The technology/conversation/content trio
Lo development of ebook and uses not he is alone tech or business. Technology has never been just technology. "L'essenza deeper than technique not it is nothing technical.” he asserts Martin Heidegger on the first page of The question of technique. Without the invention of movable type printing there would have been no Protestant Reformation, or it would have been different. There tech has a impact huge on creativeness and on the ways in which a content is expressed and disseminated. It would be enough to look at how theatrical language turned into cinema after that Georges Mélies in 1902 he put a bullet in the eye of the moon. Just six years had passed since the train of the Lumière brothers. A very short time.
In the age of new media or personal media, the content will be different from the one established in the era of the mass media or industrial media. As he never tires of repeating Derrick de Kerckhove la report on new media is a conversazione where the distinction between roles and hierarchies tends to disappear. There conversazione determines the construction, reception, dissemination and also the bequest of a content. And it's right there tech is skills la conversazione.
The construction of Shades as open content
The biggest bestseller of the past decade, le Fifty shades of gray, Was built right on the net as a open content. Her genesi was told by the Israeli sociologist Eva Illouz in a recent book also translated into Italian. Illouz well describes the process of creation/conversation/reception James experienced with her work. She wrote about it:
“Many contemporary books and television programs feature the mix between processes di production need reception, which makes them virtually indistinguishable or, better, the reception has become one part of the process di writing/ production that communicates directly with the imagination of readers and viewers. This process is called "prosumption". The consumer/reader/viewer that participate to the creation & of goods which is consuming is one of transformations more significant than process di best before date. In the fan fiction internet version, Fifty shades of gray (such as the Oprah Winfrey Show or reality shows) incorporated directly i suggestions of the readers, so that it can be assumed that the meanings and the welcome narrative twists ai readers were incorporated of narration".
That's what happened with James's erotic novel. Perhaps this creative process is responsible for the phenomenon of identification of millions of ordinary readers with the characters and the story. Who knows their tastes better than the reading crowd?
Towards total content
But the thing that makes you think the most is the radicality of the change that new media can represent for the content. It's just the the protagonist of this change. Is the software that put in hands of the creative many mezzi for the storytelling: the reading, vision, simulation,listening,interaction,alteration. The software makes it possible to create ansynthesis work is till now it was somethingimpossible due to the impossibility of producing, distributing and receiving it.
With a smartphone or tablet it is now possible to receive it even at the top of a mountain. In his studies of logic the German philosopher Hegel devotes many pages to exposing a fundamental theorem to understand the nature of technology. Hegel says that when a phenomenon increases quantitatively you don't just have a numerical change in quantity, but you have one radical qualitative transformation of the scenario. Today with smartphones and tablets in the hands of a third of the world's population this phenomenon is happening. What do you do with these tools? Content of all kinds is consumed and conversations are held. That's why you will have one transformation radical of the content and liberal arts.
No is no longer even theopera of a artist or an author solitary, But the outcome of a team work where different skills and different talents crystallize. In this process, a large one is also determined interdisciplinary contamination. In the conjunction of the various expressive codes the crumbling different gods genres artists and theirs hierarchy. It's not quite the return of the romantic idea of Total artwork (total work of art), but something that has some kinship with that idea. Time Left still the authors, artists, publishers and finally the market is also missing, but the fundamentals are all already there. Now we need the new Méliès to show us the way; someone who goes beyond the naive idea of letting the reader choose the ending. Today is perhaps the video game three-dimensional is the form that comes closest to the idea of a total work.
Looking for new content
In 2013 at the Columbia University was opened on Digital Storytelling Lab which has the purpose of experience new narrative forms suitable for public who reads a few books or rarely sits in a movie theater, but reads and writes a lot about social media and consume hours and hours of videos on YouTube, Vine or Netflix. The Columbia laboratory poster (which boasts the most prestigious journalism school in the world) reads: “La tech, as businesses of creativeness, He has always molded i ways in which the stories are discoveries e narrated. In the XNUMXst century, for example, the mass democratization of creative media – languages, data and algorithms – has changed the relationship between authors and audiences”. The context in which a content falls could not be better described.
In another laboratory document, a fundamental aspect of the discussion around content in new media is clearly expressed. AND the hegemony of the technological and detachment of the content creators, the authors, the artists, the publishers. It is this detachment that makes the development of new forms of storytelling still stuttering and uncertain. This document reads: “There has been a lot of discussion about the ways in which new technologies and new platforms are changing storytelling, but a lot of this discussion happens on the technology side. The part that creates the storytelling is really missing".
When Apple Lossless Audio CODEC (ALAC), presents to the public a new device hardly forget about emphasize how the gadget of the moment (Tim Cook also did it with the Apple Watch) is able to “unleash a new wave of creativity”. An almost ritual affirmation for a company that intends to place itself at the point of intersection between the liberal arts and technology. Yet it is quello which is success with theiPhone and the theiPad who have become among the most important mezzi for vehicular i content through applications and ebooks.
