What the fuck is the point of this?!
Telescopictext
11–20 of 67 posts
Re: Telescopictext
#12It might be nice to read news articles this way. Start with the headline and expand the parts that interest you the most. I can imagine it being difficult to write that way, though.
Re: Telescopictext
#13Wow, the http://www.telescopictext.org/ website is a very slick tool to create your own. I created an example one here (made a few typos that I couldn't figure out how to fix): http://www.telescopictext.org/text/AYeELHzYgVV8b
It has the feel of interactive embedded footnotes with positive reinforcement for opening them -- each time I clicked it revealed a few more features about you. Positive reinforcement is an important factor as you feel like you're discovering information hidden at a deeper level. Even if dozens, or even hundreds, have discovered that "secret" before it still feels like you've achieved something. The alt-text on XKCD is a perfect example of this.
Footnotes tend to convey additional information omitted due to necessity or lack of interest by the mainstream readers. I don't see them online a great deal, primarily as the web isn't composed of traditional pages so they don't translate well...
Has anyone else seen an interesting or novel way of doing footnotes on the internet?
(unrelated, but if anyone wants a fascinating example of footnotes in meta-fiction, the novel Oracle Night by Paul Auster has entire subplots and even another "book" hidden in the footnotes)
Re: Telescopictext
#14It might be nice to read news articles this way. Start with the headline and expand the parts that interest you the most. I can imagine it being difficult to write that way, though.
I discovered Joe Davis and TT a couple years (even going so far as to make my own editing tool which, I like to think, influenced Joe's own implementation).
I was thinking about the news article ideas the other day, actually. (E.g., a 24in60.com snippet that expends to a full article.) I think it would be really cool, but it takes a lot of work to make something seamlessly go from being a snippet of information to a full-fledged investigatory article. You'd basically have to write a series of increasingly more detailed articles using the same story flow. This might be something text analytics and computer-generated content could be able to do; if not today, then someday.
Re: Telescopictext
#15Nice, it's like having a slider to go from Raymond Carver to David Foster Wallace.
Re: Telescopictext
#16It might be nice to read news articles this way. Start with the headline and expand the parts that interest you the most. I can imagine it being difficult to write that way, though.
I discovered Joe Davis and TT a couple years (even going so far as to make my own editing tool which, I like to think, influenced Joe's own implementation). I was thinking about the news article ideas the other day, actually. (E.g., a 24in60.com snippet that expends to a full article.) I think it would be really cool, but it takes a lot of work to make something seamlessly go from being a snippet of information to a…
Why not go the opposite way and write increasingly shorter snippets from a full article?
Re: Telescopictext
#17Nice, it's like having a slider to go from Raymond Carver to David Foster Wallace.
Nicholson Baker's The Mezzanine is a terrific novel about a guy who leaves his desk to ride down an escalator to buy shoelaces and a cookie.
Re: Telescopictext
#18Wow, the http://www.telescopictext.org/ website is a very slick tool to create your own. I created an example one here (made a few typos that I couldn't figure out how to fix): http://www.telescopictext.org/text/AYeELHzYgVV8b
It has the feel of interactive embedded footnotes with positive reinforcement for opening them -- each time I clicked it revealed a few more features about you. Positive reinforcement is an important factor as you feel like you're discovering information hidden at a deeper level. Even if dozens, or even hundreds, have discovered that "secret" before it still feels like you've achieved something. The alt-text on XKCD…
My colleague (with some help from me) created an interactive version of the 1932 French poem "Nouvelles impressions d’Afrique" by Roussel, one of the early experiments in this vein: http://withhiddennoise.net/roussel/
Re: Telescopictext
#19The fully expanded text is: Yawning, and smearing my eyes with my fingers, I walked bleary eyed into the kitchen and filled the kettle with fresh water from the tap, checking with my hands to make sure it was cold enough (The best tea comes from the coldest water). I glanced outside for a minute at the city mist. I could almost taste the grey. I plugged the kettle in and switched it on. As the kettle began to hiss, I…
Thank you for the TLDR. I wondered whether the text would just keep expanding forever... In some ways I am sad that it did not.
Isn't the TL;DR "I made tea" ?
Re: Telescopictext
#20The text does not collapse back...