A spider’s web vs a knitted scarf

The very last point of the week 7 reading is my favourite, where it talks about a plot being like a knitted scarf or a spider’s web. With the scarf you can tell where the beginning and end is, and there has so be a sequence or pattern the whole way through. However with a spider’s web you wouldn’t know where the beginning or end is unless you watched the spider weave it. It could be attached to multiple places and branch out to other trees or furniture. It is up to us to interpret its patterning. This sounds a lot like Networked media, where there is not distinct beginning and end, however everything is connected to each other. I like to say it is the same as hypertext/hyperlinking.

Symposium 7

Symposium 7 Questions:

As I couldn’t make the symposium I decided to answer these questions in my own way.

  1. Which is more important in making a great book, form or content? To begin with it is this an online book or a hard copy? Print Literacy or Networked Literacy? Throughout this semester there has been a huge discussion on books. Every week we see the little book and find ourselves listening to why networked literacy is the future, why it is better and how it benefits us. I feel as though depending on if you read a book or if your reading a webpage the form will be different. Networked Literacy has no edges. There is room to move, so I would say the content here is what makes it great, however it still needs direction. I would say that both form and content are important in making a great book, because they go hand in hand.

 

  1. Without a conventional narrative structure, how much control does an author lose? What is a conventional narrative structure these days? Again, Networked literacy has no edges, it is interactive through hypertext. It is a new way to communicate. It is clear that the majority of us read information off the internet rather than a book, and when we read off the internet we do not end up where we started. We will click on links and find ourselves deep within the web, finding all of this information that we didn’t know existed. If an author changes with technology, I believe that with a bit of knowledge, you can be just a great of an author without having a contents page that says this will be on page ## and nowhere else. Being an author on the internet opens up endless opportunities where you can communicate and interact globally, and learn new skills along the way.
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