The Web has created a new set of behaviors and expectations for users. These behaviors and expectations have come to define the Web and all forms of electronic media that are produced for personal computers, whether they are iPads, Kindles, desktops, or notebooks (aka laptops). That is, the Web has defined the ways in which we behave behind a personal device with a screen — whether we are connected to the Web or not.
The Web fucking changed everything, especially the way we see the world and the way we behave in it. This epistemological shift is the topic of conversations that have been ongoing for some time. J.David Bolter’s Turing’s Man: Western Culture in the Computer Age seems especially prescient now, so much so that new readers may find it boring because of its fantastical predictions (for 1986) — predictions that were so dead on they seem obvious and hardly worth study. What he predicted was wide spread use of computers in everyday life, believing that when the computer eventually found its way into every home that it would change us. It has.
This brings us to an interesting place in an interesting time. Old media struggles to survive, knows that it must embrace the content platforms of the future. Yet, it does so irresponsibly, and – for the most part – thoughtlessly.
An illustration:
“Pop, can I have some ice cream,” asks the little boy, born just 8 years ago, in 2002, long before the first dotcom crash.
His father, a product of the cold war, someone who notices the way the world has changed and how quickly it has done so, kinda hates his kid for taking the world for granted, and decides to test him.
“Sure. I’ll go get you some ice cream.”
When dad returns, he brings his brand new iPad with him. Open on the screen is an image of an ice cream cone.
“DaaAAaad,” says the kid.
“I know,” says dad. Then he returns with actual ice cream. When his son asks if he can play on the Internet, his dad says, “Sure, let me go get it.” An hour later he returns. His son sits watching TV, having forgotten about his request for the Internet. Dad thinks, “This is the way it was for me. I wish my kid liked TV more.” His kid smiles at him, wondering why dad just stands in the living room, on the very polished hardwood floor. The dad smiles back. He can’t help himself. His kid is especially cute when his face is stained with chocolate.
Then, dad throws a large accordian folder in his kid’s lap, filled with file folders and paper. The folders represent sites, and the folders within the folders represent pages on that site. Inside those folders are pieces of paper, hardcopies of content.
“DaaAAaad,” says the kid.
This time, dad says, “What?”
“This isn’t the same. This is more like homework.”
A Hardcopy is Not a Copy
Let’s step away from these guys for second. Dad has given his son paper, printed on that paper are pages from the web. Why is this different? Is it better? Is it worse? There is no real answer. Outside of the way interactivity has changed and the removal of audio, video, and animation, the content is exactly the same.
Would his son have had the same reaction if he had requested a copy of Moby Dick to read and was instead given an iPad or kindle with a digital copy of the book? The answer is no, but that’s only because the kid is still a kid, not yet smart enough to perceive the inherent problem with manipulating content from one medium and transposing it onto another.
So, why doesn’t putting a book on an iPad feel as extreme as printing the web on paper? The answer is simple. Each form of content belongs and behaves in certain ways depending on the medium through which that content is made accessible. However, many might suggest that because a novel is simply text on a page, then it too can easily live on the screen, especially because the web has established itself as a refuge for text, a second life as it were, and I won’t argue otherwise. However, despite their similarities, text on the web is different than text in print. Text read on a web page predicts and encourages behavior different from the text housed on paper.
When Wilhelm Richard Wagner, a German composer, conductor, theatre director and essayist, primarily known for his “music dramas,” announced, through a series of essays between 1849 and 1852, that he was planning something he called Gesamtkunstwerk (“total artwork”), the guy had to build himself his own opera house, the Bayreuth Festspielhaus, to stage these works exactly as he imagined them. His total artwork was the attempt to synthesize all the poetic, visual, musical and dramatic arts into one thing. Genius, but, again, the guy had to create a very particular stage, he had to bend the medium, shape it to fit his notion of what theatre should or could do.
Espen Aarseth believes that getting to the message is as important as the message itself, which seems true enough, even if we aren’t talking about what it’s like to read a traditional novel. However, some have even been heard throwing about the cliche, “the journey is the most important part.” How does that journey change when it takes place on our computers, tablets, and phones? It changes substantially, as the reader (now transformed to user) is engaged in a virtual world reminiscent of the physical one, finding content outside the body of the artifact if necessary. One might read a book and need another book to make it make sense, or use the computer as an adjunct for the experience. In this respect the user must journey to new points to consume new information.
