Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
Discovery becomes more interesting when the new information is not
what one might have expected; in other words, it's a surprise (what's that
scruffy bum doing at this fancy party? Why is the house suddenly shaking?
A higher interest rate may give me a tax break!). Surprises have a higher
potential for complication than do run-of-the-mill discoveries; that is, they
often raise more questions than they answer. Although in “real” life sur-
prises are as often nasty as they are pleasant (why is the house suddenly
shaking?), in the context of
drama
, they are almost always pleasurable, in
that they lead to excitement, vicarious feeling, engagement, and specula-
tion—and we are “safe” from real-world consequences (there's an earth-
quake going on—don't worry, honey, it's only a movie).
Surprise
is that
subspecies of discovery that is different from what one expected (or might
logically have expected) to be true. Surprise is deployed by playwrights to
turn up the gain on emotional and intellectual involvement—to quite liter-
ally give the audience a thrill.
A more rare and potent fl avor of surprise is what Aristotle referred to
as
reversal
: A surprise that reveals that the
opposite
of what one expected is
true (that's not a man, that's a
woman
! The detective is actually the mur-
derer! I thought that “formatting” would
tidy up
my disk, not
erase
it!). Re-
versals can cause major changes in our understanding of what is going on
and our expectations about what will happen next; in other words, they
can radically alter
probability
. In a play, an early reversal might serve as
an inciting incident, causing a sharp upturn in the C/T slope (by raising a
whole set of questions all at once). The climax of a play may be a reversal
that causes a sharp downward turn in the slope (by answering a host of
questions all at once).
In human-computer interaction, like drama, surprise and reversal are
effi cient and economical means for achieving radical shifts in probability.
The reasons for wanting to create such a shift may be pragmatic or aes-
thetic. A reversal may be needed to turn a person away from an unpro-
ductive or potentially dangerous path of action. Surprise and reversal can
also be deployed to create changes in the “slope” of the action in order to
achieve a pleasing whole. Of course, it must be remembered that dramatic
reversals have no serious real-world consequences. Obviously, one should
avoid any incidents that cause actual pain or harm (such as erasing a fi le or
destroying a document). In summary, surprises and reversals are tools for
changing what people understand and expect, for stimulating interest and
involvement, and for orchestrating the shape of the action.
