|| -------- -- -----  A E R I E   O B L I V I A N A . singular book of text wandertainment by Frank Edward Nora ------------------- ----------- OSOAWEEK--ISSUE 249--5/4/99 <-------  ||  OsoaWeek  ||  Issues  ||  Book 20  ||  -------> (Cup OWis249, Created v3 (10/3/99), Copyright 1999) = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = ------------------- OSOAWEEK Ezine of Obliviana Issue 249, 5/4/99, copyright 1999 by Frank Edward Nora, Lord of Obliviana ----------- ------------------- LORD OF OBLIVIANA ----------- Mon 5/3/99 * 9:13 PM On Friday I had a kind of revelation, in the park between the Staten Island Ferry and the Hoboken/Jersey City Ferry. Curved docklike structure, and black metal stylized observation thing. Aerie Obliviana as wellspring. It's funny. I've come so far--next issue will be OsoaWeek 250!!! But still, Obliviana is nowhere, man. I know that Aerie Obliviana is absolutely the right direction for Obliviana to go in. But it's a very difficult thing to get people into. Version One, which is online now, contains the OsoaWeek and Superior Archives. These are both Revolvers which are not well-suited to be focus content. Without context, both are pretty confusing. OsoaWeek and Superior are Revolvers that will interest people who are already into other, more accessible Revolvers in Aerie Obliviana. I have already made a great deal of progress in Severe Repair, which will be the major addition to Aerie Version 2, coming on June 7. Severe Repair is itself a little mind-boggling, but I think it will grab many people's attention and hold onto it. Zope is the other Revolver I am definitely going to add to Aerie Version 2. Zope is a comic strip character, and Aerie Obliviana has no graphics, so the full impact of Zope will not come across in the Cups of Aerie Obliviana. But it will be a very complete archive of Zope's adventures. This is where Aerie as wellspring starts to make sense. Zope in Aerie as text, and streaming forth out of Aerie, the idea takes on new forms. In this case, Zope with graphics. Convoluted? I mean, I have had Zope comics in graphical form online before--why do I have to distill Zope into text in Aerie, and then being the graphical Zope back? The answer is, the Revolver Zope RESIDES inside Aerie. It is FROM there. This may not seem to matter much, but I believe it matters a lot. See, from my own experience, whenever I see something online, I want some idea of where it's coming from. The context. Lack of context, and confusion, and the sense of being lost--these are prime ingredients in accelerating the fuse of the attention span. So, Zope as it had been online, just sitting there, part of "Obliviana"... an Obliviana with no definition... very hard for people to pigeonhole in their mental filing system... such things are usually discarded quickly... Now I know I've been saying how confusing some of the content in Aeire Obliviana can be--but this is where the definition of Aerie Obliviana becomes so important. Aerie is a book. A cool book with lots of cool stuff inside to read. That's it. Whatever is inside of it, Aerie Obliviana in "just" a book. Just ONE book. A singular book. One thing. All of these ideas theoretically serve to make the idea of Obliviana "fileable" in the mind. What is it? It's a cool online book. That's it. This is an idea that is easy to understand. And it is my goal to structure Obliviana so that people receive this idea when they encounter Aerie Obliviana. And once people understand Aerie Obliviana in this way, the content that springs forth from it into other media, such a graphical Zope comics, will have an anchor of understandability, "fileability". Aerie Version Two will be out in a little over a month. My ad in Wired Magazine should be out a few weeks after that. And a few more weeks after that, and it'll be Summer 1999--which I have looked forward to and strived, for years, to be the time when Obliviana finally "takes off". Where I'm at now is definitely not what I was expecting--I had, for a long time, been thinking along the lines of an online game/community (see OsoaWeek for a massively in-depth chronicle of these ideas). But though Aerie Obliviana was unexpected, I now see that it is absolutely the right plan for Obliviana. Well, that's it for now. Get all Obliviana. ------------------- SONG OF THE WEEK ----------- Bill Perkins, "Little Bird/Little Boat" (Album: "Ultra Lounge Volume 14: Bossa Novaville") ------------------- END ----------- -------> ------------------- ----------- -------- -- -----