If you haven't yet done that activity, head over there first. It's okay. This file will wait.
According to Janet Murray, author of Hamlet on the Holodeck and Inventing the Medium,
Everything made of electronic bits is potentially:
- procedural (composed of executable rules)
- participatory (inviting human action and manipulation of the represented world)
- encyclopedic (containing very high capacity of information in multiple media formats)
- spatial (navigable as an information repository and/or a virtual place)
"These affordances," she writes, "make up the designer’s palette for representation in any digital format or genre."
How well do these affordances, i.e. prominent potentialities, line up with the story you wrote for the main activity? In other words: what do they help you see about the digital or the analog objects and habits that you described there? What do you see differently now? What questions do they raise about the changes you narrated? On the flip side: does your story help you understand any of Murray's terms?
Discuss as a group. When you're ready, edit this file, and in the section below try to articulate the highlights and main takeaways (including any unanswered questions) from your discussion.
File a pull request back to the main repository when you're done.
I wrote that almost everything can be done digitally in the modern era. My statement covers each affordance. Oour story is also too short to contain any true opinions or notions about the extent of a digital world. I understand a participatory affordance as being observed via social media and messaging platforms, like email and text. Encyclopedic is obviously evident in digital platforms since browers, like Google, generate millions of answers (articles, blogs, videos, etc.) within fractions of a second. The internet and digital platforms inundate users with information, which can often be overwhleming.