Having been previously exposed to Hegirascope (by force) through an ENGL 325 recitation, I really wasn’t looking forward to “going to the dentist” again.\u00a0 Therefore, I set my kitchen timer for exactly 30 minutes and…reluctantly…re-entered the world of this hypertext abyss. \u00a0My aversion to this creation stems from the simple fact that I don’t naturally read, think, and respond as fast as Hegirascope requires.\u00a0 When words are coming and going on a page before I have the chance to read and process their meaning, I feel agitated.\u00a0 Further, if I can’t make sense of the words I’m reading, the experience is frustrating and meaningless.\u00a0 This considered, I took Prof. Sample’s advice and chose to enter Hegirascope through the introduction and index option.\u00a0 \u00a0I also chose to exercise further control by backspacing if the pages advanced before I was ready.\u00a0 This helped me immensely and definitely improved the experience.\u00a0 Backspacing may not be what Stuart Moulthrop had in mind, but it gave me the opportunity to go back, read\/re-read pages, and process them on my timeframe, not the program’s.\u00a0 \u00a0I wondered if this might be in a sense cheating, but I don’t think so. \u00a0The ability to backspace could have been disabled.\u00a0<\/p>\n
For me, the option of entering Hegirascope through the index had an anxiety reducing effect.\u00a0 Because the index page is static, it allows the opportunity to peruse the topics and select a link with no time limit.\u00a0 This entry gives the user some measure of control that the “diving in” option takes away.\u00a0 After thoughtfully studying the categories, I yielded to temptation and entered Hegirascope through ” \u2018ORAL SEX.’ ”\u00a0 Although I could not find a relationship between the subjects\/theme in this link and the topic as I expected it, I’m glad this is where I started.\u00a0 The first link was Zick.\u00a0 From “Hey Zick,” again, out of curiosity, I chose the next Zick link.\u00a0 My course of travel took me to such places as “Shadows,” “Choose Life,” “Spelling of Love,” “LINGERIE,” \u00a0and “LOVE IS THE THING WITHOUT STAPLES.”\u00a0 As I write these names, I realize that I chose titles that intrigued me and placed them in my “grocery cart.”\u00a0 Marie-Laure Ryan’s metaphor of the “supermarket-shopping experience” was definitely my approach and the one that made me feel the most comfortable with this hypertext.\u00a0 According to Ryan, “This reader does not feel compelled to read the text in its entirety or to pay attention to every screen, because (s)he sees the text…as a display or resources from which (s)he can freely pick and choose.”\u00a0 (Marie-Laure Ryan, thank you for validating my approach!)\u00a0\u00a0Ryan further states that for user’s who apply the “super-market shopping” approach, segments are regarded “as a mode of transportation.”\u00a0 I can definitely identify with Marie-Laure Ryan’s\u00a0description.\u00a0<\/p>\n
My slower paced experience with Hegiroscope enabled me to awaken to a possible theme.\u00a0 Much of Moulthrope’s text seems to relate to the technology of computers, the web, the virtual world, virtual experience, and in general – technology\u00a0merged or juxtaposed with life experience – all of this in the context of time.\u00a0 If I didn’t have so much homework, I can honestly say that I would spend more time exploring the hegirasphere and its meaning related to specific aspects of the text that I found intriguing.\u00a0 In the interest of full disclosure, I have to admit that there were some pages that made zero sense to me, but for the most part – without too much work\/effort – I did see a common thread.<\/p>\n
So, my conclusion is that a slower paced hegira-experience was the Novocain I needed.\u00a0 After my timer beeped and while still numb, I felt brave enough to give “diving in” (minus backspacing) one more try.\u00a0 In an instant, the familiar agitation returned. I quickly realized that for this procedure, I would probably need laughing gas, too.<\/p>\n
\u00a0As a footnote, I went back to Hegiroscope this morning to re-create the experience I had last night, but it was impossible.\u00a0 When I opened “ORAL SEX,” the program did not allow me to take the same path.\u00a0 When I clicked “Zick,” I got a blank white page. \u00a0Refreshing did nothing. \u00a0So, it seems that Moulthrop purposely did not want us to have the option of choosing to travel the same path twice.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Having been previously exposed to Hegirascope (by force) through an ENGL 325 recitation, I really wasn’t looking forward to “going to the dentist” again.\u00a0 Therefore, I set my kitchen timer for exactly 30 minutes and…reluctantly…re-entered the world of this hypertext abyss. \u00a0My aversion to this creation stems from the simple fact that I don’t naturally … Continue reading Hegirascope – A Virtual Shopping Experience<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[28,29,12,30],"class_list":["post-155","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reflections","tag-hegirascope","tag-hypertext","tag-meaning","tag-stuart-moulthrop"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2008\/343\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/155","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2008\/343\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2008\/343\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2008\/343\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2008\/343\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=155"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2008\/343\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/155\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":159,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2008\/343\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/155\/revisions\/159"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2008\/343\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=155"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2008\/343\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=155"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2008\/343\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=155"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}