Nobody or nothing exists in isolation: everything is an element of a structure. Every structure is in its turn an element of another structure. (Carrion, 5)

I chose this quote because it was closely related to the concept of how mediums build off of one another. Our multi-modal project will be looking at the development of mediums across human history.

My interest in this topic extends from a class I took with Dr. Barber. Specifically the view presented by Marshall McLuhan that all mediums are all shaped and informed by the mediums that came before it. Mediums are structures that contain information, earlier mediums become elements in the structures of successor mediums.

For example the medium of sound is the basis for human speech. The medium of speech becomes solidified and made into visual symbols for the medium of writing. In these ways we can see that the methods of communication in the past are the scaffolding on which modern mediums such as books and films are influenced by the way that they are presented.

In this way I believe that Carrion is commenting on the way that literature has gone through an evolution over time, and that commentary can be mirrored on other genres of communication. An example I think of are movies and how fundamentally the moving visual image has become engrained in global culture.

The clearest evolutionary trend is towards the visual. Many mediums work to create a way to visually represent the information contained in other mediums. For example text represents the words of speaking in a symbolic fashion to extend how long that information can be stored and retrieved.

As the human race has created every more avenues to deliver visual information the complexity and affordances involved in delivering that information has risen along with it. Our study of hypertexts speaks to the synthesis of many mediums that electronic texts hope to achieve.

The quote I chose to use is the second sentence in The Language section of the reading:

“The starting point of the transmission of mental images is always an intention: we speak to transmit a particular image“.

This quote can be use to describe different languages interact with one another. Each language wants to create their own image of what they see in their own context for others to understand. Coding html is similar to language with the difference being it is a typing format. Learning a new language is always scary at first due to not knowing what the language it is saying just like html. Once someone starts to learn the language they start to get better and better until they can speak it fluently.

For the group project I would like our group to approach the project in this matter: coding in html is scary at first and can be crazy once you see the whole code. However, once someone starts to learn all the coding rules, then it starts to get easier and you get better and better as you keep keep practicing and learning new things. The story would start with someone scared and freaking out because they do not understand how to code in html. As the story progresses, the character will start to get more confident and at the end of the story the character will be full of confidence and ready to start coding in html for real. It is easier to take a language you know and compare to another language to help learn which is what html does with some of its “commands” to make a webpage come to life. This actually made it a lot easier for me to understand how coding works and how to write it myself. I may accidentally forget something here or there about what I need to write, but I just end up figuring it out again.

My publication is the Fear of Coding group. We’re still fleshing out what we want to do in the publication. As I understand it, we’re focusing on a guide that helps new coders learn about coding and maybe get past some of the imposter syndrome that can plague people.

“What is more meaningful: the book or the text it contains?”

I chose this quote by Carrión because it’s something I resonate with and can be applied to our publication. Carrión mentions in his essay that a book is a container, that it carries words and text throughout its pages (1). He’s right; a book usually has words in it unless it’s a picture book. Text conveys information, whether it be useful to the reader or not.

What I take away from his idea is the design of our publication doesn’t have to be completely like a book. It could be like a standard website with links to various places. It could be a continuous page of flowing information. I take the stance that text is more meaningful, because though books can exist for more than just containing something, text can exist outside of books. We can expand on and explore how text is portrayed. Perhaps our “table of contents” won’t be in a traditional format, or maybe we won’t have chapters and instead will have sections with links to them. I can’t say definitively what we’ll do, but it doesn’t have to be strictly like a book.

Works Cited

Carrión, Ulises. “The New Art of Making Books.” Kontexts, no. 6-7, 1975, pp. 1-8.

