The first main point Lunenfeld tried to explain was how our culture has stopped dead in its tracks when it comes to visions about the future. His example was the film Blade Runner, which (in 1982), showed a futuristic world that would mold this image into society’s head of what people had to look forward to. He explained how films such as The Matrix display this same futuristic world, twenty years later, with only subtle differences existing between the two.
Lunenfeld, who is also an avid worker on the Mediawork Project (http://mitpress.mit.edu/e-books/mediawork/) explained that while this futuristic world is not at all like the one that has been imagined for many years, it has changed to the extent that technology goes hand in hand with media that never would have been considered as such, but more so that the use of this technology to (as he stressed) enhance and not replace these media by allowing the user some interactivity with them.
The examples given on the website above explore this idea, with the use of interactive reading (choosing the way a story is going to mold), or even through just having the text scroll different ways, making the reader investigate the way they view a certain type of medium.
Editorial note by Conceptual Studies: We've added some "visual aids" here. The last two images come from Scott McCloud's "webtake" response to Brenda Laurel's equally inspired "Utopian Entrepreneur." Visit the link given above to read through Laurel's and McCloud's pieces in their entirety.
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