eople were being exposed to music that they barely had time to remember, because the huge volume of recordings and the small amount of time to absorb them presented to the proto-modernist listener a kind of soundbite mentality.” I think this serves as a warning. It isn’t even about sound. Link your pages too much and you loose your reader. It is a fine line between linking to expand your readers’ knowledge and linking to the point that you loose them in a tangent. For example…DJ Spooky –> Hitler Video –> Der Untergang –> Magda Goebbel –> Goebbel murder/suicide –> what were we talking about again?
he result is an immense repository – an archive of almost anything that has ever been recorded.” To me this begs the question, what else is there to talk about? And if you do decide to risk it and create a scholarly webtext, you had better be original. Because if what you have to say is too bland, too long, too outdated, too ANYTHING, you’ll lose your readers.
n our day and age, the basic idea of how we create content in our minds is so conditioned by media that we are in a position unlike any other culture in human history: Today, this interior rhythm of words, this inside conversation, expresses itself in a way that can be changed once it enters the “real” world.” I think this speaks to that while a scholarly online work must have a sense of credibility and restraint, there are relatively more options as how to convey your meaning. Scholars are no longer bound by white paper and black ink; margins that can only be so wide and a header which must contain A, B, and C. Now there is the opportunity to really get behind what you’re thinking through tasteful flash, website design, and subtle font choices.
Too anything? I’m not sure. Can you be too funky? Too cool? Too funny?
Maybe tasteful flash and subtle font choices can still be means to that end — being as engaged aesthetically and creatively as we are intellectually.