The design of the multimedia will be a group effort and each of us are going to have a different perspective on how we would want to design the salmon creek journal. In my IT job SHS needs to design flyers and books to get traffic to help repair the devices. The most common issue with our publishing that I have seen has mainly been the structure of the flyer or book. As looking at the book, I can make feedback that can help the book do better from a design and usability perspective. ” In the old art, just as the author’s intention is ultimately unfathomable and the sense of his words indefinable, so the understanding of the reader is unquantifiable. In the new art, the reading itself proves that the reader understands.” The quote that I have chosen is very important, as it involves the structure of the book and how others may perceive the book. We don’t know if a reader will understand our book, so structuring the book in a way that most can understand is going to be very crucial to the success of the salmon creek journal. Because there is the uncertainty that they can understand the book, we may need to do some tests to make sure they understand it through someone that is not directly involved with the project. If other people can understand our book without having to explain what our book is about, they, we may have success on our hands, but we cannot get the perspective of others if we have a genuine understanding of what has been written or not.

“To understand something, is to understand the structure of which it is a part and/or the elements
forming the structure that that something is.
A book consists of various elements, one of which might be a text” (Carrion, 5).

For my group’s multimodal project, we want to put an emphasis on how language and text developed. All stages of this process have a connection and there is a reason why sound progressed to language, which progressed to the alphabet and writing. The quote above reminds me of this process and how every element has a structure. The structures and elements are all connected in some way or another.

While the reading focuses on book and text, our project will incorporate what came before that, acoustic and speech space. Our project will of course use text to relay our information, but it will also incorporate moving visuals and sound. A combination of sound, speech, visuals, and text will work together with our design to portray the information. Just like how these elements work together, the spaces we will be talking about work with one another. Each space leads to another, and there are elements in each that relate to each other. Acoustic space relates to speech because of the sounds people make to speak. The alphabet relates to acoustic because it is the sounds of words written out. Putting the alphabet together creates writing, and using sound with writing creates speech. The design of our project should also reflect this concept, with elements all connecting to each other.

I believe that multimedia, hyperlinks and interactivity can help create a deeper understanding of whatever topic one chooses to study. However, I can see how these could be viewed as distracting and take you out of deep attention mode. Personally, I prefer to read alone in a quiet area free of distractions. But then when it’s time to write, I prefer to have ambient background music on. I’ve also learned a lot from screen readings. Having the option to view examples from the text in an interactive way has helped me understand certain material faster than traditional reading. I think that both screen reading and traditional reading have their benefits and should be utilized in a way where both deep attention and hyper attention can exist. 

“Each cognitive mode has advantages and limitations. Deep attention is superb for solving complex problems represented in a single medium, but it comes at the price of environmental alertness and flexibility of response. Hyper attention excels at negotiating rapidly changing environments in which multiple foci compete for attention; its disadvantage is impatience with focusing for long periods on a non-interactive object” 

A book is a volume in the space. It is the true ground of the communication that takes place through words – its here and now.

With the multimodal publishing project, my group and I have decided that we would create a publication that describes the different kinds of learning differences while also providing ways and resources to help combat them. After having read this quote I feel that going through with this project communication should be one of the most important aspects of our project. How we choose to communicate our publication is important as it will decide how our audience will understand that information and absorb it. With the publication, I want to make use of the space and really think about the words that we fill that space with and how our message will be communicated. Within books, communication of the ideas involved is key as they are the very thing that you want your audience to understand. In communicating our own ideas we will not only be able to teach our audience about the different kinds of learning differences that one could have, but we will also be able to educate them in ways to help those who have these learning differences or even how to help themselves. With this project, we will be able to communicate to an audience on an issue that is important and affects a variety of people including myself. Now, in designing the project I would like to create an experience that both communicates our ideas and creates an immersive experience for readers through use of educational videos.

https://dtc-wsuv.org/cminden22/dtc338-epub-assignmen-cminden/

Here is the link to my Epub assignment.

Here is the new link for my EPUB

https://dtc-wsuv.org/crobb22/public-domain-publication.epub

https://dtc-wsuv.org/rdoherty21/DTC%20338/

The book has hardly changed in the thousands of years of its existence. Is that due to technology limits of the time, or was it nearly perfected in the years following its creation? Just as the printing press revolutionized the book and reading, how will digital affect the legacy of the book? This is a question that will be attempted to be answered in this blog post. This post will look into where the book is going, and some fun ideas for the book in the future. 

