LECTURE 3 – “What is Text?”

It is always great to have guest lecturers and industry professionals appear and Skye Doherty was no exception. Her manner of lecturing was fast paced and engaging and it was great that she left some time at the end of the lecture to answer questions and promote discussion.

The lecture focused around the question, “what is text?” It’s hard to believe that we are constantly exposed to text each day but we rarely take note of its enormous powers of communication. As Skye pointed out text is:

• fast and flexible
• about complete control
• portable and searchable 
• all over the Internet
• the substance of a story 
• emails, blogs, tweets, Facebook updates and comments
• metadata, excerpts, tags
• etc.

I found the idea of encompassing complete story content in a headline or by-line very interesting as it had never occurred to me how engaging this form of expression could be. Over the course of JOUR1111 I would really like to improve my ability for generating witty headlines as I think this is a valuable tool no matter what course or profession a person wishes to follow. My favourite headline was definitely the extract from The Scottish Sun which read “Super Caley Go Ballistic Celtic Are Atrocious”. As a Mary Poppins fan and a lover of word play, this headline captured my attention and my respect.  

At the conclusion of the lecture, Skye introduced us to the online videogame, “Cutthroat Capitalism” published  in Wired. Although it is essentially a game, “Cutthroat Capitalism” also doubles as an economic analysis of the Somali pirate business model.

The premise of the game is that you’re a pirate commander staked with $50,000 and your job is to guide your pirate crew through raids in and around the Gulf of Aden, attack and capture ships and successfully negotiate a ransom. I played this for over an hour when I arrived home from university and really enjoyed the challenge and negotiation skills involved.

Click here to play "Cutthroat Capitalism: the game"