Sometimes a "Story" Isn't a Story at All: Blog #5

Focusing on the section entitled “Computer Scientists as Storytellers” in Chapter 2 of Janet Murray’s book, Hamlet on the Holodeck; I am almost disturbed by the prospect of stories no longer truly being stories. Yes, the interactive quality is interesting in its use as a videogame. I do want to be able to “sense” flying in "Placeholder," but I am leery of being so completely inured in a story through the tactile that I am able to change the outcome (Murray 61).

Towards the end of the section, Murray describes what a movie might be like in the year 2097 with all the various techno gadgets included that she describes previously in the section. She envisions a Holodeck like quality, but I do not see the outcome as that. In the Holodeck Janeway is playing a character in a set story. She steps into a role. She can feel all the things the character would feel, but she doesn’t have effect on the story itself. Murray’s “holodeck” is different: “We would be able to move the images,” “We would meet characters within this world who would sense our presence and converse with us,” “We would enter the story, and the plot would change according to our actions” (Murray 63). This description is not really of a story so much as of a virtual reality. Stories have specific beginnings, middles, and endings which require only the specific characters given. If some random Joe Schmoe steps into the story and does not take up the role of one of these specified characters, then it is no longer a story. What happens is the same as me walking into a historic romance novel dressed in jeans and a t-shirt and my women’s equality attitude; this spells disaster, not interactive story.

Somehow, I am irritated by the possibility of my film experience denigrating into Murray’s vision. I don’t want to tell the story; I want to be told the story. If I wanted to be in control of what was happening in a virtual setting, then I wouldn’t watch a movie or read a book I would play an open-ended RPG. I take no issue with adding tactile experiences to a set story. I feel that is the same as surround sound in the movie theater. I don’t even mind feeling as though I am really in the setting. 3-D glasses attempted to do the same thing. I simply do not feel Murray is still describing a story when the story changes based on my existence within its boundaries. I want to be immersed, but I do not want to be in control. Movies, books, and videogames for pleasure are traditionally used as escapism. I cannot escape if I am still required to make decisions.

These are separate types of entertainment. When I want to choose where to go and what to do in a setting outside the one I live in, I play a video game. When I want to simply experience or imagine, I read or watch fiction. Personally, I do not think these things can commingle and maintain the title of story or game. Murray's vision is something new and should be categorized as such.

The closest thing I can compare this to from my personal experience is the Role Playing option in World of Warcraft. You can choose to create a character on one of their RP servers. The idea is that everyone on the server wishes to Role-Play constantly and they get irritated if you break out of character, because it ruins the experience for others.

Hannah Marney got me try this with her. She has a love of text-based RPGs, so this option created images for her to associate with her role-playing. I could never get the hang of it, specifically because of the reasons I outlined above. She felt like she was writing her own story and enjoyed doing so. It was as if it still unfolded without her prior knowledge, accept she knew what she intended to do herself; however, since she played with other living “characters,” what was going to happen remained unknown.

I did not particularly care for this type of “storytelling.” I was required to come up with witty things to say, actions to emote, and a personality to act out. I had to write an entire life for a person that would never exist for anyone else. There was no way for me to compare my perception of my character to someone else’s perception of my character, since mine was the only one that existed or mattered. The procedural nature of the character design allowed me to say “No, my character would never do that,” and so she never did.

This is so different from discussing how someone else views Shakespeare’s Hamlet as a character. Anyone who has read Hamlet knows what Hamlet did, knows what Hamlet thought about doing, and watched his inner turmoil change him. He was not a flat character. My WoW character is flat. Perhaps that is the major issue. If you step into a story world and are not a character in the story, you are flat and 2-D no matter how many tactiles you have to tell your brain otherwise. Murray herself describes something similar when she discusses playing in the ALIVE program at MIT. She cannot fully accept the virtual reality of the situation in the “magic mirror” because she sees herself in the mirror, in her own “ordinary clothes” (Murray 62). It required being able to watch someone else interacting with the ALIVE characters for the virtual reality to really work. The voyeur aspect is a major part of any good story. People want to be in the story as someone else, or not at all.


Murray, Janet H. Hamlet on the Holodeck. Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1997.

I Learned it From my Computer... Blog #4

In Nelson’s Computer Lib/ Dream Machine there is a focus on education needing to move past its overly structured, unthinking roots. Nelson’s primary issue with education is the mind set it produces in children which follows them into adulthood, “Not becoming involved with the subject, the student grabs for rote payoff rather than insight” (309). This relates to the computer through the use of computers as a tool to teaching. The idea is that computers are “cold” and “inhuman,” whereas teachers are “warm” and “human.” This is a stereotype that is not held up by much factual or statistical information. Overall, the use of the computer as teacher enables the student to become more intimate with the subject he is studying rather than focusing on completing busy work to make the desired grade; actually studying a subject rather than learning it long enough to get through a course and promptly forgetting it upon completion.