Borsuk writes, “Headings, glosses, and titles might be written in red, as would dots and dashes used to separate sections and sentences” (17) Borsuk is talking about how Greek and Roman scribes would organize their manuscripts. If you look at any modern text book, the same thing still happens today. Chapters and sections are usually highlighted in a brighter color than the regular text which helps keep things organized and easy to find. The chapters and sections are also commonly separated by some kind of border that lets you know that these ideas are related to one another. This quote makes it hard to imagine that books will change much in the future. The very essence of what a book is has not changed much at all since it was created all those years ago. 

The idea behind reading does not make a whole lot of sense, words and symbols are used to convey messages about stuff that happens in real life. That’s why in the future augmented reality will play a large part in how readers consume books. Borsuk says, “For example, in Quanzhou, there is a mountain whose cliffs are inscribed with maritime stories, such as historical accounts of Zheng He’s travels to the western ocean.” (35) In the future when we’re all wearing augmented reality glasses, I could see stories on landmarks or buildings of note. Say you’re in Seattle and you’re wearing your glasses and an icon pops up on the Space Needle. A story comes up and displays itself next to the actual landmark and tells you about the history of it and how it came to be. This idea could translate into reading anywhere that has a solid color, such as a wall or table. Borsuk writes, “Artists’ books showcase several historical forms that turn the book into a recombinant structure, allowing readers to create new juxtapositions within it.” (168) You could be in line at the DMV waiting to get a new license and you could just stare at a cream colored wall and enjoy reading your book through your glasses. This may seem like you would get some weird looks, but in the future people will be used to this and no one will even bat an eye at you. Augmented reality can also change how we interact with print books. As you read through the augmented glasses, they can conjure up certain scenes off to the side of the book. Maybe you’re reading a book from A Song of Ice and Fire and a dragon flies around the book while you read about it. The glasses can also track your eyes and get data from them. The glasses will be able to tell which word you stopped on and after a second of your eyes hovering over a word, they’ll generate the definition of that word without even asking. External links will also be implemented in case you want to buy or learn something more about the book you’re reading.

Artificial intelligence is another thing that will play a large part in books in the future. You’ll be able to set your own voice as the narration for the book you’re reading. I would personally never do this because I despise the sound of my own voice, but this is a neat feature that could have many different benefits. A prime use of this would be to preserve a loved one’s voice. Having a grandparents voice narrate a story for their grandchild would be a touching use of this technology, or using the voice of a long lost loved one. This could also save publishing companies by not having to pay a voice actor to narrate the story. Celebrities could make money by offering their voices as a download for users to buy. Imagine spending $19.99 on a Snoop Dogg voice download so you could listen to Pride and Prejudice with him. Artificial intelligence doesn’t stop at voices though. It could also generate images based on the story that you are reading. These could either pop up on your e-reader device, or could display through your augmented reality glasses. Artificial intelligence will also be able to create new stories based on your own experience. Say you’re riding the bus into town and go across the river. A story could be automatically generated about a bus riding protagonist who fights with a Godzilla type creature to keep the world safe. This ability would turn any boring task into an interesting event. Virtual reality gets a lot of the hype nowadays, but I personally think that augmented reality may be the bigger technology in the future. 

An unfortunate drawback of digital books in the future will be the addition of ads. Take a look at YouTube and how long it can take to watch a video. Some videos can have ads that take over 5 minutes to sit through. Amazon sells Kindles at discounted prices if you’re okay with it being loaded with ads. With how absurd ads are becoming in digital media, they’ll soon make their way into digital books. If you take your eyes off of the screen for more than 10 seconds, an ad will pop up and won’t go away until you’ve stared at it for 5 seconds. Ad’s will also be planted at the end of chapters because most people will stop their reading at that point. Travel companies will have external links to the destination of the book you’re reading. While you are reading a book about someone traveling Europe, every new location will have a link to flights and hotels around that area. You’ll even get a discount because you have auto pay and you can book the flight and hotel with just a touch of the screen. 

