Economics: Looking at the Solow Model 2

In my last economics post, we looked at three equations:

Y= AK^αL^1-α
Y= C + I
K_t+1=K_t + I - dK_t

and turned the capital accumulation equation into this:

sY=dK_t

Now, we're going to plug it into the production function so we can determine the optimal amount of K.

To do so,


sY=dK_t ---------> Y=dK/s

From now on, I'm going to remove the t subscript, mainly because it's a hassle to type. So,

dK/s=AK^αL^1-α

K = sAK^αL^1-α/d

K^1-α = sAL^1-α/d

K = (sAL^1-α/d)^1/(1-α)

We can now simplify the equation further:

K=L* (sA/d)^1/(1-α)

So now, what does this tell us? It tells us the steady state.

I currently don't have a graph nor the time to make one online, so I will provide this:
Simple Solow Model at Wolfram

In the next batch of notes, I will go over the basic assumptions of Solow Model, as I have neglected to do so in the first set. I will also look at the per capita equations, and transition dynamics.

A Checklist

I really want to accomplish some things before this year is over. After watching and being inspired by so many things, I find myself consumed by so many ideas. In a film, I was introduced to the resilient nature of an idea. In a real life example, I saw how much damage and beauty that idea created. So, here is a checklist of what I want to do, at this moment:

Learn more programming. Plain and simple :)
Learn more Chinese.
Get an internship this summer. Preferably with a company that everyone hates, but I still love. Hint: They were the subject of a recent Buffet discussion.
Write a story. Details of my story are somewhere in this blog.
Go hiking. I live near the woods. I need to hike.

And that's it. For the moment.

Economics: Looking at the Solow Model 1

Since I seem to be on a roll with posting class notes, I'd figured I might as well post what I went over in my macroeconomics class. Today, we continued our journey with the Solow Growth Model. Unlike a simple production function, the Solow Growth Model takes into account Capital Accumulation.

To calculate the Solow Model, we require a few equations:

Y= AK^αL^1-α
Y= C + I
K_t+1=K_t + I - dK_t

The first equation refers to the production formula. A certain output Y is equal to A, the technology factor, K, some amount of capital, and L, labor. The production formula follows the basic Cobb Douglas form where we have K, L and some form of alpha. Alpha is less than one.

The second equation basically states that the general output is equal to consumption and investment. What does not get consumed is saved and therefore invested. This formula leads to another formula where I= sY. s stands for a savings rate. We assume in this equation that the savings rate is equal throughout the country.

The last equation is the capital accumulation function. If we simplify the function, it will look something like this:

ΔK = I - dK_t

All the formulas are related to each other. Now, how can we calculate the optimal value for our country?

We utilize all the formulas to create one super amazing formula. In the Solow Model, all economies move to a steady state. The steady state is where the amount of K is optimal. Now several things can actually shift the K, but we'll discuss that later.

To calculate the steady state, we first take the last equation.

ΔK = I - dK_t ----------> 0 = I - dK_t

Now, why do we do that? Basically, the best point is where Investment is equal to depreciation. The idea is similar to Marginal Product or Maximization Problems.

So, after playing with that equation, we get something like this:

I = dK_t ----------> sY=dK_t

Now, let's plug that into the production function!

Transmedia Storytelling Notes Part 3

Part 5: Negative Capability

When applied to storytelling, negative capability is the art of building strategic gaps into a narrative to evoke a delicious sense of 'uncertainty, Mystery, or doubt' in the audience. Simple references to people, places or events external to the current narrative provide hints to the history of the characters and the larger world in which the story takes place. This empowers audiences to fill in the gaps in their own imaginations while leaving them curious to find out more.

Long pg 53

Negative capability ties directly to Ruppel's migratory cues, which I touched on near the end of section 1.3. To recap, migratory cues are "a signal towards another medium – the means through which various narrative paths are marked by an author and located by a user through activation patterns". While negative capability need not actually lead to anything at the moment in which it's written into the story, it clears a space in the narrative for those cues to be planted .

