Prezintly, I Have a Few Questions

                No, that was not a misspelling. This class has made me increasingly intrigued about how I, as a writer, could help to lead this progression of Book Culture for the publisher. I’ve spent hours at times reeling in the idea of a progressive reading context. Not just eBooks - in the world I was picturing they would be the “slow” technology like hardback books are being looked at more and more today. In the world I imagine a couple different options.

            First will come the eBooks that have sound bites and YouTube clips filtered in. Kindle will have to adapt their technology a little bit, but these kinds of books could be available on iPad even tomorrow if they have been written. The sound bite idea has always made me think of Leap Frog or those rather corny audio books (not all of them are corny – usually it’s mainly the books written for children or the very young adults in their pre-teens or early teens), but now I’ve taken to imagining memes or YouTube clips that accentuate parts of the story. I never thought I’d be saying that’d be a cool idea, but I see it as like YouTube was for the film world.

            Ok, but we’ve heard this idea before. What about something that’s a little different? What about text that literally moves with the reader? No, not a video like text that is read to the reader, but literally text that moves to excite the right energy for the right parts of the story. This idea sprang from hearing about  a story that was partly written in PowerPoint and how it affected the presentation of the information and added to the story being told. Recently I’ve been thinking about the energy contained within a Prezi and the energy it creates. So, here’s my thought – what if the story was written in a Prezi (for now, though it might actually be better as a video later) and the way the words were written (how they were placed, if they were zoomed into, if they were placed within other words, etc.) would create the meaning. This idea was further birthed from the idea of the narrative poem. In the time of Homer, these giant narrative stories were written in poetic form, but the epic poem has in some ways died as something to aim for and conquer. Some forms of poetry focus on the placement of the words and what that can mean. This PreziBook would be a way to marry this concept of poetry and the narrative – an epic poem of this technologically advanced day and age.

            This summer I plan to embark on this journey already taken by Homer, Virgil, Shakespeare, and others, and while I don’t hold that mine shall be anywhere as glorious I do hope to grasp the future and experience a new creative experience. Who knows? Maybe it could become my thing? My art? My special mark on the world?