Web narritives

When I first read the instructions I couldn’t think of how a series of blog posts as a narrative, but as I did the reading and looked at a few it hit me…. there windows into a bigger story.  This form of blogging even if it is unitentional is very interesting, most of the posts give you just enough information to keep the hook in, so you keep coming back to it.  The glimpses into another persons story whether true or fake, no matter how menial allows the reader to compare what is read to their own tendencies.  Even if the blog is not to our interest we can just go search, or stumble onto another blog by some other blogger and fall into that narrative.  One of the most important parts of narratives though is being able to come into one anywhere along the timeline of the story, and depending on how interesting it is you can move along that story’s tale either backwards to see how the characters got to where you were introduced into it or you can move forward into the story and try to piece the puzzle together.  With these blogs being on the internet, as long as the poster dose not delete the blog or make it private, one can access it at almost any time.  This allows for people to read into pieces of other peoples lives from years ago to what somebody was up to a few minutes ago. This is also a problem with these blogs, well at least the good ones.  There are blogs where the original poster has a set time to post, or a goal which is why they are posting, and when they are done with that goal or bored of the blog or simply move on then the windows into that persons tale end.  For the most part it is abrupt or some will make a last post and make it clear to there audience.  This dose not in any way mean that the story will finish, or in the readers eyes the tale could be full of questions, how do the people in the narrative get on after some event or what ever happened to that family down the street, or did they get that paper done in time.  Even though this can be troubling to the reader, the incompleteness, expesially when the tale being told has you hooked multiple times and you can’t wait for that weekly update, or post, the reader will have to hold on, and wait for that next window to open for the next tale.

The second chapter (Levinson)

The Spread of Information:

Information started off be being spoken from person to person generation to generation until civilizations developed a writing system.  After this point information was written down at first on stone slabs.  These last a long time but take up a lot of area and are hard to move, also it would take a lot of resources to copy the information if needed or to fix it.  Eventually with paper and paper like mediums written knowledge became easier to write down and copy but the paper did not have the survivability of stone slabs.  On the other hand it made storage a hell of a lot easier.  Fast forward to today and the rise of the computer the next form of information storage is though bytes.  With the computer one can type out stories, accounts, ideas, or just a thought of the day into a personal word document or they can place it into a public forum or blog.  This form of information is extremely size friendly, a person could carry two terabytes of word documents in their pocket, and as long as you do not throw a magnet at your computer or external hard drive the information should be there for as long as the memory holds.  Or if you place the information onto the internet odds are that it will spread (depending on where you place it) or at least someone will take it and it will be stored into a personal collection only to resurface sometime down the road.

Making things look fancy, more pieces of flare:

Among the many many many…. things that were talked about of why a blog is interesting, and all the things you can do with it the main ones that stuck out would be the ability to post pictures that could relate to your post… or some random one:

(that took way too long to figure out by the way…. note to self when in doubt just google it and save some time….)

Along with pictures that can help a post for a blog the poster can also link a video (also something that has nothing to do with blogging).  Another thing that blogging can allow is on your blog one could sell add space to slowly gather an income over time, this also relies on how active your blog is but it also opens the door for false information to come up.  This can happen and has happened, it happens because false info is normally a lot more interesting than what actually happened.  And if you have some off the wall report and the word spreads then more people want to see the post which turns into more hits on your page and increases traffic which would increase your income from the add space.

Control over what is seen:

In most media forms when someone publishes what they want to say, that is how it will be for all of the copies and after it goes out the ability or idea of changing what you stated becomes almost impossible to change unless you come out with a new edition or new document all together.  On the web on the other hand if you were to post something you could change it completely, possibly with nobody knowing (depending on popularity of own blog or the area where you posted).  There are different ways to do this, one could simply make a note stating what they changed, cross sections of it out these words do not belong, or to change it secretly and hope nobody has the old copy of it.

Well this is where the typing has to stop for the night…. damn time running too fast… well if everything goes in my favor ill be able to update/finish this tomorrow…

Levinson’s first chapter

The general stuff:

     The first chapter of New New Media, was a slow read…., but it did describe what new new media actually is.  New new media is just another form or evolution in how we use media.  With new new media the user can both put data out onto the internet and they can also take info from the internet. This new new media is moved through the internet so it is fast and it can be absorbed by many people along the way and they could also add to it.  This is the strength of the new new media, the ability to have instant speed congregation of ideas. This media is often transfered/ shared through people’s blogs, twitter, facebook, wikipedia, reddit, digg, and many other sites.  Along with these sites we as users use hardware(devices) to access, collect, and change data and with the end result we have the option to keep what we gathered or to place the new data that we formed using stuff already there back out onto the internet for others.

The stuff that stuck out and the sticky situation that will come from it:

The main thing that peaked my interest in this first chapter would have to be the small section on new media and government control.   It is in defining the lines of where the government says you can or can’t that most problems will come up.  If you come up with an idea, a new book, or theory of how something works and you post it to the internet for feed-back at what point down the line after countless people view, download, link to, or share it can you consider the work still yours.

Some little thoughts,:

For me the internet is a giant in the form of information and resources.  The information and resources flow from websites and information centers that Levinson defines as new new media.  The real power is being able to connect with any number of people from all aspects of life and from all over the world and to be able to take an idea, an issue, or some idea and have all these different people work on it is a great idea.  Even though this happens for a few things most of the time the internet and the new new media is used as a way to connect to people with similiar ideas, and/or hobbies.  Even with this connection though it still is an extremly fast way of getting idea out into the open where then if the right amount of interest is there the idea can grow, expand, change, or even mutate into something new or into something bigger than ever expected.

Games, games and more games

What is one to do with a three days of nothing to do? Some are productive, such as cleaning or finishing homework, others sit down and read a good book or three.  My weekend consisted of hanging out and playing board games for hours on end over a few days.  Started the weekend of with Heroscape a game of clashing armies from all over time and space ( great game if you can get your hands on it by the way ) and a great game of Axis and allies, where you control one of the major powers and fight through WW2.  Another great game but when it takes an hour to go through one turn a game can easily last 6-7 hours…