English 680V: Visual Rhetoric in a Technological Age (Purdue)

What could an immersive book look like?  Lanham has talked about the movement away from interactive texts and back towards traditional texts (only they’re on a computer screen).  He also talks about the way that books, at least for those of us who really adore reading, are an immersive reality all to themselves.  I have always shied from ebooks for many of the reasons that Lanham mentions: they are not mobile, there is nothing to touch and write on, I feel left out of the text and am interrupted by scrolling or button pushing.  I just never found a love for them, and would rather read something that is on paper—yet I am able to spend hours online flipping back and forth through pages of information.  How can this be?  The way I read a novel or article is of course very different then the way I read online.  Online I am generally skimming to the paragraph that feels like it hold some nugget of truth, or I am reading for brief information (recipe, factoid…).  It seems that the texts online don’t quite take it far enough.  How would it be different if I could be in the text?  And how would it be if my actions actually changed the text?  I was desperately looking for this wonderful thesis that one of the MFAs at Colorado State University made while I was just starting.  She had a site where how you moved and selected text (which faded in and out and was hauntingly cool) changed the story that would appear and/or evolve.  It was one of the most effective online creative texts that invited you into the process.  Also, I am curious about the way it would be if, as we read/interacted with a book, we were in a virtual world of the text… I haven’t fleshed out what this would look like, and it might be part of my 3D library mind map of love, but this giant gerbil ball might be part of it.