Tuesday, September 23, 2014

The Jumbled Mess of the Reagan Library

I've been singing a lot of praises about e-literature lately, but there is one piece in particular that I found rather odd and perhaps an example of how not to go about creating digital literature. Reagan Library comes off as simply making no sense, which may be what the author had intended, but it doesn't work. Nothing in the point and click text is connected to each other, which can be confusing and even frustrating at certain parts of the "story." It's difficult to figure out what the plot or theme even is, because of its disconnected pages.
We are first greeted with a splash page containing the logo and several buttons. What happens after that is anyones guess as the website randomly generates one of its pages to give you as a starting point. No matter how many times I refreshed the page, I always got a different beginning. A cool idea, sure, but when none of the new beginnings help to explain to me anything that is going on in the plot it definitely loses some appeal. To progress, viewers simply click on the most random choices of words to go to a next page via hyperlinks. The pages that follow don't even seem to have any connection to the word you clicked; for instance, when I clicked on the word "databases," it took me to a page about the sky and clouds. It seemingly made no addition to whatever semblance of a story there was.
Reagan's Library is just odd. It seems like nothing but a random jumble of words trying to seem interactive but disconnecting at the same time. For this reason, I believe it could be viewed as a prime example of how not to create a digital literary file. Yes, interactivity is there, but interactivity simply for the sake of having it is pointless in itself.

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