As of right now, the most consistent use of computers in the classroom is merely as a teaching aid or tool. The thought process for this type of use, related to the computer, is the same as using chalk on a chalkboard or marker on a whiteboard; the computer is considered merely a communication tool between teacher and student or as a more convenient way to give multiple choice tests. It is now also used more often for research, but again, this is similar to the use of a book or journal. There is little time devoted to truly experimenting with the other tool provided by computers: possible artificial intelligence to educate.

Looking up “artificial intelligence in education” on Google search produced quite a few hits. Most collegiate institutions now provide online classes in which the student works (for the most part) at his own pace, takes part in online forum discussions with other students, and uses AI based computer tutorials to help work through certain subjects without the direct aid of a human teacher. One such site is http://www.aaai.org/. This site specializes in improving “the teaching and training of AI practitioners,” among other AI related subjects. A page on the site related specifically to AI education discusses the continual, albeit gradual, movement toward employing AI directly in schools.

Why Not Use Pictures??? Research #2

In Marcel O’Gorman’s “E-Crit: Digital Media, Critical Theory, and the Humanities,” Chapter 2, he discusses various topics about the need for the “Republic of Scholars” to develop beyond the papyrus and “ink interface” it clings to so completely. Our technology currently enables us to cite work online via links to the work (so long as it is available online and not in an exclusive database), yet I still have a MLA citation at the bottom of this blog. Perhaps a compromise would be to keep the citation, yet make the title (within the citation) a link to the book on Amazon? Although I feel this development of the Republic of Scholars into a more digitally acceptable form is inevitable, I still think it is a long time coming. Writing has remained the same way since its inception; changing it will be quite a feat.

Moving away from the “Republic” and its changes, I’d like to discuss “imagetexts” since they are more relevant to my Senior Project work on digital elegy. O’Gorman describes the interplay that happens when placing text and pictures together as an imagetext. The words and the pictures each have their own message, but they also create a new message through their combination. A constant struggle exists, but by using the pictures and text specifically to compliment each other, the combined message overcomes the individual messages of the pictures and text, and creates a deeper, richer meaning and experience for the audience and the author when used as a digital elegy. By combining images with text, the need for historic knowledge of the culture and society the work was produced in lessens. Pictures can tell us what we need to know about the history associated with the text. My imagetexts, digital elegy, will be the layering of literary elegy on top of digital photographs and film in the hope that the literary will be enhanced by the digital. I want the subject of the elegy to become more alive to the audience through the addition of significant images.

The other image related term O’Gorman focuses on in Chapter 2 is “hypericons.” In class we discussed bathroom signs (basic figures of men and women to denote who can enter which bathroom in a public place) as possibly being the beginning of hypericons. These signs, as well as many other types of signs, have a basic idea associated with them, and it is just one idea not many. Hypericons have many possible ideas associated with them. They require some interpretation on the part of the viewer and cannot be lumped into one category or another. Generally speaking, hypericons are saturated with possible ideas and meanings that are related to the image. The key difference between an imagetext and a hypericon is the lack of text in a hypericon; the textuality of a hypericon is entirely interpretive for the viewer rather than being a layering of text onto a related image. The first picture in Chapter 2, “The Eye Socket,” by Stephen Gibb, can be viewed as a hypericon in that it radiates multiple possible interpretations. (I would have provided a link to the specific picture, but I cannot find one on the net. I assume Stephen Gibb’s artist site, linked above, will have this picture in the archive once it is complete.) We see the electrical socket, the eye, the plug… but the combination of images gives off various messages. My personal interpretation is based off of the thumbnail version of the image (on the first page of Chapter 2) since you cannot see the eye. To me, the electrical outlet already displays a certain fear and disgust at the idea of being “plugged.” The shape of the individual holes in the socket look slightly skewed, implying feeling and personification without the eye pictured below it. Once I looked at the full image I was amazed at how much more disturbing the image became. This painting epitomizes hypericons in its ability to project thoughts, ideas, and meanings to its audience without the aid of words.

The chapter as a whole was eye opening, to use a pun. The idea that images can communicate better than words has been glossed over in the past. However, the advent of the internet requires our societies movement toward pictorial communication. We began with merely television, but now everything we mentally consume is available on the net and we don’t like it if it doesn’t include pictures, animation, or some variant of eye candy. If pictures are what we continue producing, then pictures will become the norm for communication regardless of the desires of the Republic of Scholars.



O'Gorman, Marcel. E-Crit: Digital Media Critical Theory and the Humanities. Toronto: University of Toronto Press Incorporated, 2006.