If I were to relate the first piece to something from my list, I could write about how webcams are nullifying the viability of facial expressions as a means of communication in the digital age. After all, when one is teleconferencing with others from wherever, one is only actually looking at a display in space – a representation of a photograph. As it is not the ‘real thing,’ and may have been manipulated prior to one’s viewing of it, without delectability, the text of the image cannot be relied upon as conveying the intended message. But that would be silly.
I could relate the second piece to the list item ‘marketing/advertising’ as both are primarily based upon group action. The author seems to be saying that Hypertextual writing is better because it permits the readers to have some direct control over the content. Thus the writing is effectively a committee piece, like most advertising. Ads, for the most part, want to appeal to the widest possible audience (to sell more product), so contain elements that appeal to everybody. In a similar way to Hypertext writing’s Choose-Your-Own-Adventure style of reading, everybody is given what they want.
But, like most “creative” things that come out of committees, the quality of the product is dubious.
The third essay can be related to opera. Film in the recent past and opera in the more distant past, were both repositories of memory. Just as opera faded in importance and became just an option for entertainment and history, so, too, is film following. However, opera is still a beautiful form of art, and no less majestic due to television, nor compact discs. Film will have a similar fate, I think. The Battleship Potemkin is a beautiful film, and always will be.
