The assigned readings were a wonderful bouquet.  I appreciated the recycling of all the information we have been receiving.  We have been reading about the history of digital humanities–the behind-the-scenes-work since the 60s–and the pros that come with it towards research and globalized scholarship, as well as the foreseeable drawbacks.  We have read about interdisciplinary possibilities due to the existence of cyber commonplaces, and this group of chapters presents us with the reality of the digital/film-making world.  Chapters 26 and 32 are a wonderful illustration for an outsider–like me–of how the computer boom has revolutionized the world of film making, film study, film education, and video applications to humanistic studies on the web.   I was mesmerized, entertained all along, and took notes like a freshman [10 bytes is a 10-letter word, mind you, and you need tons of pixels per inch to get your daughter looking glorious in that video sent to grandpa in South America].

I spent lots of time reading Chapter 28, went quickly through the advantages of digital text; then, I stopped short at the statement: “narrative is not a reliable way to gain knowledge about the past because it involves a fabrication.”  I was taken back to arguments in other classes about literature versus history, and how they are both key legacy elements of humanity that complement each other.  I also remembered Isabel Allende’s quote, “[Writing is] recalling emotions and pains of my fate, and telling part of the history” http://prelectur.stanford.edu/lecturers/allende/interviews.html .  If what Allende says holds true to most literary writers–intending to recall emotions and feeling about the history–then the suggestions in Chapter 28 by Ryan are out of place, or are very materialistic.  He says we –literature people–need to learn something from computer games in “having narrative temporality” and giving the reader/player the “ticking of the clock” feeling, a feeling that he is in control, and in the moment.    After reading all the articles I can see finding a middle ground in multivariant narratives, but learning too much from computer game psychology to produce literary e-text..I don’t think so.   Literature is, like Allende implies, history told from the very emotional humanistic pragmatic point of view of the author.  It is then emotionally biased history, which would benefit with tags for video and audio enhancements.  All these ideas are coming from the chapters.

I was also deeply enthralled by Chapter 34, especially about its definition of beauty as an “idealized integration of form and function.”  This came after the description of Hawthorne’s butterfly narrative.  Material to think for weeks.  Beauty has been discussed throughout the ages.  To talk about beauty in cyberspace is a whole new subgenre.