[thequality-update] testing 3 18:04

[Michela Ledwidge]

thequality-update 01/2004

 

Update on thequality.com's current projects and insights into

converging media issues. http://thequality.com

 

NEWS

 

- What's the Story?

- Wednesday, February 18, 3pm, BAFTA, 195 Piccadilly London UK

 

Kicking off the year is What's The Story?, an event I am producing for
the BAFTA Interactive Festival, a three-day series of events kicking off
on February 17 with the aim of finding out why the idea of interactive
story has refused to die. We've invited game-makers to sit around a
table with film-makers and let rip on how they see new developments
impacting their craft now and in the future. There will be exclusive
demos of upcoming interactive titles including Peter Molyneux's “The
Movies”, some specially commissioned machinima (if you don't know what
machinima is, this will be a great opportunity to see it in action), a
VJ set and a host of other goodies.

 

BAFTA Members Free

Non Members £10

 

FOOD FOR THOUGHT

 

It has been over two years since our last update (this was always meant
to be semi-regular!) and no news has been good news. It's been eleven
years since this little dotcom started and with the benefit of a little
bit more hindsight, it doesn't seem like many things have changed
online. 

 

There is still a shortage of good plumbers. There are still plenty of
opportunities to lose money. There are still lots of virtually clueless
consultants. There are still plenty of opportunities to do something and
achieve widescale recognition. Content still has a ridiculously short
life-span. Links still break and services still slip regularly into
obsolescence. Business plans and storage mechanisms still fail, domains
still expire, and backwards and forwards compatibility is still viewed
by many as a luxury. The digital age could still easily end up as an
embarrassing black hole in recorded human history. "It doesn't work now
of course but it was pretty cool."

 

Depressing? Not at all! The good news is that the experience of the
builders, the plumbers, and their respective tools are all steadily
improving without much hype, for the benefit of those who are generating
it. Online distribution has never been as efficient as it is today, to
the horror and delight of industry. Sustainable systems design is no
longer simply a nice-to-have but more of a cost imperative. The Internet
has never been a more effective medium in which to publish substance and
the likelihood of substantial content being accessible is improving. If
you're into rubbish, there's plenty more of that as well. Which is not a
bad thing. It is hard to set culture against culture when either can
poke through the other's trash. Empathise with your enemy, they say.
File-share and share alike.

 

The explosion of interconnected weblogs has been fun to watch, an
illustration of how quickly the Internet evolves. Content management
starts to get complicated and suddenly, for many people, it is suddenly
becomes irrelevant. The Web throws another googly. A new paradigm takes
hold. Regardless of what content is actually being produced, the sheer
scale and vigour of all this personal publishing is doing wonders for
the overall usability of the Web - the glorified global filing cabinet.
Semantic information is soaking in at a rate that will be increasingly
hard to remove quickly - handy stuff if anyone wants to hide the drawers
marked "Dissent". 

 

I still find it ironic how much the whole system relies on text. Simple
labels. Simple protocols. No degree in rocket science required. Despite
the debut of photo-realistic CG humans, despite the unparalleled sonic
realism of convolution reverb, literacy is still what counts.
Readability is what counts. You don't have to go to great expense to
make online stuff readable but if you are serious you do need to share
something. Which is not to say that you can't protect assets, guard
crown jewels, but if your public content isn't machine-readable, it may
be time to question why.

 

ABOUT

 

thequality.com is Michela Ledwidge's interactive production company
specialising in story-telling and story systems. The company was founded
in Sydney in 1993 and moved to London in 1998.

 

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.thequality.com/mail/thequality-update/attachments/20040206/822f7858/attachment.htm