Long 59

Thanks to negative capability and the ‘writerly’ nature of the text, the story continues to function without audience members having experienced either the anime or the video game, as they can imagine their own answer to the question of where exactly that letter came from. They retain the option to go and track it down, and their understanding (and enjoyment) of the story would be increased by their doing so. One possible way to merge these terminologies is to understand any reference to external people, places or events as utilizing negative capability to craft potential migratory cues, and become actualized as migratory cues when those extensions are made available.

Long 60

A storyteller looking to craft a potential transmedia narrative should carefully craft the world in which that story exists, and then make passing references to elements in that world during the course of the narrative to simultaneously spark audience imaginations through negative capability and provide potential openings for future migratory cues.

Long 60

Writerly vs Readerly Text (?)

Part 6: The Hermenetic Codes

Transmedia Storytelling Notes Part 2

I do not like reading such long pages of texts
I do not enjoy the search
I will not take part in this discussion
I will not be a film student's friend
Destroy this topic today! Today! Today!
Today I say!
Without delay!

Part 3: Distinctive vs Valuable Contribution

Summary: There's a difference between transmedia storytelling and transmedia. Brands fall under transmedia. To tell whether something is not part of brand, Long says to evaluate how "well they set themselves apart from transmedia branding through narrative cohesion and canon" (pg 34). Long then looks at Star Wars and its expanded universe. Basically, George Lucas agreed that fans can have fun and create stories. But what he also said is that he doesn't consider them to be a part of his universe. Long then assumes fans will create two Star Wars universes- one Lucas approves of (canon) and one that has everything in it. And because I am lazy ...

This is where a crucial distinction can be made concerning true transmedia
narratives like The Matrix, and can be considered a first step toward establishing an
aesthetics of transmedia storytelling: each component of a transmedia story is
designed as canonical from the outset. While it's still possible to argue for a distinction
between 'primary elements' (the films) and 'secondary elements' (the comics, the video
games, the anime, and everything else) in the franchise, plot points were revealed in the
secondary components that greatly enriched one's understanding of what was happening
in the primary components. Fans that consumed these additional components came away
with a fuller understanding and a better experience of the world as a whole.

Long pg 40

This is a complete contrast from licensing. Licensing is basically taking whatever is original and making it suck.

Migratory Cues:

Referring to the Letter in the Matrix that became central to the game:

Ruppel refers to these intermedial hooks as 'migratory cues', "the means through which various
narrative paths are marked by an author and located by a user through activation patterns

 Long pg 42

Part 4: From Plot to Character to World

Aristotle is arguing that it’s more important to focus on the actions of the players – the what happens, the plot – rather than on the qualities – the personalities and emotions – that distinguish the players onstage into separate characters.

Long 44

That said, a storyteller's priorities begin to shift if the end goal changes from telling one good story to keeping an audience engaged for multiple stories. Audiences enjoy a thrilling plot, but they become more deeply engaged with good, solid characters. Consider the epic adventures of heroes like Hercules: a single solid character can keep audiences coming back for more over and over again.

Long 44

Transmedia narratives, however, are indicative of a new shift in emphasis. The entertainment industry has learned that yes, popular recurring characters can increase repeat revenue, but better still is a rich story world that can host multiple sets of recurring characters, as in Star Trek and Star Wars.

Long 45

When developing a narrative that's meant to extend across multiple media forms, the
world must be considered a primary character of its own, because many transmedia
narratives aren’t the story of one character at all, but the story of a world.

Long 48

This is also not to say that all transmedia narratives need to focus on the world as the primary character; it is easy to imagine a smaller, self-contained transfiction story that begins and ends with one primary character. However, a storyteller charged with creating a story open to eventual transmedia expansion should be aware that while the story he or she is currently writing may focus on one character, a different storyteller might focus on someone completely different, in a completely different era. The trick is to build enough compelling texture, opportunity and character into the larger world to bring audiences back again and again no matter what media form future extensions may take, and to do it gracefully.

