Fostering Communication: New Media Storytelling
Nathaniel Pope
April 2005
 
   As technology continues to evolve so do the ways in which stories are told. There is a mutual dependence between not only the devices used to tell such stories, but amongst the stories themselves, past, present, and future. The introduction of these new technologies into society is neither linear or random as popularly believed.  New and old media alike become interconnected, altering the scope of narrative creation. Both computers and the internet and their variant technologies provide a wide range of opportunities for people and organizations to exchange and share information, communications, and to interact with one another on various levels in real- time. These available resources permit users to act as both spectators who view content that has already been made available to them and contributors who take the initiative to make such content available to others, especially in the context of narrative creation. This symbiosis can be  demonstrated by two particular case studies and their relationship to one another. The first, Adventure, arguably the first computer text-based fantasy game, created by William Crowther and later contributed to by Donald Woods grew to fruition as it was circulated amongst groups of friends over early constructs of the internet. This “twisty maze of passages” builds off of traditional modes of literature to create an interactive gaming and narrative experience. The second, “Thirteen Ways of Looking At A BlackBerry,” David Friend’s parody of Wallace Steven’s 20th century classic “Thirteen Ways of Looking At A Blackbird,” forms a complex social commentary and critique on our digital society, especially the language and culture of handheld PDA devices such as the BlackBerry. This poem, published in The New Yorker in 2004, further demonstrates the convergence between old and new media and exemplifies how society is coming to be dominated by machines.  When these digital texts are read together they reveal the interface of living in a digital age: the convergence of all media and their larger roles in fostering communication among individuals and groups of people. Furthermore, these texts not only question how far we will take this digital revolution, but also demonstrate that in doing so, problems aside, we are able to improve and perfect our systems of communication, especially that of story-telling.
 
   In Adventure, Crowther employs various qualities of “modularity,” “automation,” and “variability” (Manovich) in a virtual re-creation and extension of his real-life adventures exploring and mapping the Mammoth caves in Kentucky (Adams). The text is composed of various modules or “collections of discreet samples” of text [modularity] that “exist in different, potentially infinite versions” of these experiences [variability] (Manovich 30). In order to play the game and reveal Crowthel’s adventure, users must “direct the game with natural language input” (Crowthel in Adams), simple phrases containing recognizable verbs for the software. The object of the game thus becomes for the user to interact with the computer interface by using these commands to map a series of “twisty little passages” in order to find and conquer Colossal Cave in a certain manner, under a certain number of moves, and without getting killed. At any one point in time, the user can choose where to go, what to do, and how to interact with various characters and creatures along the way. However, each move carries certain consequences for later in the game. For example, when the user comes to a fork in the road it is crucial that the user go in the right direction. Furthermore, it is up to the user to map the effect of these various moves in order to master the game. Similarly, the user must also learn how to use tools, limited resources, for a wide range of tasks from catching birds and killing snakes and dwarfs to navigating in dark passageways, crossing fissures, conquering mazes, and avoiding pirates. One can choose to either kill the bird or to use it to kill the snake, but without the bird the user cannot get past the snake. So it makes little sense to kill the bird. These challenges help to demonstrate how digital media becomes an active site of narration [automation]. Crowthel’s story becomes digital and digital thus becomes a site of narrative organized in an efficient manner for rapid and random access of these materials. However, the game is not immediately accessible, rather bounded by various textual and logical restrictions which force the user to solve this puzzle to create the final outcome of the game. How well the user overcomes these obstacles determines both the duration of the game and how successfully the user will rank upon its conclusion, ranging from “Adventurer” to “Adventurer Grandmaster” and beyond.
 
   In the process, Crowthel becomes what Michael Joyce refers to as a “scriptor” or one who uses “constructive hypertext” such as the software used to create Adventure, the game itself, and Fronz, the software used to run the game “to develop a body of information which [users] map according to their needs, their interests, and the transformations they discover as they invent, gather and act upon that information” (Joyce 616). To a certain degree, users are in control of their own gaming experience able to choose how to interact with the physical environment and characters. This includes the ability to explore labyrinths, search for hidden treasures, climb huge plants, and kill dragons barehanded. Thus, by playing the game users can experience the thrill of what it was like for Crowthel to explore caves, with fictional content added for entertainment purposes. When the user is lost deep in a maze or cannot figure out how to lower a bridge, or to get to the main office without waking the dwarfs or irritating the snakes he or she experiences  what it is like to explore these Kentucky-based caves with an added since of adventure. These challenges reveal the extent to which the user is not actually in control. However, the shroud of interactivity works to hide this fact.