Content innovation in ebooks
Very little has been seen so far and everything outside the major circuits. Eight years after the introduction of the first Kindle and the first iPhone, the balance is bleak at the limit of awasted opportunity. The blame must be equally distributed among the big publishers and technological. Big publishers and technology argue fiercely and make all sorts of things like in the War of the Roses. Tim Cook, in an interview reported by Financial Times, he said “The bitter truth is that there is a Berlin Wall between the Silicon Valley e who creates the content. They don't respect and don't understand each other." But there is one thing where publishers and techs copulate like a couple on their honeymoon. They get along in keep The ebook in a state of minority.
Despite the good reception of ebooks among the general public, despite the good margins of ebooks for publishers and authors, despite the enormous potential of the ePub language and the devices where they are read, theebook it is still one today mere copy digital of the book, a different way of distributing a traditional content.
I big publishers and great authors, who still control publishing, want it that way and therethey invest very little, or even hinder its development. THE technological I am no less. Oh yeah they queue to publishers like Apple does (we are their best allies, declared Tim Cook in the above interview) or oppose them solely on a commercial level like Amazon which, on the other hand, continues to offer and invest in flinstonian technologies through which it is impossible to create a new generation content. behold theebook, private of a content distinctive and specific, loses comparison with the book which is still one of the artifacts of greatest affection for the general public.
Who will innovate then? Fortunately there are many start-up seams on the rete, Creborn with the network culture who have begun a path of innovation on the web, with applications, with social media, with new generation publishing. There are also new creative figures, outside the traditional cultural circuits, which are creating un new type of audience with proposals of formats and new languages that will find a way to evolve from the first formless experiments towards something that will become mainstream.
Content innovation in apps
It's right with the app which are seen better things. It's just the interactive factor, which is the hallmark of apps compared to other media, to make the difference. is theaction expectation by identification is compels i creators of content a confront with the innovation of product. Maybe it's just with the app which is emerging of a new form di storyspecific to the Internet. Told with different media in one way not linear, these new forms of content activate a involvement of the reader/spectator which is similar to that of the Games. It is narrations fully and deeply immersive, more immersive than a book, a film, a theater show. The storytelling in this context breaks down those distinctions di mezzi need roles that were typical of the content distributed through the mass media. The distinctions that disappear are those between author and audience, between storytelling and game, between fiction and reality.
One of the best achievements of this immersive form is application from the name Karen which is one middle way between one story it's a game through which, and above all with the interaction between the "subject" and the software, the former reaches a greater knowledge of itself. It is a journey that can last several days. Frank Rose, author of the best seller The Art of Immersion (Italian ed., Immerse yourself in the stories. The craft of storytelling in the Internet age, Code editions), and scholar of these phenomena, has dedicated an article to Karen, “Karen, an App That Knows You All Too Well”, hosted by the “New York Timess". To ebookextra readers we offer it in the Italian translation by Ilaria Amurri. For those interested in deepening the thought of Frank Rose can read this post "The art of storytelling in the age of personal media".
Karen
Would you like to hire a life coachbut can't decide? Today, many App Stores offer electronic alternatives for iPhone or Android, such as Success Wizard, "to organize, concentrate and obtain concrete and lasting results", or the countless exercises of LiveHappy, created by the Californian psychologist author of The How of Happiness; there is then niggle, for those who want "a pocket friend, available 24 hours a day", and soon the English group Blast Theory will launch a truly revolutionary application: Karen, the virtual coach that upsets users, leaving them definitely dumbfounded.
Karen is ainteractive artwork controlled by a , a cross between a story and a game. Designed to last a few days, this extensive experience deliberately shocking it is intended to make us question our relationship with digital devices, which can come to know us better than we imagine.
Unlike many other applications of life coaching, Karen communicates through un video lessoninstead of a text fading further the boundary between the reality and virtual world.
Coach (played by Claire Cage, series actress such as Coronation Street e Being Human) addresses the user directly and asks him a series of questions. AND winking, friendly… maybe a little too friendly. "She's just come off a long story," explains Matt Adams, one of the three members of Blast Theory, "and she's eager to try something new on the net."
Meaning of Karen
The behavior of Karen gives rise to dynamics somewhat reminiscent of the film Here (by Spike Jonze, 2013), in which the protagonist, played by Joaquin Phoenix, yes falls in love of a operating system. In this case, however, it is the Karem application itself that behaves strangely: “he develops a kind of crush”, says Adams, “and after about ten days he tells you what he has learned about you, even if he doesn't explain how you know certain things”.
The beauty is that it's not a movie, but aapplication customized for smartphone e tablets: there is no “fourth wall” here Here, the story is about you, Karen fits and takes shape thanks to information is are provided, draws conclusions based on your choices and as you open up, she opens up to you, in an increasingly anomalous way for a normal session of life coaching.