This is how new media fiction behaves. We will not flip a page; we will click links. We will not observe a picture; a picture may observe us. A picture will not manipulate our emotions; we will manipulate the picture to arouse them (the iPad version of Alice in Wonderland, for example).
My point is, I suppose, that traditional narrative fiction does not belong behind the screen. It belongs in print. Can it get by behind a screen; can it live there? Sure. Yes. However, it does not belong there. It was not created for a digital platform and because it was not created for a digital platform, the book offers the user very little of what the user expects from a digital artifact. That is, 500 million Facebook users can’t be wrong. People with computers surf the Web. Their experience on the web is an infinitely richer experience (which does not suggest that it produces richer content) than the activity of reading a traditional novel. We travel through the Web. We stop to stare. We come across secondary content and then content even further removed from the purpose of our visit to the Web. We behave differently behind the screen than we do behind works gathered on paper or film. Because we behave differently, we expect that behavior to be encouraged by electronic mediums. Reading a book on an iPad or Kindle, subconsciously or patently, still produces a desire in us to behave differently than we would if we were holding a hardcopy of the text, yet this behavior must be censored. We have to react against the pleasure of interactivity, a freedom encouraged by digital mediums. This rejection of the the behavior the medium elicits creates distraction and a desire for a richer (let’s say fully realized) experience. This is why the reading experience on an iPad or Kindle is slower than that of the reading experience created by the book in print.
Removing Traditional Conceits from Narrative Fiction
This gets me to my point: In order for traditional narrative fiction to thrive, it must first acknowledge the platform through which it will sustain longevity. Anyone walking through a Barnes and Noble will see that traditional narrative fiction occupies far less bookshelf space than it did just five years ago.
Part of the reason for this is obvious. New technologies have changed the nature of interpersonal relationships. Simply writing about it, isn’t the best way to articulate it, which is why we (the fiction writer) must strive to find the best way to discuss it. That discussion, because it concerns the Web and the technologies that have become dependent upon it, is best held on the screen, best delivered through the medium that changed our conversations, behaviors, and interpersonal relationships.
What will this new media fiction look like? How will it behave, what tools will be used to create it, what code will be used to write it?
More importantly, who will read it? How will we get them to read it? My first suggestion is to focus on users, transforming them to readers. This is the new market, the audience that will sustain fiction as we have come to know it. Instead, it will rely on various tools, more options, but it should encourage the behaviors established by those who use the Web. Why? Because so many more people read and interact with the Web than do books.
I’m not suggesting that video and audio become focal points for narrative fiction, but they should be considered, as should the image.
The Image
The image is not new to traditional narrative fiction. In fact, it is an old friend, despite its infrequent use. However, when fiction makes the transition to an electronic platform, the page becomes image. We look closely at the way the words are displayed, and even (perhaps) hope for an image to give those words additional context. The newspaper and magazine have more to do with this than the Web, which makes sense. The Web, and the content textual it produces, has taken its cues from newspapers and magazines. The Blog is the best example. However, Blogs and Web pages are themselves images more than they are content. We visit sites because they are attractive, because they are laid out effectively. No matter how strong the content that rests in them, the content is ignored if it is not displayed attractively.
My point is that the Web creates an image before it creates anything else, and for this reason, the user expects the page to look a certain way. Apple’s iBooks app is beautiful, much like the minimalist approach the Safari browser takes when users click the Reader button in the address bar. The Reader option in Safari, rather than give words a cleaner platform so that they more directly resemble print, is itself an image, too. It eschews all other distracting images (mostly ads) so that the user can get at the content they have visited a site to retrieve. The blank canvass is more than a page – it is graceful and clean. It provides white space, space that makes reading more pleasurable. Yet, this function is not the norm, but it is indicative of behavior. People who read longer works on the Web will find this option appealing, much like they do an application called Instapaper, which essentially save the text of an article and nothing else so that users can take website with them on the go, when Internet access is not available.