Long 50

Worldbuilding is dull. Worldbuilding literalizes the urge to invent.
Worldbuilding gives an unnecessary permission for acts of writing
(indeed, for acts of reading). Worldbuilding numbs the reader’s ability to
fulfill their part of the bargain, because it believes that it has to do
everything around here if anything is going to get done.
Above all, worldbuilding is not technically necessary. It is the great
clomping foot of nerdism. It is the attempt to exhaustively survey a place
that isn’t there. A good writer would never try to do that, even with a place
that is there. It isn’t possible, & if it was the results wouldn’t be readable:
they would constitute not a book but the biggest library ever built, a
hallowed place of dedication & lifelong study. This gives us a clue to the
psychological type of the worldbuilder & the worldbuilder’s victim, &
makes us very afraid.

 M John Harrison

Transmedia Storytelling Notes

I don't like film classes. In fact, I absolutely detest them. Film classes are obnoxious. Both textual and student wise. To prepare me for my film essay, where I will analyze Star Wars, I will take down notes and pose questions from the Geoffrey Long text called 'Transmedia Storytelling' ... 'Jim Henson.'


One of the things I don't get about film is that insane amount of jargon. Actually jargon is the term I would use for this field. I would say something along the lines of vocabulary. Yes, film has an insane amount of vocabulary. Why? Maybe it's to sound cool; I don't really know. I just know that I now have to devote a part of my brain to it, even if I don't want to.

At this particular moment 5:17 pm on Wednesday, 43 minutes away from an accounting event, I am rather all over the place. Maybe I'm just too busy. Or maybe I hate this text. But I will tell you this, "I hate this text." Can someone just please give me an outline of this work? I can then search like a transmedia storytelling fan and find the meanings behind each paragraph. Look, I even found one about Barthes Codes. It's simple really. Don't make it harder for me. My time is valuable.


Notes from the text:


 Part 1. What is Transmedia Storytelling?

Convergence Culture:

A transmedia story unfolds across multiple media platforms with each new
text making a distinctive and valuable contribution to the whole.

 Henry Jenkins

Here the drive to
continue exploring the franchise is increased by promising not narrative repetition, but extension. While each could be experienced separately and still be enjoyable, each component became part of a single unified storytelling experience.

Geoffrey Long (pg  14-15)

According to Jenkins’ definition, transmedia narrative might be graphed thus:
Although each component can be experienced individually, they all clearly exist in
relation to each other in the larger transmedia story.

Geoffrey Long (15)


Screen Bleed:

Matt Hanson, the founder of the digital film festival onedotzero, refers to the practice as ‘screen bleed’ in his 2003 book The End of Celluloid: Film Futures in the Digital Age:

Originally a technical term (when non-broadcast safe colors, which are very bright or color-saturated, bleed into other areas of the screen), screen bleed is a useful term to appropriate to describe a modern narrative
condition where fictive worlds extend into multiple media and moving image formats. I believe the condition of screen bleed is proliferating due to the immersive 3D worlds we explore as game players and digital media consumers. This is why all-encompassing mythologies are the most resonant with contemporary audiences. After all, if a gaming experience is so involving, so cinematic, why shouldn’t we expand the experience into film or interactive online worlds, where each strand of narrative offers a new dimensional layer? (Hanson 47)

Long pg 17


Media Mix:

Mimi Ito, meanwhile, refers to the Pokémon/Yu-Gi-Oh transmedia model as an example of a ‘media mix’:

By linking content in multiple media forms such as video games, card games, television, film, manga books, toys, and household objects, Pokémon created a new kind of citational network that has come to be called a “media mix”… Rather than spoon-feed stabilized narratives and heroes to a supposedly passive audience, Pokémon and Yu-Gi-Oh invite children to collect, acquire, recombine, and enact stories within their peer networks, trading cards, information, and monsters in what Sefton-Green has called a “knowledge industry”. These media mixes challenge our ideas of childhood agency and the passivity of media consumption, highlighting the active, entrepreneurial, and technologized aspects of children’s engagement with popular culture.

