In Jorge Luis Borges’ story The Aleph, “Borges” is shown a small object called the Aleph in Carlos Argentino’s basement. Here’s how the Aleph is described:

Under the step, toward the right, I saw a small iridescent sphere of almost unbearable brightness . . . The Aleph was probably two or three centimeters in diameter, but universal space was contained inside it, with no diminution inside.

The Aleph contains infinite space “contained” in a container about the size of a square inch. Here’s how the space inside is described:

Each thing [inside the space], the glass surface of a mirror, let us say) was infinite things, because I could clearly see it from every point in the cosmos. I saw the populous sea . . . saw in a rear courtyard on Calle Soler the same tiles I’d seen twenty years before in the entryway of a house in Fray Bentos . . . saw every letter of every page at once . . . saw the oblique shadows of ferns on the floor of a green house . . . saw the Aleph from everywhere at once . . . saw your face . . . the inconceivable universe.

Depending on point of view, such an object makes perfect sense. The Aleph is spherical, thus at whatever point it rests, it faces “all directions” outward and inward simultaneously. This doesn’t explain the object; the Aleph is an unexplainable mystery and dangerous, destructive, and wondrous. As space it is all of space, just as one circle is all circles. It’s a mystery of massive potential: a poem that reflects or contains all poems, a structure that is every structure simultaneously.

In this number, for example, 10, we can conceive of all numbers and combinations of numbers.

Thus, the “story” The Aleph IS the Aleph. It’s also The Zahir:

Tennyson said that if we could but understand a single flower we might know who we are and what the world is. Perhaps he was trying to say that there is nothing, however humble, that does not imply the history of the world and its infinite cancatenations of causes and effects . . . Perhaps he was trying to say that the visible world can be seen entire in every image, just as Schopenhauer tells us that the Will expresses itself entire in every man and woman . . . of one were to believe Tennyson, everything would be–everything. . .

NMC is finally up and running and things seem to be moving “into time.”

To consider: we’ve talked through and shown examples of some element of new media and raced through the fundamentals of narrative structure, story, and media space, such as the issue of diagesis.

But I’m reminded of a scale issue, especially due to recent discoveries. The larger (more abstract) the space, the more time becomes necessary to mark scale.

In story, characters in the frame move through the envelope of time/space, as the reader or watcher does. But do they both inhabit the same space? (Of course not!)

In class we talked about the 4th wall, that border between one and another world, a border against which we can begin to talk about interactivity, immersion, and space and what these mean.

Sometimes at the dinner table I will jump and claim: “What am I doing here? I was just on the bridge of the Enterprise!” This is a frequent phenomenon on Star Trek, where a character will leap in and out of space time and be believed with minimal need to convince others that this is “real.” In my case, the family yawns, making the connection, then moving on to the gravy.

An interesting little tid bit for entanglement: (source)

To begin his discussion of Borges’ fiction as an alternative to mimetic realism, Fuentes commented that he had never wanted to actually meet Borges. In fact, he didn’t even want to know what Borges looked like. It seemed proper that only the work should exist, that Borges was his work, and that by reading it, one became the blind Argentine, much in the way that Borges himself once wrote: “All men who repeat one line of Shakespeare are William Shakespeare.” This provocative idea is central to the idea of the “open work,” a conception of literature that sees each book as a work forever in the process of being written. Given that each reader engages a work with a different set of preconceptions, notions, and cultural biases, the real nature of the book is inextricably bound to the creative act of reading it, and is therefore never truly a contained universe. (It was a point Mr. Fuentes would reiterate several days later in a short lecture about Italo Calvino at Cooper Union.) Borges is particularly appropriate here because he does not utilize mimetic or historical realism: his works are primarily about the workings of the mind itself. They are carefully structured to engage the reader, to make the reader into an active participant. Fuentes compared Borges to the writer of detective stories where the true mystery is the thought process of the detective himself, as if “Poirot were investigating Poirot, or as if Holmes discovered that he himself is Moriarty.”
Thematically, Borges is always concerned with the mystery of absence vs. presence, a mystery that may be resolved differently for each reader. As a chess player might say, “The moves we do not make are as important as the moves we do make.” This is indeed an apt metaphor for reading Borges, where each reader may take a different branch in a garden of forking paths. Fuentes drew upon the story “Pierre Menard, Author of Don Quixote” to further illustrate this point. The Don Quixote of Cervantes means something different to the Don Quixote of the later Menard, even though the text is identical: times have changed; language has changed; readers have changed. As Fuentes would restate again throughout his lecture, a book is never finished, for it belongs to the future.

