org.uk.
Disney Songs. “Aladdin – A Whole New World”. YouTube. YouTube, 8 December 2008.
Jack Douglass on YouTube. YouTube.
Philip DeFranco on YouTube. YouTube.
Twitter Website. Twitter.
Widrich, Leo. “Every 60 Seconds 175,000 Tweets Are Sent”. Buffer. BufferApp, 27 February 2012.
YouTube Website. YouTube.
đ Some great links here: Jack Douglas – new to me – love it, thank you.
Ummmm – this is blog 1:2 đ
Hi Shannon! Thanks for pointing out the pros and cons of self-publishing online. I can see how Twitter can be a problem- it’s difficult to filter out quality posts vs. lower calibre material. Even though I love using Twitter and I get a lot of my news from there, one of the problems I have with it is seeing some of the trending topics. A lot of the trends are about things I personally couldn’t care about, such as boy bands (ahem One Direction). In fact, the top worldwide trend right now is #SkinFor1D, with the second being #RIPMayaAngelou. And when I click on the top trend, all I see are massive fangirl tweets. Bleh. On the same page, one of the other problems with Twitter is that people keep killing off celebrities this way. I’m not even sure how, or why people start them.
However, I do really appreciate the fact that people who self-publish online can be much more “real” by connecting to their audience. Last night, I went to watch a show by a YouTube artist (Tyler Ward) at Fortune Sound Club. One of the reasons why I really enjoyed it was because he really connected to the audience. He also had everyone heavily engaged, even bringing some of them up onstage. In comparison to some of the bigger name concerts at larger venues I’ve been to (Rogers Arena), the artists who perform there lack/have a lesser connection to the audience. I suppose that when one goes through a publisher/middleman, some of that potential interconnection is lost.
You make some good points with this blog post; you focus right down on the absence of a mediator between write and reader: the publisher. As you know from my discussions, I too see this as one of the most significant impacts that the www and social media applications have on writing and reading (along with the hyperlink and the inclusion of visual and audio elements).
I want to give you some advice about they way you phrase/think through your discussion. You write:
âIn my opinion, this can be both a good and a bad thing.â
Instead of framing your insights as âopinionsâ and instead of articulating judgments âgood and badâ â try to begin to think in terms of âperspectivesâ and âdifferencesâ â but not attached to ideas of good and bad â just different. In this case, you would be discussing two different perspectives on the value of the www and social media applications. The value of examining perspectives in place of âopinionsâ is that it is easier to allow yourself to have two different perspectives, and also enlarges the possibility of âlistening and hearingâ different perspectives than your own. And, the value of removing judgments and instead examining differences is that you might just open up a space for common ground between different perspectives; an intersection. This is something I write about on this weekâs blog â so please do go there Monday morning. Thanks.
I am going to use this following paragraph to demonstrate what I am trying to express:
Of course, the self-publishing freedom that the internet provides also has a negative effect on the overall quality of the literature that is put out. Twitter is an excellent example of this. Because of its 140 character allowance, many of the âtweetsâ posted are of extremely low quality. Also, because anyone can create an account and post content on Twitter, the website is flooded with posts. This makes it much more difficult to find quality among the more than 150000 tweets that are published every minute. While before publishing companies were in place to ensure only quality literature was published, now we find ourselves responsible for distinguishing between the quality posts in a sea of tweets.
Clearly, Twittering is a very different experience than reading literature? Indeed, the art of the 140 character Twitter can be as exciting as a great poem â in the hands of a Twitter artist. But, not everyone is an artist! As well, Twittering is not just a different genre from literature; likewise, the Tweet has different purposes and goals then a poem or a novel. And, by denying Twittering itâs own identity â you also deny the values inherent in the Tweet in so many different circumstances: public demonstrations are one of the first things that comes to my mind. Tweeting has a powerful role in democracy building. Do you get my point? Do you see the dangers involved when we dichotomize like this â applying the same set of measurements to two different thing so we can argue one is good, the other is bad? Too often the âthing/person/poem that is bad is never measured for the worth it/they have to offer. Tweeting has its values, and it is not a âbadâ thing because it is different.