Just Scroll: In the Multidimension

How often do you read something like this where the page goes on and on forever, and you never know where to stop and where you should start? It’s hard, right? This interface emphasizes that. Scroll left to right with your mouse, finger, device. Scroll with your eyes up and down!

Now imagine if every paper and every article were like this. Readers might not be able to understand other people’s writing, all text would be interpreted differently in, like, ways that make those different reading practices obvious: there’d be no gist or common ground in a reading except that the words were the same. But is that such a bad thing, to write and read considering how its the words that exist, not necessarily how they’re put together?

Interfacial #1:Reading in Too Dimensions Usually, an author writes in one dimension. You know, left to right or right to left or up down or down up. And two-dimensional writing is kinda limited to acrostics, telestichs, and double acrostics: first letters at the beginning or last letters at the end or both spell something.

But here it’s more complicated. Authors let audience members tease the audience in a complicated game of word alignment and scroll to make meaning when you read up and when you read down. When you scroll left and right and up and down. Go ahead, play.

Go ahead, play. Go ahead, play. Go ahead, play. Go ahead, play. Go ahead, play. Go ahead, play. Go ahead, play. Go ahead, play. Go ahead, play. Go ahead, play. Go ahead, play.

Interfacial #2:Writing in Too Dimensions When you scroll to read left to write do you stop at the “right” place? Or do you keep going? Does it make sense on the next line? Does it make the sense the author wanted or is the new sense yours? So if ya don’t know then an audience has some power to tease an author’s meaning!

When you scroll and make meaning from top to bottom, there are alotta permutations and whatever you pick might be an intention, but we doubt it. Of course, Like a writer could italicize some stuff or make it different to intend purpose--see what we did. Or just don't do it and give agency to the reader to read up and down and--add a third dimension--down and up. Maybe even a fourth: right to left! Seems like more equity for an audience, for making up their own mind about meaning. Doncha think?

Interfacial #3:Citing in Too Dimensions Because how can you cite something if you don’t know where it starts and where it ends? How could you plagiarize it? Every time you look at a section a new meaning comes into play. Like this sentence for example:

“Peter is happy” most people if they start from the beginning of this page will read Peter is happy, but if you were to start from a random spot in the text you might read “happy most people” or if you are reading backwards you might read “happy is Peter.”

A sentence like this can be read backwards and still make sense in the original context, but not all sentences will stay the same backwards and forwards. For example, “Are you as bored as I am?”. In this context, the person talking is asking their friend or someone else if they are also very bored. But if we were to switch the sentence around, then it sounds like this: “Am I as bored as you are?” Now that I am nearing the end of my writing, and maybe you are nearing the end of your reading or

maybe you’re in the middle, either way do you think you read my words write? Is this what I intended to say? If you missed a word, did it change the meaning? If you read every other word of what I wrote, would it make sense? And finally, how would you even begin to cite my work if you wanted to use it? Could you or have I made it impossible to do? If you do use my work, is there a way to ethically cite it, or are you just guessing? Just some things to think about on your way out 😊