{"id":99,"date":"2005-10-18T13:21:57","date_gmt":"2005-10-18T17:21:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2005\/343\/2005\/10\/18\/hegirascope-2\/"},"modified":"2005-10-18T13:21:57","modified_gmt":"2005-10-18T17:21:57","slug":"hegirascope-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2005\/343\/2005\/10\/18\/hegirascope-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Hegirascope"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

While going through the Hegirascope, the reader will come across many different pages and many pages that seemingly have no relation to each other.  However, if one reads for long enough, they will encounter fragments from many different stories and begin to slowly piece together each story.  It would take forever to figure out the entire Hegirascope, so when I found a couple of pages that directly related to each other and directly linked to each other, I figured I would start there.  The first page that I decided to begin with, titled Amanda, (http:\/\/iat.ubalt.edu\/moulthrop\/hypertexts\/hgs\/HGS078.html<\/a>) seems to be a letter or an e-mail written by a woman named Amanda to her husband or boyfriend.  She is telling him about her experience in <\/span>Oklahoma City<\/span>, just after the Oklahoma City Bombing.  Specifically, she is talking about her initial observations about the emergency response, and how many rolls of film she shot and where she shot them from.  <\/span><\/p>\n

From there, I clicked on the link titled "Stop Worrying" (http:\/\/iat.ubalt.edu\/moulthrop\/hypertexts\/hgs\/HGS135.html<\/a>).  It caught my attention because of the fact that it was essentially the last thing that Amanda said in her letter.  Clicking that link brought me to a page titled "Amandus", which was seemingly a response to the letter or e-mail that Amanda had written.  It seems to be a general update on life from the other character in the letters, detailing the daily happenings.  As I was reading this letter, the page automatically updated to what appeared to be another letter from Amanda in response to the Amandus letter (http:\/\/iat.ubalt.edu\/moulthrop\/hypertexts\/hgs\/HGS136.html<\/a>). There is some highly personal discussion going on between the two individuals, and it’s interesting to see the back-and-forth conversation between the two in letter form.<\/span><\/p>\n

An interesting point in these letters is that the links provided on the side of the page are all words directly from the letter.  However, they often times don’t link to something directly related to the word which is linked.  Most of the time you can’t make a direct path between segments of the same story simply by clicking on links.  Typically you just happen across another piece of the story minutes later, and you must reconnect what you had already read.  To help you link stories together, pieces of the same story on different pages use the same background color and the same font color.  This tends to cause a "haven’t I seen this page before?" reaction, but you quickly realize you haven’t once you start reading.<\/span><\/p>\n

This approach is very successful.  While reading what seems to be a random assortment of fragments of stories wouldn’t seem to be all that interesting, attention is retained by the fact that you begin to anticipate finding the continuation of a story buried somewhere in all the links.  Also, you can’t help but wonder "what’s next?" and either wait for the page to automatically update, or click on a link.  It’s strange to think that the author of the Hegirascope would want to make the tempo of browsing the sight so fast, since the pages automatically update every thirty seconds or so.  It almost causes a sense or urgency in the reader, giving the feeling of "I have to read fast or I won’t finish this page".  Again, this makes the reader want to keep on reading, and it really makes the Hegirascope a successful piece of digital text.  It really is a "text machine".<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

While going through the Hegirascope, the reader will come across many different pages and many pages that seemingly have no relation to each other.  However, if one reads for long enough, they will encounter fragments from many different stories and begin to slowly piece together each story.  It would take forever to figure out the … Continue reading Hegirascope<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-99","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reflections"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2005\/343\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2005\/343\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2005\/343\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2005\/343\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2005\/343\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=99"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2005\/343\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2005\/343\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=99"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2005\/343\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=99"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2005\/343\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=99"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}