Hypercompendia

I was happily surprised to not only see my great-niece Zoee since she’s in a Navy family so I don’t get to see her and her brother and sister growing up but exciting to see that she’s, at fifteen and likely a junior, doing film projects for school. (She’s the shortest one–which cracked me up since that’s from our side of the family!)

I really like the fact that new media is being made available as courses in the high schools; this evidently was “Intro to Film and Video, and Zoee along with three friends produced this as a class project back in January. Particularly at the high school level–and probably earlier as well–and with kids so savvy now about technology, such courses are fun as well as necessary entry points into the college and career field of choices.

Hooray for this Tennessee high school!

This morning I received an e-mail from Amazon.com where I frequently purchase books.

Dear Amazon.com Customer,
As someone who has purchased or rated books by Roland Barthes, you might like to know that Health Insurance And Health Savings Account Made Easy is now available. You can order yours for just $9.95 by following the link below.

I’m still trying to figure out the connection between Barthes and Health Insurance and even with the longest stretch, I cannot see one. So? Obviously a sales gimmick to push a current hot topic on some configuration of their customers.

This is what bothers me about social networking and internet identifiers. Bad enough that folks don’t seem to “get” us in real life, but on the net where we’ve so carefully (and carelessly) let ourselves be judged by what we write, link to, photo-share, and buy? The old Animals’ tune is running around in my mind: “I’m just a soul whose intentions are good/Oh Lord, please don’t let me be misunderstood.” It’s one of our  fears, for many of us, one of our biggest.

So is an internet identity as cool as we think? Is what we put out there–real or wishful fantasy–something we want hanging in cyberspace well beyond our own physical presence has mouldered (or been crispy-fried) away? Interesting, this new technology, eh?

Excellent post from Tale of Tales on the history, the rise and fall, the pros and cons, of producing a “new” style of video game not for the gamer perhaps as much as to reach and appeal to the non-gamer audience.

I found it interesting for many reasons but basically two: 1) a high degree of interest in the game once I saw the trailer and the exquisite graphics and work that went into this, and 2) I’m facing the same dilemma in literary hypertext. Shall I continue to bother “breaking into” the reading audience that chooses romance, sci-fi, or whatever’s trendy and appeal to their interests which I’ll try to appease, or do I write for the experienced hypertext reader, i.e., the academic, the new media or contemporary literature professors, or the coding folk.

This also caught my eye within the article:

But all the modelers we tested just couldn’t get the style right. To create stylized characters for a horror game that are not cartoony but still attractive, is apparently a skill not taught in 3D academies. Part of the reason probably was that we only got male candidates. Our experience with finding our wonderful animator Laura Raines Smith had taught us that it takes a woman to animate girls properly. Maybe it takes a woman to model girls as well. We don’t blame the men. We blame the fact that more women don’t choose 3D modeling as a career!

Ah, but there for the span of thirty years, would I be.

Found on Dark Roasted Blend, the Great Sperm Race: The Most Extreme Race on Earth which has a lot of the screen shots of the forthcoming National Geographic program which will be aired tomorrow, Sunday, March 14th at 9 p.m.

This looks like an amazingly different take on the topic of reproduction, judging from the photos, but it is put out in an interesting and imaginative manner. The images reminded me somewhat of an old Woody Allen movie that had a particularly hysterical scene wherein Allen and others, all dressed as sperm cells, were arguing over the ejaculation and journey to the womb.

To bring back some of the fun–check out the game on the National Geographic site; I almost knocked over my laptop when I bonked my sperm into the vaginal wall. Then, when I got my laughter back into a reasonable semblance of gameplay and moved on, I killed it with oozy acid. Too funny.

Thought I’d point to an interview I recently did over at Fictionaut about hypertext and new media in general. I had formed a Hypertext Group within this online writers colony and am thrilled to encourage interest and find a receptive and curious audience there.

At Facebook there is some commentary between myself and Finnegan Flawnt, who just recently started playing with the Tinderbox program, that entertains the question of new media being metafictional by nature. It is worth thinking about, if perhaps even the simplest hypertext is in fact calling attention to the act of writing by its visual invitation to interact with the text.

