R2 Reading Response
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How Stories Deceive This New Yorker article offers a digestible example on how a good story can be powerfully persuasive and albeit, deceptive. Which leads me to an broader question: How can we better understand the intentionality and morality of storytellingWe discussed last week on how “deceptive” storytelling can be wishy-washy at times. In the video Ali presented, the library deceived the public into thinking the organisation was pro-book burning. This engendered the whole public into rallying agains the library’s motives, and supporting a more literate society. In less parasitic terms, we can say that the library shifted the conversation from less about taxes and more about the consequences of no economic support – aka book burning. This is a tricky situation. On the one hand, the library created the strategic campaign with clear moral intentionality; they were not trying to push for a deceptive idea but to get people rallied up on what was clearly a more important topic of discussion – the books themselves. On the other hand, what the library did was clearly a form of deception; they constructed a powerful narrative that led the entire world in a collective frenzy. What is fascinating is that nowhere along the way, did anybody even question this narrative – we willingly suspended our judgement in surrender of a damn convincing story. If we look at this in conjunction with the case of Samantha Azzopardi aka GPO Girl then, can we really consider her a fraud or a con-artist if all she really is is a damn good storyteller? Why was the library applauded for pulling off this deceptive narrative (once they publicly revealed their intentions) while Azzopardi was convicted of multiple counts of fraud and eventually forced to remain in her respective homeland in Australia? On the surface, the core difference seems to be the intentionality of the user, but what if this intentionality is hard to discern? What I wished the article touched more on what Azzopardi’s physiological state or personality is. The article claims that Azzopardi was evaluated by a psychologist as mentally normal, but I am very much skeptical about this claim. Perhaps Azzopardi is in fact not mentally aware of her constant identity fabrication, but externally and mistakenly seen as an expert con-artist. If so, were her actions really intentional? I would like to understand Azzopardi’s side of the story, but the article fails to offer the entire spectrum of the issue, immediately labelling her as a negative threat to society. The X, Y, and Z of digital storytelling Peter Samis offers an interesting digest on how the design of digital experiences has evolved to accommodate a much more socially conscious community of users (what today, can be understood as user interaction and interaction design). Share ability. Human-centered design. Efficiency and readability. These concerns dominate our current mode of design thinking. We are continually striving for more compact and uniform formulas to interact with each other. There seems to be a striving for, as the title describes it, a surefire x,y, and z of digital storytelling. If I put on my artist’s hat, this concept of human-centered design seems awfully…safe. (ironically, I study both art and human-computer interaction at CMU) As Samis mentions at the end of the paper, is there any room for creativity and custom experiences within the whole world of responsive design? I am not talking about creativity in the form of typeface or color experimentation, but the questioning and redesigning of “linear” design itself. As Samis questions,
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