As we work on the New Media 1: Perspectives course due to run in the fall and introduce New Media Communication to students, a few issues are beginning to stand out. Perspectives concentrates on narrative structures as they relate to media and to spatial analysis as this broad concept relates to the tools and stages that we work with to present, study, build and arrange ideas in digital and other physical spaces, including architecture, and the standards of simulations as well the relationships that authors and readers develop as they interact through their actions and objects (more on this a little later).

Students will do lots of hands on work and walking around and observing. In the context of New Media 1: Perspectives, everything seems relevant and nothing appears insignificant. The physicality of things–books, interface, games–is standing out. The NMC website should be up soon.

How to handle voting? Like this (from NYT):

Almost all the electronic records from the first widespread use of touch-screen voting in Miami-Dade County have been lost, stoking concerns that the machines are unreliable as the presidential election draws near.

The records disappeared after two computer system crashes last year, county elections officials said, leaving no audit trail for the 2002 gubernatorial primary. A citizens group uncovered the loss this month after requesting all audit data from that election.

Without the question, the knowledge wouldn’t gone down a hole. It seems a simple matter to get a slip back compared to an ATM receipt. At this point, though, I’d rather just pull a lever.

More here.

Via gamesutra. A recent study in Pediatrics on TV violence and parents’ monitoring habits concludes this:

There was variability in attitudes and practices regarding television violence viewing and monitoring among parents. Attitudes and practices varied on the basis of the age of the child and the gender of the parent.

The above comes from the abstract, since the actual article calls for cash. Question is, beside the profound conclusion above, how much is this information worth.

I’ve always been horrified and amused by the evening new’s typical promos: CAR CRASH ON — DETAILS AT 11PM. If it’s that important, why not NOW!

TORNADO APPROACHING–DETAILS AT 11.

Pediatrics has to stay in business, sure, but as a matter of discussion how much should “staying informed” cost?

Just a snide thought.

It would be nice to do one of these some time.

For those considering the leap into Interactive Fiction and New Media 1: Perspectives, it’s time to use those springs.

I’d encourage English majors, teachers, and budding technologists to grapple with these areas, because it is here that the edge can be confronted, and by edge I mean “use” and “analysis” beyond conventions of conventional degrees: i.e., the hyperconventional. We’re talking serious study in coolness and narrative structure with these courses, and the Perspectives course is really coming together with the remediative (the concept of remediation and more: see Bolter, Remediation) elements of media and thought and communication.

The IF course will introduce and consider different modes of thinking about thinking, thinking about presentation, thinking about art, thinking about tools. This course is not a credit course, though it should be. But no matter. It is a course that, if used productively, can get you thinking about edges. Just ask Coonce-Ewing.

Then read this piece of IF (Downtown Tokyo, one of the course’s readings) and draw a map of the “world.”

One issue that keeps coming up as we talk more and more about new media and what to do with it in the classroom is the issue of the nature of the classroom itself. It’s a fun idea, something to throw around. What is it? How is it constructed? What sort of space is it and how much latitude do we have to play with it, especially within American education.

Some might say that the world is a great lecture hall and that all the objects that make it up are things with which to learn, from tadpoles to user interface, and thereby have a useful purpose.

Is the classroom gamelike; that is, does the classroom display characteristics of game. I don’t mean game as in the “frivolous” but games as strictly rules-based situations contrived for a given outcome. Most situations involve some sort of “reward,” a pay off, hence demand strategic thinking to get that reward. We need to get to the elavator before the crowd does, so we finish work a little early and then dash for the hall. Finishing work is the “tactical maneuver.” Strategy is the overall plan.

Does the way people behave in the classroom involve “game-like” approaches, playing for a particular result? If we achieve the result, did someone learn?

One of the hot issues these days is games and education, using games to teach (sort of like using stories to teach, hm, what, narrative?) and teaching with games. Subtle distinctions? Using games to teach and teaching with games. Are these similar statements?

Games are immersive by “nature” (they want us “inside”). Therefore, they encourage virtual spaces that grab and keep you. Games have a power of immersion that teachers would love to capture in the classroom, having students so engrossed in the “moment” of the subject that they just can’t help but leave jazzed and “filled” with so much about Shakespeare that their tongues drip with sonnet honey.

Lots of games exist that are themselves “learning” environments with a specific goal: teaching physics, for example. Yet all games involve environments and codes and surfaces that demand learning or that must be learned. In games we learn because we have to. There are some games that I can’t stand: certain games that are so complex, like Wadjet, that I spend much of the time at the table amazed at my dumbness. I like fast, kinetic games where cards are slapped around and fingers bleed, gladitorial stuff. Yet, as far as PC games go, I immerse myself in the adventures.

We live in these worlds anyway. Is the classroom not just another form of virtuality?