Ontological implications

15. Representational Fears

Fear of Fragmentation

• Every new representational medium has been accompanied by fear that
  representational arts can be delusional.
• The more persuasive the medium, the more dangerous.
• Digital can assimilate all previous representations . . . so seems excessively
  dangerous.

Fragmentation of the Self

• Especially troubling in the case of young people.
• Multiple roles across multiple mediums and avatorial representations
  

Answer to fragmentation--Kaleidoscopic Vision?

• Multiform narratives feature alternative time/action lines; Readers assume a more active role when processing them.
  • We may learn to understand narrative PROCESS (rather than just practices and/or outcomes).
  • Immersion is possible here; agency has real outcomes.
• Digital media can manage multi-form-ality via procedurals, spatiality
• Because of the encyclopedic nature of computers, digital communication technologies might help us master the fragmentation of the age.
• Order of the third order: "As we invent new principles of organization that make sense in a world of knowledge freed from physical constraints, information doesn't just want to be free, it wants to be miscellaneous. The more information, the more possible ways to search, find, organize. The more ways to search & find, the less organized; the less organized, the better the chances of finding what you really want.

Want to learn more ?(I mean, besides watching the Matrix trilogy another 10 times!)

Janet Murray: Hamlet on the Holodeck
Edward Castronova, Synthetic Worlds
Edward Castronova, Exodus to the Virtual World
David Weinberger, Everything is Miscellaneous: The Power of the New Digital Disorder