My first instinct when I opened the Firefly site, as with the Jabber site, was to just click. My natural instinct in any site like this is to click, explore, and discover as much as I can without actually reading and/or following the instructions. In all honesty, Firefly was kind of boring and I think it’s due to the fact that requires less thought. Jabber possessed more of an everlasting entertainment value even though less clicking was required. The reason behind the process was more complex and it did require some knowledge of the system to understand what was happening. Firefly was boring because it was more self-explanatory and there weren’t as many things flying around the page.
The representational meaning behind Firefly was to provide a text that reads like a create-your-own-story book. It shows us a poem with 5 lines per page and a background picture of a memorial is provided – a different picture/view on each page. Each of these lines is able to switch to another line, once clicked on. It gives us options and depending on the line you switch, you’ll create a different part of the story, which may also mean a different end product.
The evocative meaning behind Firefly was created through the nostaligic feel of the style of text. I know that one person in class mentioned that it reminded her of when she or her children read those type of books when they were younger. Also, this style of changing one part of a work, which leads to a potentially completly different ending is relevant to our everyday life. This meaning that if we were to chose to drive versus ride our bike to school could, it be the deciding factor of our fate. One slip of another driver or the drivee/biker could evolve into a fatal crash ending one person or many people’s lives. Sure, that’s an extreme example, but in reality, one wrong, unanticipated, or irrational thought by any party in a situation could change your life.