{"id":73467,"date":"2014-06-03T05:30:24","date_gmt":"2014-06-03T10:30:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/?p=73467"},"modified":"2014-06-04T08:23:47","modified_gmt":"2014-06-04T13:23:47","slug":"is-homestuck-the-future-of-the-digitally-native-publication","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/?p=73467","title":{"rendered":"Is Homestuck the future of the digitally-native publication?"},"content":{"rendered":"

by Clayton Hayes, Head Editor,\u00a0INALJ North Dakota<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

Is Homestuck the future of the digitally-native publication?<\/span><\/h3>\n

\"clayton.hayes\"<\/a>Several months ago I got into a discussion on reddit<\/a> about the online comic\/story\/cult known as\u00a0Homestuck. For those of you unfamiliar, Homestuck<\/a> is a label-defying piece of online storytelling created\u00a0by Andrew Hussie. Started in 2009 as a single page, Hussie has since expanded Homestuck to include\u00a0almost 7,000 pages and over 730,000 words as of October 16, 2013 when Hussie put the site on an\u00a0indefinite hiatus. I was a fan of Hussie\u2019s earlier work, Problem Sleuth<\/a>, but quickly lost patience with\u00a0Homestuck\u2019s long, text-based posts and extremely convoluted plotline. The discussion did lead me to\u00a0this PBS video<\/a>, though, discussing Homestuck as the \u201cUlysses of the Internet\u201d.<\/p>\n

It got me thinking about what a digitally-native information resource could look like and, the more I\u00a0thought about it, the more it seems that Homesuck provides an excellent example.<\/p>\n

As you travel down the narrative\u2019s rabbit hole, you notice a pervading inconsistency<\/em> in the way each\u00a0page is formatted. Though Homestuck\u2019s early pages consist primarily of static<\/a> or animated<\/a> images with a\u00a0bit of accompanying text, it goes on to include pages that are much more text-heavy<\/a>, Flash-based games<\/a>\u00a0and animations<\/a>, along with a few other stray pages here or there.<\/p>\n

Isn\u2019t this exactly the sort of thing we should expect of publications developed specifically for online\u00a0platforms? It really can be thought of as a book in the broadest sense of the term, with page after page\u00a0of information, but each page can be filled with just about anything. Any sort of content that you can\u00a0imagine being on the web could fill the pages of a publication created using Homestuck as a template.<\/p>\n

As it stands now, almost all of the publications we see online are essentially digital reproductions of\u00a0their physical counterparts (especially when you look at scholarly resources). We are so married to the\u00a0familiar structure of the book that it\u2019s hard for us to break out of that mindset. It\u2019s hard to try and look\u00a0more creatively at the publishing process and at the opportunities presented by the online environment.\u00a0But you look at something like Homestuck and there it is. With no physical limitations on content, the\u00a0publication can be whatever you\u2019d like it to be.<\/p>\n

Do you want to include a poster-sized image or PDF in the publication? Why not! A YouTube video,\u00a0a Flash-based cartoon, a page of text, or a graphic-novel style comic? There\u2019s no reason not to. Page\u00a0breaks can happen at logical intervals instead of being dictated by the physical limitations of a print\u00a0page. Many online news websites use a similar system, with each article existing on its own page with\u00a0unique formatting according to the content of the article.<\/p>\n

When looking at scholarly resources in particular, the ability to comment and discuss content in the\u00a0same space as the content itself provides an interesting opportunity for open peer review and other\u00a0services that rely on social interaction. There are some limitations, of course. Publications of this\u00a0type would require the user to be connected to the internet in order to view the content. Due to the\u00a0vagaries of web development, it\u2019s unlikely that users could even download a version of the publication\u00a0that could be accessed locally. A lot more thought would have to be put into how users can navigate\u00a0the publication as well; spend any amount of time on Homestuck and you\u2019ll realize that it\u2019s nearly\u00a0impossible to find one particular page.<\/p>\n

Still, there is a lot of innovation that can take place with how web-based information resources are\u00a0developed and presented to users. As stakeholders in the publication process, we should be advocates\u00a0for innovation and can help to provide perspective on new methods by which information can reach\u00a0users.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Clayton Hayes, Head Editor,\u00a0INALJ North Dakota Is Homestuck the future of the digitally-native publication? Several months ago I got into a discussion on reddit about the online comic\/story\/cult known as\u00a0Homestuck. For those of you unfamiliar, Homestuck is a label-defying piece of online storytelling created\u00a0by Andrew Hussie. Started in 2009 as a single page, Hussie…<\/p>\n

Read more \u2192<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":60423,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[145],"tags":[69,3592,5898,6263,6261,3662,6262,4681],"class_list":["post-73467","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-articles","tag-article","tag-blog","tag-clayton-hayes","tag-digital-publications","tag-homestuck","tag-inalj-north-dakota","tag-online-publications","tag-webcomics"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/02\/clayton.hayes_.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1WoMK-j6X","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73467","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=73467"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73467\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/60423"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=73467"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=73467"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=73467"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}