    The game can also be read as an “exploratory hypertext,”  a “delivery or presentational technology” that “encourage and enable an audience [rather than users] to control the transformation of a body of information to meet its needs and interests” (615).  This “transformation of knowledge” (616), aided by interactivity helps to disguise the fact that users are merely exploring the world of the pre-constructed text. All possible explorations and interactions are not only reliant upon, but defined by the pre-designed code of the software. Thus to experience Adventure, like most games, is not to manipulate this code in the creation of a new narrative, but to follow the code down a path that branches in many directions before once again converging on one final end solution. The user may die before reaching the conclusion of the story, the detonation of the main office and subsequent conquering of the cave, but although death may end one’s progress, it does not diminish the fact that there is only one ending to the story. No one Adventure experience is exactly the same, although very similar. The user can only use a limited number of commands to transform the text on screen into something meaningful. However there are various limits to this transformation of knowledge that will be explored after first looking at Friend’s text as a constructive and exploratory hypertext and its potential for narrative creation.

    Friend extends traditional and contemporary use of narrative by re-writing Steven’s classic poem using modularity and variability to critique modern society’s use of the BlackBerry. He contends that people’s lives are dictated by the painfully repetitive “Hunting, Pecking/Punching, jabbing” to simply “Open. Download. Delete.” data which “Flows 24/7." Also, he identifies how people’s abbreviated expressions such as “GTG,” “L8R,” and “Luv U” take away the fullness, flow, and flower of traditional prose and poetry. Furthermore he questions both whether “it was destined thus/that this keyboard be so caressed?”  and

    Which best fills
    And quenches
    The silence?
    The BlackBerry
    On
    Or the BlackBerry
    off? (76)

    These are merely rhetorical questions that Friend hopes his readers and PDA users will continue to ask themselves as new technologies come to the forefront. Thus, despite the problematic nature of these machines, Friend promotes how they are used to simultaneously and rapidly connect people all across the globe in a way that fosters communication that otherwise would be impossible. With the help of a BlackBerry people are able to “sail along, and soon speed on/To cruise with other strangers.” Inasmuch, Friend’s critique of digital PDA culture is constructive criticism in that it seeks improvement of these technologies. In doing so, he demonstrates how traditional forms of literature such as a poem can become an active site of digital composition and structure.

    Similar to Adventure, “BlackBerry” can be read as a new media text, a constructive hypertext that “requires a capability to act: to create, to change, and to recover particular encounters within the developing body of knowledge” (Joyce 616). Friend uses Steven’s poem to develop one of his own. However, whether the text can be seen as constructive or exploratory depends not only on how it is created, but how it is used. This text represents the constructive, able to alter and construct new text and argument. Thus if readers in turn use Friend’s text in this manner it becomes constructive. However, if they merely read through it once or twice and then set it down for all eternity, it becomes more of an exploratory one. Readers must become active scriptors, using “Blackberry” as a base text in the creation of another for the poem to continue to be constructive hypertext. Furthermore, Friend encourages BlackBerry users to use these PDAs to construct a better source of communications.