We’ve gotten used to seeing text as thoughts and read them not as signs and symbolic marks upon a background (think of looking at a page of Chinese writing when you can’t read the language), but see the idea presented in the pattern formed by the letters. Possibly seeing beyond the words and sentences to the images they represent. Hypertext includes links within text of a different and obvious color that is saying something about the text itself and the process of reading it, rather than merely being a part of the story. It’s talking directly to the reader. It’s an interesting way of looking at new media, particularly when it includes audio and visual effects that further call attention to the experience. Is it screaming, louder than the story it presents, “Look at me, I’m a story!”?

Two interesting articles today on the neverending speculations about what e-books will do to change reading habits:

John T brings up the NPR note that focuses on Amazon’s reader and this statement by a writer:

“Over the last couple of years, I’ve really noticed if I sit down with a book, after a few paragraphs, I’ll say, ‘You know, where’s the links? Where’s the e-mail? Where’s all the stuff going on?’ ” says writer Nicholas Carr. “And it’s kind of sad.”

But I find that to be a back and forth switch that toggles itself depending upon which method of reading is being done. If I’m reading “straight” text for a while–a while meaning anyplace from an hour to a couple days–I’m momentarily stumped by finding links in a hypertext piece–and here, I’m talking seconds of indecision. Then back to straight reading where I will indeed be looking for links, as Carr notes. Though not with the sense of sadness, but rather mere readjustment to the medium.

Then this in MacWorld:  “Sales of electronic books topped their paper-based cousins for the first time this past Christmas day, according to Amazon.com”  With the caveat:

“Given the timing of the event, it’s likely that the spike in e-book sales recorded by Amazon was due primarily to the high number of gift recipients who opened up the brand-new Kindles they found under their Christmas trees; nonetheless, this milestone could represent a watershed event for the inexorable rise of e-book readers in general, and the Kindle in particular.”

Yes, that would explain a good portion of it. It’s the typical case of receiving the expensive medium as a gift and then need to feed its hunger with the software.

I don’t know why we’re really even arguing at this early stage of the transition. Any innovation that changes society’s manner of “doing” necessarily involves a bit of generational changing of the guard. Grandpa doesn’t always give up Old Nellie for the Model T that easily. Not by choice, perhaps, but by habit, income restrictions (think about how upgrading even a home use computer is a major decision when old programs won’t work anymore with Bill’s latest software releases) and a small percentage by stubborn resistance or by mere desire to remain in one’s comfort zone of familiarity.

Time will tell, then; though I believe that while all the old literature slowly finds its way onto disk and internet servers, there will always be shelves built for books.

Every now and then Chris Crawford’s Storytron comes back to mind and it’s what I thought of this morning when I ran into this note on my newsfeed on a game called “Spirited Heart.”

Spirited Heart is a fantasy life sim game. You’ll be able to create your alter ego choosing from 3 races: Human, Elf and Demon. Each race has different starting attributes, and unique dialogues and events, so if you play with a different race you’ll see different in-game situations.

You can see where I mentally linked the this with Storytron, in the mention of “Each race has different starting attributes” so that events will play out according to certain predetermined conditions that need to align. I’m sure this is nowhere near as calculated and intricate as Crawford’s work which he and his team have put years of effort and intelligence into.

Time perhaps for me to revisit Storytron and other exciting ventures such as Facade that are at the forefront of new discoveries in gaming and new media.

Just a reminder about Eastgate’s E-Lit Camp, an informal and friendly-sounding get-together of new media minds the weekend of December 11th-13th in Boston. Details here: E-Lit Camp

Haven’t had a chance to check this out much, but wanted to spread the word (thanks to Dennis Jerz) of this update on the CYOA concept at Samizdat.

Beautiful graphics, warm and inviting. I believe that in promoting hypertext narrative a good part of the appeal to stir interest will be dependent upon the visual presentation of the work. Sad to say, but text alone may have survived the evolution into book form of story, but when it comes to the internet and computer accessed narrative, pictures and color are going to play a large part in the transition.

Neat stuff.

Thought I already had posted on this exciting event but realized I’d only tweeted and Facebooked it:

(Click on the image for more information)

It’s going to be an informal, pajama-party-friendly gathering of great minds and minds that do great things with hypertextual software and concepts, as Mark says, “a weekend-long writers colony for electronic literature.” It sounds like it’s going to be exciting, informational, and fun!