The more I read and notice the format and images in the Writing New Media text, the more I dislike it.
I hate to sound as if I know what the authors and editors should be including in their text. I definitely don’t know. But this text seems so primitive; it seems so in a state of experimentation, which is good, but also it is as if the authors or editors just want to piss me off with an obscure design.
But it makes me think of what it is like to look back at some very old texts that have such primitive visuals. Can I try to compare them to ancient scrolls? Can I look at ancient scrolls and compare them with texts with similar purposes of today? Can I imagine that I go into future and compare this text to a future text about writing media? Will this appear to be a relic? I don’t know; I could stand looking at ancient scrolls. This I can’t!
I will continue my idiot wind—having to turn my head to read the page numbers is just stupid. No you can’t get me to explain myself any more than you can get the editors (is that who is in charge of formatting?) to have a bit of reason for facing page numbers so inconveniently in two different directions, neither of which is the direction of the letters on its page. I’m surprised the headings and subtitles aren’t upside-down. Is technology supposed to make things more difficult? Am I missing the point? Is it supposed to be ironic? Oxymoronic? Or just moronic?
Perhaps the problem is mine. Is it me who comes from such a life of luxury that I wish my literature to have reason with its formatting? Is such a formatting issue really a puzzle, which I must interpret? I generally don’t mind interpreting puzzles of sorts, but my interpretation is that I’m supposed to notice that it looks weird. I must be missing something. Perhaps it is like those pictures, whatever they are called, that you must stand at a distance and look through them to get a view of something hidden. That must be it. Excuse me. I must go back to turning the text sideways to see if there are any hidden holograms behind it.
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Hahahaha I wondered the same thing about the page numbers! It certainly seems that there are people out there who seem to try to break boundaries so "obviously" that the way they try to break them seems absolutely ridiculous. Academically, I guess we could say that the editors have or author has successfully disrupted your traditional notions; however, is this truly a success? I guess it depends on the goal for the communication. Was the goal to have you notice the page numbers? Be distracted by them? If so, this is a good success. If the goal was merely to break boundaries and have you appreciate that move, I doubt it was a success (it usually is not a success for me when I sense that someone is deliberately trying to break boundaries).
It seems to me, at midnight anyway, that true boundary breaking happens without planning. It evolves.
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