    Although both texts feature constructive and exploratory potential there are various limits to Adventure’s ability to “transform” narrative knowledge for the viewer. According to Joyce, "transformation of knowledge" within a text “should include a capability to create, change, and recover particular encounters with the body of knowledge, maintaining these encounters as versions of the material, ie., trails, paths, webs, notebooks, etc” (617). Adventure fails to do this to its full potential, leaving it up to the viewer rather than the computer software. While “BlackBerry” can be read both linearly and as a new media text, allowing the reader to interactively jump form one portion of the text to another, Adventure’s limited use of branching type interactivity (Manovich 38) restricts the user’s ability to move both forward and backwards in the text. One cannot reread the text in the middle of a game as one can with older media such as “BlackBerry” in which one can reread a line or stanza infinitely many times if desirable. In this way, the text is more linear and less associational than “BlackBerry.” For example, when reading “BlackBerry” one can easily go forward or backward and read any part of it at any moment. If one wants to compare the first stanza to the last, for example, the reader can easily shift focus. This is quite limited in Adventure due to software constraints rather than narrative composition. One cannot scroll from one portion of the text to another. Although various game files can be saved and accessed upon command, this is not efficient and interrupts the flow of the game. Although one argument for this type of interface is that it adds to the user’s experience to have to remember various outcomes of various moves, this is a trivial skill that most computer users, much less gamers find to be worthwhile. It is a pain to not be able to scroll back and retrace the story. In a book, one can turn the pages. In a film, one can rewind. In Adventure, one loses this information after a certain number of moves. On the other hand, “Blackberry” fuses discreet bits of information and the structure of a poem to enable free flow of information. Whereas in Adventure the user must remember or physically record what previous events took place, “BlackBerry” is published in this form. Thus, game narratives such as Adventure run the risk of becoming less accessible and less communicative as previous forms of media, whereas “Blackberry” builds off of both forms of literature to create one of its own. Writing and reading are not linear processes. The mind works in various associational ways. Adventure partially fails to allow for associational thinking despite the potential to do so. Sherry Turkle reveals Adventure’s counterproductive nature in her essay “Video Games: Computer Holding Power.” She contends that “Technological advances have enabled designers to create games that provide visually appealing situations and demand a diverse and challenging set of skills.”  Remembering previous events in a game should not be one of these challenges due to the linearity it causes. Nonetheless, Adventure becomes linear and inaccessible rather than hyper textual and accessible on multiple levels due to its inability to allow users to access the entire story at any point in time.

    In conclusion, these texts help to show how the culture of new media is a culture of translation: an active process of interconnecting all forms of media. This requires both mapping traditional forms of literature on to current digital devices as is the case in Adventure and mapping new forms of media onto traditional forms of literature, combining both content and structure as in “Thirteen Ways to Look at a BlackBerry.” However both texts reveal that a deeper understanding of digital technology is required in order fully assimilate into the digital age. The resulting message of these texts, intended or not can be summed up by Norbert Weiner who stated that “If we want to live with the machine, we must understand the machine, we must not worship the machine” (72). Friend’s similar message is obvious: although the Blackberry can and should be used to connect the world, one should also understand its potential uses and the consequences of choosing one use over the other.  When looked at in this manner, Adventure also demonstrates the need for such an enlightenment. In order to defeat the game, a deep understanding of its structure and logic is needed. Thus, in order to create Theodore Nelson’s “Dream Machine” or Vannevar Bush’s “memex” we must understand these principles and actively become engaged in the culture of new media as do these texts.    


Bibliography

Adams, Rick. “Colossal Cave Adventure.” Internet: Rick Adams. 13 April 2005. http://www.rickadams.org/adventure/c_xyzzy.html

Crowthel, William. Adventure. The New Media Reader CD-ROM. Ed. Noah Wardrip-Fruin and Nick Montfort. Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2003.  

Friend, David. "Thirteenways Of Looking At A BlackBerry." New Yorker 8 Nov. 2004: 148.

Joyce, Michael. “Siren Shapes: Exploratory and Constructive Hypertexts.” The New Media Reader. Ed. Noah Wardrip-Fruin and Nick Montfort. Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2003. 614-624.

Manovich, Lev. The Language of New Media. Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2001.

Nelson, Theodore H. “Computer Lib/Dream Machines.” The New Media Reader. Ed. Noah Wardrip-Fruin and Nick Montfort. Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2003. 303-338.

Turkle, Sherry. “Video Games and Computer Holding Power.” The New Media Reader. Ed. Noah Wardrip-Fruin and Nick Montfort. Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2003. 500-513.

Weiner, Norbert. “Men, Machines, and the World About.” The New Media Reader. Ed. Noah Wardrip-Fruin and Nick Montfort. Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2003. 67-72.