Karen can be downloaded from the Apple App Store and will be entered into the Storyscapes contest Tribeca Film Festival, dedicated to interactive story. “I like the idea of a coach misbehaving,” he says Ingrid Kopp, director of the interactive section of the Tribeca Film Institute and curator of the competition, “I thought it would be perfect for New Yorkers!”.
Kopp has had her eye on Blast Theory for some time and it's easy to see why: fifty kilometers from London, in the seaside town of Brighton, the team faces new technological challenges every day, combining play, storytelling and action. "There interest especially the relationship with Cell and we try to exploit them as a cultural space,” Adams explains. “With Karen we wanted to study the way in which the humans come in report ".
The strange thing is that usually i virtual characters they don't have the ability to do leads on 'ego of the user, born di to adapt to its personality, a peculiarity that makes Karen a unique tool, which allows us to reflect on the difficult relationship between digital personalization and human solipsism. "It's kind of like making a deal with the devil," adds Adams, speaking of the tendency to customize applications, “but we're here entering in one space immense e unexplored, which we do ourselves fatigue a understand".
Between reality and fiction
Blast Theory has always ventured into ai boundaries of reality: one of the first projects, the 1999 installation called “desert rain”, recreated a war scenario against the backdrop of a virtual desert, projecting images onto a wall of water, a medium which confuses la perception of what is real and what is digital. The six players had twenty minutes to find six characters and get out of a distressing world alive, but alone all fine, looking at a video lesson, they yielded tale that those people were really existed (a British soldier, a BBC reporter, a diplomat, etc.) and that their experience was set in 1991, during the Gulf War.
The project "Ulrike and Eamon Compliant”, commissioned for the Venice Biennale of 2009, consisted in letting the player enter a small wooden room, in the baroque halls of Zenobio Palace, where he was asked to choose un cellular andidentity: Ulrike, journalist and single mother from West Berlin, or Eamon, Northern Ireland customs officer and father of four.
Following the fitting instructions through a phone, the players si they walked in alleys labyrinthine of Venezia and learning of murders and bank robberies they realized they had chosen Ulrike Meinhof, leader of the Red Army Faction: Eamon Collins, extremist member of the Irish Republican Army, two famous terrorists of the 70s and 80s. In the end, a few questions revealed just how much it is easy overstep il overdrive ofidealism becoming killers.
Karen, like “Desert Rain” and “Ulrike and Eamon Compliant”, was developed with input from Mixed Reality Lab of the University of Nottingham, which studies the way in which technologies digital can to influence everyday life, for example in the context of privacy (recently, through a readability test, the lab discovered that reading Google's terms of service is like reading an epic poem, in terms of difficulty) and data management that make up the identity on the net.
“Karen is the artistic expression of these questions,” says Steve Benford, a professor at the Mixed Reality Lab who has worked frequently with the British technology group, “in pure 'Blast Theory' style, subverts i principles fundamentals of design of extensive experience ofuser”, which tend to limit the sources of discomfort, rather than introduce them. The lab has partnered with Nick Tandavanitj of Blast Theory, in order to develop new technologies di user profiling: the project is co-commissioned by Space, a digital arts platform founded by the BBC and the Arts Council of England, and developed in partnership with National Theater Wales, which will host a special event next summer aimed at a limited number of Karen users; $28 in funding was raised through Kickstarter.
To make Karen more plausible, Blast Theory turned to Kelly Page, a Chicago expert who has put together various typology psychological tests, including questionnaires that assess emotional resilience or define i five whether of personality (open-mindedness, conscientiousness, extraversion, pleasantness, pleasantness e emotional stability).
Karen's method
Like all applications of coaching, Karen it begins with some question concerning the emotional sphere of the user: in general, do you think you are an optimistic person? Do you think you had a happy childhood? Think you can handle stress? Do you try to think positively even when you are in pain or in difficulty? But the other applications don't start talking about theirs divorce and they don't make you peek From one door ajar to spy on a guy named Dave, breathlessly confiding in you that he's stark naked.
Once you get a better understanding of Dave and Karen's emotionally complicated relationship, you'll be invited to join one or the other for a fling. How far are you willing to go? Your answer will be more revealing than anything you've said up to that point.
All 'start, During the knowledge stage, Karen looks at you and says "if you confide in me, I can help you understand things about yourself that you didn't even realize": every application of life coaching, but in this case it is really true. The identification they will know how much Karen ha learned on them only at the end of the experience and at this point they will be invited to buy (for $3.99) the broad psychological profile that l 'application ha filled out with disconcerting precision. However, Adams explains, Karen's goal is not "to solve your problems by accumulating information, and her judgment shouldn't be taken too seriously."
Quest 'application can be interpreted as a game, but when it starts to involve us more closely we begin to understand how blurred the border that separates us from our devices is. Karen envisions a future where the definition of what is human becomes ever more ambiguous, and not because some mad scientist has created a race of humanoid robots, but because we want to have a pocket friend who acts as if they know us…or at least we think they do. want it.
In any case, as Matt Adams rightly observes “it is always intriguing to deal with something that attracts and repels us at the same time”.
