blog.tylerball

2010-04-30

The past few days have been pretty warm and I’m moving. I’m also starting to read go deeper into my Python book. It seems that whenever I try to learn something about programming I’m caught between not knowing enough about it to actually build something, and to eager too get started on my project to actually learn enough to do it. I guess those are the same thing.

About the moving thing. I live across the street from all the dorms here on campus. All week I’ve sat on my porch with my Learning Python and watched hundreds of first years move their shit into their parents’ minivans. Every half an hour there is a suburbanite who never learned how to parallel park, trying to do just that. My street runs down the long side of a perfectly rectangular concrete student filing cabinet. But it’s nice. There are trees.

So it starts with a van pulling up to the car in front of the spot. Everything is going fine at this point. They begin to reverse and either start turning the wheel too hard, or way to slowly. They’re either on the grass or still in the street. Then the other sibling who is dragged along to “help Jenny move out” has to get out and direct.

When does that ever work? The people who always volunteer to get out and direct are never the ones capable of performing the necessary hand signals. It quickly degrades into “WHOA, WHOA, WHOA”.

Then they get the jerky; gas, brake, gas, brake, gas, brake thing going on. Basically they spend more time trying to fix their mistakes then they wouldve if they’d only lined up their car properly and acted with patience.

I think that’s a pretty good metaphor for my learning process.

Previously.

Tribute

This story starts as innocent as any other. You sit down to your computer, fresh from the latest teen-pocket draining flick at the nearest megamoviecomplex, and open Windows Movie Maker. The default blue background blares at you from under the white Impact. Your mouse slides over the cardboard from a case of Miller Lite that you use as a mousepad and you open Internet Explorer 6.0.

Then with your favourite heartthrob’s lines still ringing in your head you promptly input their name into Google Image Search and download the first 80 results into a special folder called “Michael Cera” on your desktop.

What happen’s next can only be described as magic. With a few swishes of the wrist, vertically scrolling ‘<3’s and some tasteful transitions, you have yourself a perfect tribute YouTube video.

YEARS LATER

I sit at my computer late at night looking for that funny scene from Arrested Development to show one of my friends. Your video, accurately titled “George Michael Greatest Hits” appears on the screen…

The Internet and Storytelling

Whenever I happen upon an article like this one—that seems to happen more often these days—I sigh and hope for a valid argument. Luckily, Ben Macintyre has some great points.

I agree with him that the average length of each “piece” of knowledge we consume may be shortening. People are getting their information in smaller bursts from Wikipedia pages, link-blogs and tweets. Is this any different than the millions of people who skim through the morning paper everyday?

Macintyre is also correct that the computer is not the place for reading. For me it is impossible to do long form reading on a computer of the traditional sense. Look at that page the article appears on. There are three external ads, classifieds, comments, tags and countless links to other Times content. How tragic his piece becomes, placed in this context.

Herein lies the problem with Macintyre’s observation. He views the internet from the perspective of the old media and sees the internet as a web-browser that goes to Twitter, YouTube and Facebook.

I feel we’re in a transitional period in reading. The internet’s trend for the past 15 years has been the gradual distillation and concentration of information. This a natural byproduct of computers that multitask and compile information so easily. I’m hoping the advent of single purpose devices like the Kindle and applications like Instapaper will make it easier for everyone to read on a screen again. The internet has not replaced the book because we are only now reaching a similar form factor, mobility and ease of use. The devices that are close are still expensive and hard to use in comparison.

As a personal aside, I’ve been doing much more long-form reading with Instapaper than I have in the past few years without it. At the end of the day I crawl into bed and dig into some truly enlightening and informative material.

I know you’re saying that nobody knows what Instapaper is, or a Kindle for that matter, but when the Egyptians figured out how to make papyrus nobody knew how to read. These technologies are only growing in use.

Macintyre is crying over the lowest common denominator. The people that receive their information on facebook statuses and have twitter pages full of meaningless hashtags aren’t the type that ever read a novel outside of Oprah’s Book Club anyway. It’s unfortunate, but nobody can make an argument that the internet is making it harder for them to find writing and storytelling. They will continue to find narratives in Macintyre’s examples of reality TV the news media. At least they are literate.

I’m not going to argue that the internet is replacing old forms of expression, or whether that’s even possible or worth worrying about. Because it isn’t. The point is that the internet is still so young. The average joe is still very far from understanding how it all works, but trust me, the edges of a storytelling revolution on the internet are starting to show. As soon as the television stops barking the word Twitter at us as the main form of expression on the internet, the better off we’ll be. Macintyre isn’t helping by falling behind the mainstream cry over our shortening attention spans.