The Story Engine sounds like a worthwhile project. On one hand, as an experiment, it would be interesting to watch the
narratives develop because of the controlled factors of participators and base story. It could be noted how different people interact
with each other, as well as to whatever the story in focus is. On the other hand, as a literary endeavor, the end result of a narrative
might be fun to read, or even present an entirely new way of reading and writing stories. It definitely breaks some of the confines
put on Wikipedia, because of the editing and control, and Coover's workshop, allowing several writers/artists to participate in one
narrative. The comparison to Game Theory is definitely topical, as the internet and online networking are playing such a large role
in society. As for ideas of defining the self and one's role in the world, I think it's hard to determine what effect this will have on
them without studying the process and end result of a narrative created by the Story Engine.
I agree with Erin about the Story Engine being a worthwhile project, and the article says that it will be free but directed to a certain group of users and I hope that users will have to register and get approved to write in the story engine but reading it would be free to other users because with the internet being so vast and reaching people all over the world, it would be a waste to try to get a group of good creative idealistic people together to write a nonlinear narrative story and you have little Timmy the 12 year old sadist from Tennessee taking the story out of context and turning it into a demented unreadable uncreative expression of ignorance. Yes everyone is capable of freedom of speech but when u have a positive forward moving forward thinking idea like the Story Engine, I think one would be selective as to who is able to write a branch of narrative from the original. The article also states, "A reader can read and interpret a Jane Austen novel more deeply, and in a more textured wy over repeated re-readings, than is available with a non-linear narrative in which the reader's primary experience is simply a cosmetic, physical one of navigating around in a novel way." I think the Story Engine should be more about inspiration and expanding one's creativity rather than interpreting the text. You can read the nonlinear story in all its various forms and the stories as a whole will stick with you and if you want to read the same story again you should remember the links you clicked the first time and just follow that pattern again if you want a deep and textured interpretation, but the focus should be more on inspiration to write your own part of the story, to build on what is there and have someone else read and build on that. That's something you can't do with linear narrative and that's why I am looking forward to seeing the ideas and storylines created with The Story Engine.
ReplyDeleteI Also agree with Erin. I think this project is good and will help many people in the end, Although It said it was set to be launched sometime in the beginning of 2008. lol I also don't know how this is gonna work in the High speed internet world today. There are so many other means of writing articles and stories online that making this project work will need strength from people all around the world.
ReplyDeleteThe Story Engine concept as discussed in the article "Active Reading: The Story Engine" by Seth Ellis seems like it would be an interesting project to watch unfold. However, mention by other before me, there would have to be many trial runs and parameters set up first in order to make this concept work. The idea of the story engine reminds me of the game where everyone sits in a circle and takes turns adding one sentence to a story idea. It's usually fun for sometime, but then as creativity runs low the stories usually become nonsensical. Ultimately, once ground rules are established, like perhaps the one mentioned in the comment above mine that only certain people can have prior access to the engine, and so on, then I think this could be a worth while item to try. Difficult, but worthwhile.
ReplyDeleteSeth Ellis has an interesting idea in his finalization of his "story engine" study. Mr. Ellis seems interested in the relationship between readers and writers. An interesting relationship, but I feel that taking the interactive idea model and applying it to written texts is perhaps a futile experiment, as Ellis points out himself, that the differing story threads if viewed at once would make an indistinguishable mess. This reading in that way kinda plays with the idea of infinite plausibility within narratives. I feel the application is more applicable to video games than to written texts because in video games you can give the user the "free will" while still retaining a certain set of rules about a world. However when you give the "user/reader" authorship in a written text these pretexts are not followed. As each reader at each different point and time when a hypertext thread has a chance to diverge from the original story will have a differing idea of as to where they see the text proceeding from that point. And none of the co-authors have the experience or the vision of the author. Also this kind of authorship, destroys the original work.
ReplyDeleteI feel that this type of co-writing would only be helpful if there was in the interface some type of alogorythm that the original author would agree to, which would control how the text would "react" to changes made in the story. In other words, in order for differing threads to be meaningful in the context of the story the story must in a way. React and rewrite itself based on changes made by co-authors in real time. This in my opinion would be a much more worthwhile investigation. And experiment in to this idea of co-authorship, and would also give insight into the mathematical models themselves. Unfortunately this experiment would require the use of artificial "intelligence." A technology currently not in wide use, or widely available.
As a disscusion on purely human interaction, the "story engine" functions less like a story engine and more like a multi-layered human blog interface where real people update and comment on each others writing with posts and reaction posts. checking each others work and seeing how different users re-write the same story. Ultimately creating story's which actually have little or nothing to do with one another.
I wouldn't call Seth typical. Actually the ideas relating to user game world "freedom" is a new and constantly evolving field in the world of games. More massive online multi-player games follow this model than do platform games. Most platform games follow a linear narrative. But increasingly this user-driven philosophy is now being used.
So there I disagree with Erin.
The story engine is really not an engine at all. Because there is no "engine." But it is related to games in the way Seth would speak of it because both mediums tell stories. except for games must be interactive stories, necessitating the use of an "engine" until I see an interactive book I'll be quite skeptical of this idea of free for all content related blogging.
I agree with Erin too. many participants, changes based stories. It was really good methods to communicate and create new things with many people. Web, interactive world can allowed to do it,
ReplyDeleteThe story engine they talk about almost reminds me of a forum. You can add any information to it no matter who you are. But in this case, your input relies to a specific plot. This allows for many different creative ideas to be converged and looked at by any with an internet access. I feel that things such as video blogs have more of an entertainment value though. I don't know how successful these story engines will be with the public, but I do see it as a helpful source for creative thinking.
ReplyDelete-Greg Fernandez
I agree with Erin as well, it would be fun to watch this unfold. I also agree with Kerry and the weekend reading about the trial runs.
ReplyDeleteoff topic, is there a reason the post came up as it did with a space between every two line? that part actually kept confusing me while reading it. No big deal, just wondering.
I find this idea very interesting. The world wide web is making the entire planet a global village and thus making the world smaller and smaller. It will be interesting to see how these type of narratives and ideas develop in the future, to what extent they become popularized, and how they will be used by some to make a profit.
ReplyDeleteBy Sal
ReplyDeleteThe story engine sounds like a very interesting idea to me. It reminds me of the way ants act as a collective even when acting as individuals. This idea was also used by sci fi writers for the basis of "The Borg" in Star Trek.