So, what does this imply, what does it mean?
It means, simply, that the Web page is an image, and if it is an image, the user expects that presence in the content they consume. This, then, demands that the writer who seeks to create narrative fiction must embrace the image as much as the word.
The well-designed Web page provides depth of field, interesting and thematic use of color, well organized content structuring, and encourages intuitive behaviors that are silent, yet understood. This is art. This is an opportunity rather than a distraction for narrative fiction. It does transform the act of reading, creates a more chaotic experience. It is no longer linear, and perhaps we see this reflected, more and more often, in the stories we tell. We no longer turn pages. We click on links, click on more links, and, if the content we are reading is efficient, we return to the original page or ignore it.
We have advanced. We are more complex. Our fiction should be as well. Again, the Web is a series of images above anything else, and the thoughtful fiction writer will remember this, and with each new page visited, attempt to control the dynamics of the image and shape its content to it or vice versa.
Sound
The Web is, increasingly, growing louder. As much as content focused on the written word and image encouraged the growth and success of the web, so too did music. Music was the reason people logged on, they were able to access vast quantities of this content and save them for later consumption. People who visit the web often find themselves multitasking, listening and reading and watching simultaneously. If the Web creates image above all else and provides opportunities to consume the written word and audio content, the user expects the content creator to supply them with these forms of content. If they do not, the content creator has ignored the potentials of the medium they create for and because they do, users will look unkindly at this content, ignore it, or at least consume it sporadically enough to endanger narrative fiction.
Video and Sound, the Problem with Content on Rails
The early versions of first-person shooters ported to the iPhone were, like Doom, on rails. The user shot at bad guys, moved backward and forward, but did not control when or how they did so (outside of finishing a level, of course). They’re movements were restricted because the device did not have enough processing power to support freedom of movement. This was frustrating for some users and not a big deal for others. The fact that they could play such an advanced game, despite whatever restriction were created because of the platform, was exciting enough.
However, we have made great leaps in processing power over the last few, short years. A game such as that, today, would be a failure of the game designer.
The problem with video and audio is that content is created to behave on rails. It starts and stops when the work is completed, only a user pressing pause can manipulate the duration of the piece, which destroys, if it works in conjunction with, reading behavior.
Neil Postman explains it like this; “The reader must come armed, in a serious state of intellectual readiness. This is not easy because he comes to the text alone. In reading, one’s responses are isolated, one’s intellect thrown back on its own resources. To be confronted by the cold abstractions of printed sentences is to look upon language bare, without the assistance of either beauty or community. Thus, reading is by its nature a serious business. It is also, of course, an essentially rational activity.”
If this is what reading has to offer, perhaps the idea of marrying traditional narrative fiction in any way to digital mediums is a bad idea. As I’ve said, the Web is essentially a space created and populated with image (beauty) and community (users helping users). The book is detached from these potentials or at least from the heightened potential of each opportunity as it exists on the Web. Still, one reads by themselves, processes the thoughts provoked internally and then may solicit clarification on those thoughts from someone/something on the Web.
“From Erasmus in the sixteenth century to Elizabeth Eiseno stein in the twentieth, almost every scholar who has grappled with the question of what reading does to one’s habits of mind has concluded that the process encourages rationality; that the sequential, propositional character of the written word fosters what Walter Ong calls the ‘analytic management of knowledge.’”
This “analytic management of thought” is the reason video and audio work against the encouraged behavior of print. In print, we pause, digest, and do so at our own pace, a pace that is determined by how quickly we synthesize the information provided to us and then transform it into meaning.
So how will audio and text function in New Media Fiction?
That’s anyone’s guess, as reading does not occur on rails like audio and video do. New Media Fiction must allow the reader to manipulate these artifacts at their pleasure and in conjunction with the text they consume. That, or they must work to separate themselves from the other. What behaviors can occur in conjunction with audio or video. Should we ask the reader to rearrange or arrange video so that it makes sense, should we allow them control of or editing power over moving images. I’m not sure, but it seems fascinating because it demands that the reader reconstruct and construct that artifcat so that it has meaning.
Interactivity
More to come…
New Media Fiction 