Long pg 17

Cross sited Narratives:

Marc Ruppel refers to transmedia stories as 'cross-sited narratives', declaring them to be "a unique product of cultural and economic convergence, a process of narrative convergence". Ruppel defines 'cross-sited narratives' as "multisensory
stories told across two or more diverse media (film, print literature, web, video
games, live performance, recorded music, etc.)".

Long pg 18

Transfiction:

By transfiction I refer to stories that are distributed over more than one text, one medium. Each text, each story on each device or each website is not autonomous, unlike Henry Jenkins’ transmedia storytelling. In transfiction (a term to counter Jenkins’, though they should be the other way around!), the story is dependent on all the pieces on each medium, device or site to be read/experienced for it to be understood. Basically, no single segment will be sufficient. These will vary between being experienced simultaneously and sequentially. Examples we see now are
parallel narratives with TV shows that you can participate with by answering a quiz on the Web, mobiles, etc (especially here in [Australia]). But, we'll see stories, not just games being experienced this way. In consequence too, we'll see more technologies for having ‘hyperlinks’ between media. Using blue-tooth [sic], wireless, infra-red or something.4

What Dena describes is perhaps the most stringent definition of transmedia storytelling. Under Jenkins' definition, each transmedia extension can stand on its own as an individually enjoyable entity – so one could play Enter The Matrix or watch The Animatrix without seeing the original Matrix films and still enjoy each of them independently. Under Dena's 'transfiction' definition, however, the independent media forms couldn't stand on their own any more than an individual chapter of a novel taken out of context.5 Dena’s transfiction might be graphed as follows:

Long pg 18

Hard/Soft/Chewy

To this end, I'd like to propose the term 'hard' for transmedia narratives designed
as such from the outset. Examples of this might be anything Christy Dena might consider to be ‘transfiction,’ such as Orson Scott Card's transmedia franchise Empire, or the upcoming Final Fantasy XIII series of video games. 'Soft', then, would represent transmedia narratives that are only created after some original media component proved successful, like the spin-off video game Final Fantasy VII: Dirge of Cerebus or the eighth season of Joss Whedon's Buffy the Vampire Slayer currently being published in comic format by Dark Horse Comics.

Long pg 21 (pre existence vs post? Am I right with this?)


Part 2: Adaptation vs Transmediation

Retelling a story in a different media type is adaptation, while using multiple
media types to craft a single story is transmediation.

Long 22

In her essay “Literary Film Adaptation and the Form/Content Dilemma”, Elliott
describes multiple models for considering adaptations in this ectoplasmic fashion: a
‘psychic model’ suggests that the ‘spirit’ of a story can migrate from one body to another,
as from a novel to a film; a ‘ventriloquist model’ suggests that a film grants the spirit of
the novel a new voice; the aforementioned ‘genetic model’ suggests that the novel and
the film share a similar ‘deep structure’ similar to DNA; a ‘merging model’ suggests that
the spirits of both film and novel combine into one entity in the mind of the audience; an
‘incarnational model’ suggests that the invisible spirit of text aspires to visualize itself in
film; and a ‘trumping model’ suggests that the spirit of the novel had been misplaced all
along, and was always meant to really be a film.

Long 22

Transmedia storytelling is the art of world making. To fully experience
any fictional world, consumers must assume the role of hunters and
gatherers, chasing down bits of the story across media channels,
comparing notes with each other via online discussion groups, and
collaborating to ensure that everyone who invests time and effort will
come away with a richer entertainment experience.

Jenkins in Convergence Culture






Resources:


http://www.cla.purdue.edu/english/theory/narratology/modules/barthescodes.html


A website about the different codes. I really like this website since it simply states what is and what is not. Let's say I have some attention disorder. I would rather read this and not waste my time than reading a sixty page report. Sorry.