I think authors will still be in the same situation that they are in now. If you have a big following, or are a big name, you’ll have lucrative contracts that can make you some big bucks. What changes the most is the ease of self publication. While the big publishing companies will be making tons of money as always, more and more people will be able to publish their first book thanks to how easy it will be in the future. We’re basically at a point now where you can write a story and basically get it printed with the touch of a button. Being able to print on demand will only be more advanced in the future. Maybe in the future printers will be so advanced that they can create a physical book from a digital one you own with just a click of a button. 

Despite all of this digital talk, I truly believe that physical books will stand the test of time. Humans love tactile things. They feel good in our hands as well as looking good on our shelves. The example that I would use for this are records. A technology that was invented over one hundred years and you can still get records for a lot of new music. A physical item is a talking point, it’s something that you can display. It’s hard to imagine going over to someone’s house and inquiring about their digital book library. Another drawback to digital books is that you may not actually own them, you just have the rights to read them, while unless you got the physical book from a library, you own it. Analog books also have the benefit of not needing another technology in order to use it. It doesn’t need a cell phone, a Kindle, a laptop, or even electricity in order to be accessed.

“Deep attention, the cognitive style traditionally associated with the humanities, is characterized by concentrating on a single object for long periods (say, a novel by Dickens), ignoring outside stimuli while so engaged, preferring a single information stream, and having a high tolerance for long focus times.” (Hayles) 

Hyper-attention is important when talking about screen reading in a sense that distractions are inevitable. Every device has multiple capabilities that enable the reader to interact with an outside source. We have grown accustomed to the ability to multitask. Not always as efficient or detailed as we need to be but nonetheless, we survive. With today’s screen reading broadly being web based on a device that has active notifications, we do not share the same type of focus as do the older generations.

Essential parts of text today evolve around the technology or medium in which we read. Hyperlinks and interactivity are expected and used in modern learning environments because it gives the reader a deeper understanding of the text. When focusing on a task that involves deeper attention, such as reading music, all distractions seem to fade out.

With web and mobile devices being the primary medium of a text book, I’ve developed the habit of scanning more effectively than I would a physical book. Physical textbooks come with study guides, margin notes, bullet points, and review questions. As a digital textbook, you get all of that plus added audio and visual elements. The text is also a means to link to other resources rather than walking into a library and checking out a book.

–Quick story

The analogy I thought of when reading this essay. When you’re driving in a car with the music up loud. You are lost and decide to turn down the volume to find your destination. You immediately go from hyper-attentive to deep-attentive.

Hayles, N. Katherine. “Hyper and Deep Attention: The Generational Divide in Cognitive Modes.” Profession, 2007.

The Death of Poe

The people that contributed in my group were Devon Baxter, Jessica Unruh, Jianys Berrios, Rich Te, as well as myself. The process for collaborating ended up being pretty straightforward and simple. We shared a collaborative Google Doc, copy and pasted the story into the document, and added the heading tags to the titles of each story. We also worked on the content before the short stories, such as the publication info as well as the dedication page. From there, everyone went their separate ways, creating a copy of the master document for their version of the project.

On my own, I edited the format of the Google Doc, and continued with the process of converting the document to the finished product Epub file. Along the road, I used Dream Studio Beta and Stable Diffusion to create the base image for the cover, as well as all the artwork of the five stories. For the cover, I simply added some text that I thought looked appropriate and exported it as a jpeg. The more technical process was editing the css and html in sublime as you’re approaching the final version of the Epub file. I aligned all the headings to the center, as well as the images. For The Raven, I classified all the paragraph tags under class=”raven” so that I could adjust the left padding to make the text more towards the center of the page. Other than some font size changes, there wasn’t much more than that. I also decided to go with Times New Roman as the font, since it’s a classic, old-feeling font, and also because I felt like if I chose a different font I would have to work on the styling much more to make it formatted well.

https://dtc-wsuv.org/jgrubbs21/miniepub/

A collection of eerie Grimms’ tales handpicked for the season….

Dream Studio Images

Team Collaboration: Jessica Grubbs, Kevin Lennon, Kylie Sickles, Ryan Doherty