Too much information at once….

The Miller book Digital Story Telling has so much information it is almost hard to put it into a comment so I decided to blog about it instead.

Though a lot of the information through out the book is repeated over and over again a new angle is added as well. One of the main things to start with is how everything is ususally started looking back to see where we came from and then from there plot our course forward. As explained by Darius Medjubi a ATEC professor from UT and UTD the navigation metaphor is a corner stone of grasping any concept. So we look at storytelling and the digital is not all that different from what we have done in the past.

What struck me is the interactivity has actually just adapted itself to the new tools available to us now and as we get new ones the art of storytelling seems to adapt and change like a fluid moving into a new container.

We once started with the art of the bard and the campfire which isn’t all that different from what we experience camping around the fire with s’mores. Then there was a written language that helped archive these stories and both were essentially similar in the interaction. People didn’t like what was said there was an instant feed back. The written language evolved into the printed book. Still the interaction was the same now only on a more massive level and more so that people were able to now see the exact phrases. This is a huge difference from written and especially oral work since now the artist or performer of the story is not adding their own spin on a copy.

From here we go to audio which as much as we take for granted is a very very new thing comparatively in history. History is also moving a lot faster in innovation than we may realize at times. It was only about 50 years ago that pictures were actually mass distributed as moving and even then it was a very new medium to tell a story with.

Film and audio are now thought of as basic means of communication though also they are also still very much so growing and developing means of art. As we get the camera closer to what the human eye is capable of and smaller to have with us everywhere instead of just when it’s there it will change in the way we see things.

How is this all relevant?

Digital storytelling is all of the old mediums combined. Only now the reaction is the mediums combined as well.

Not only do we have mixed mediums but we also combine the different forms of storytelling. This however is not a new concept.

I just never realized we tell stories through other mediums like, games.

Now we have so many options with digital mediums we can combine everything.

As it now is what we are contemplating to make a story but with interactivity in the traditional sense. Yet, the traditional sense is thought of as ground breaking.

Anonymity

So, from the last post (not the comment post) I started thinking. Normally I twitter In this case I don't because well It's a bit longer of a thought or more of thoughts. 

One of the thoughts came about and leads from the first. 

Ghost writing has been around for ages ever since stories were conceived. Take for example one of the more famous ones Mark Twain. His actual name was Samuel Clemmens as I'm sure many of us all know. Somewhere in him he didn't want to go by his given name and instead write by a name put together by using river navigational terms. We're still doing the same thing. Only now we've got a larger vocabulary to use. Other people's names to web items and new things that have been invented since S.C.'s time. 

Has it been in us to loose our identity? Why are we always striving to be some one else and not some one else at the same time? We want to be the best for ourselves and our friends don't we?

At the same time it is comforting to know that as I write this I am not who I appear to be. So I wondered is this the next evolutionary step. For the masses to now have different identities instead of those select few? 

We now have an online presence one we have that we show to our employers and one we show to our friends and then there is one we show to the world yet no one knows who we truly are. Even second life holds personalities that don't truly exist anywhere else. 

All this brings me to the discussion that stemmed from class. If we are trying to keep our lives separated. Why is it that using an alias on twitter is such a bad thing? I understand that there may be some confusion on names especially if you're tracking new people and new things. At the same time though we are who we are and we like to keep parts of our lives separate. Especially a professor who is well versed in using avatar names and aliases should not mind that people use their branded names online and offline choose to do what they please. 

Any input on your thoughts?

Oops

so I was posting on a friend's site a comment and well I just had to add it here. I kinda went a bit overboard. 

speaking of no "I" in intelectual property do you think that has a bit of what influenced the EULA in google's new browser? Seeing as part of it says any content created in that browser belongs to Google.

http://gizmodo.com/5044871/google-chrome-eula-claims-ownership-of-everything-you-create-on-chrome-from-blog-posts-to-emails .

Granted as I was looking for that link google has updated their policy and now they're revising the EULA.

Seems to be an interesting trend to keep an eye on. Is this what we expect to see though a collective mind instead of the individual. More so now that it's the essential part of the ARG that there is a collective as one not as single.

How will this affect the generation that is creating this where it was taught that individuality is a good thing and a collective is a bad thing?

Character Development

So the other day I was posed with an interesting question. Is it possible to create some one out of thin existence with out having it traceable to you. Well, it is doable to a point but there are some technical things that are not avoidable. 

The technical:

your IP address is traceable.

your MAC address is traceable

ultimately unless well trained your habits on how you do things are easy to trace  back to a person (that would be you).

On the other hand if you know where and how some accounts work then it's possible to create someone. Eventually with use this person becomes an entity. How far you take it and meld it to your personality will lead it back to you or keep it separate. 

Well this post is I'm sure not making much sense mainly because I'm really not in the mood to write. I'll post more later I guess.