From Immersion To Interactivity: The Text Every Moment Globe Versus The Text Every Moment Game

A summary of:
Ryan, M.-L. (2001). Narrative every bit Virtual Reality: Immersion together with Interactivity inward Literature together with Electronic Media. The Johns Hopkins University Press: Baltimore.
Chapter vi – From Immersion to Interactivity: The Text every bit World versus the Text every bit Game

Consider this brusque passage

“There’s glory for you! [said Humpty Dumpty.]
“I don’t know what you lot hateful past times ‘glory,’” Alice said.
Humpty Dumpty smiled contemptuously. “Of course of pedagogy you lot don’t – till I tell you. I meant ‘there’s a prissy knock-down declaration for you!’”
“But ‘glory’ doesn’t hateful ‘a prissy knock-down argument,’” Alice objected.
“When I role a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said inward a rather scornful tone, “it agency only what I lead it to hateful – neither to a greater extent than nor less.”
“The interrogation is,” said Alice, “whether you lot tin brand words hateful together with hence many unlike things.”
“The interrogation is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to hold upward principal – that’s all.” – Lewis Carroll

Ryan writes virtually the game of text. I similar this quote inward particular: “The stance of linguistic relativism is a seductive plaything for a stance that conceives itself every bit play. In the epitome that currently dominates literary studies, if literature is a game, it is because linguistic communication itself is one; together with if linguistic communication is a game, it is because its rules course of pedagogy a self-enclosed organization that determines, rather than reflects, our sense of reality” (187).

I recall that this is an of import lesson for anyone inward academia. Compare this to my previous rant virtually the Game of Academia…

Another takeaway from this chapter is the way inward which the notion of authorship has evolved. Foucault writes inward “What Is an Author?”: “Referring exclusively to itself, but without beingness restricted to the confines of its interiority, writing is identified amongst its ain unfolded exteriority. This agency that it is an interplay of signs arranged less according to its signified content than according to the really nature of the signifier. Writing unfolds similar a game (jeu) that invariably goes beyond its ain rules together with transgresses its limits (120)” (190). Once writing became a game, it needed novel creative ways of playing; e.g. Cubism. “According to Roland Barthes, reading is a ‘cubist’ practice inward which ‘the meanings are cubes, piled up, altered, juxtaposed, nonetheless feeding on each other’” (191). And ultimately, the game has evolved to encourage participation: “The writerly, past times contrast, is seen every bit promoting an active together with playful participation of the reader inward the deed of writing: ‘Why is the writerly our value? Because the destination of literary move (of literature every bit work) is to brand the reader no longer a consumer, but a producer of the text’ [Barthes]” (195-6). We tin clearly encounter a path from hither to hypertext…

So what is the indicate of this seeming tangent. I suppose I encounter it every bit nonetheless about other illustration of the ways inward which our aesthetic together with cultural values receive got led to together with been incorporated inward the Internet every bit it is now: a participatory infinite inward which everyone is a creator.