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Nanopunk refers to an emerging genre of speculative science fiction (sci-fi) still very much in its infancy in comparison to other genres like that of cyberpunk or steampunk.
The genre is similar to biopunk, but describes the world where the use of biotechnologies are limited or prohibited, so only nanites and nanotechnologies are widely use (while in biopunk, bio- and nanotechnologies often coexist).
Currently the genre is more concerned with the artistic and physiological impact of nanotechnology, than of aspects of the technology itself which is still in its infancy. Unlike the cyberpunk protagonist, a low-life yet technologically advanced character, the personification of a nanopunk can be set 'hard' or 'soft', depending on your views of the impact nanotechnology will have on our future.
Industry:Literature
A narrative (or story) is any account of connected events, presented to a reader or listener in a sequence of written or spoken words, or in a sequence of (moving) pictures.
Narratives can be organized in a number of thematic and/or formal/stylistic categories: non-fiction (e.g. New Journalism, creative non-fiction, biographies, and historiography); fictionalized accounts of historical events (e.g. anecdotes, myths, and legends); and fiction proper (i.e. literature in prose, such as short stories and novels, and sometimes in poetry and drama, although in drama the events are primarily being shown instead of told). Narrative is found in all forms of human creativity and art, including speech, writing, songs, film, television, games, photography, theatre, and visual arts such as painting (with the modern art movements refusing the narrative in favour of the abstract and conceptual) that describes a sequence of events. The word derives from the Latin verb narrare, "to tell", which is derived from the adjective gnarus, "knowing" or "skilled".
The word "story" may be used as a synonym of "narrative". It can also be used to refer to the sequence of events described in a narrative. Narratives may also be nested within other narratives, such as narratives told by an unreliable narrator (a character) typically found in noir fiction genre. An important part of narration is the narrative mode, the set of methods used to communicate the narrative through a process narration (see also "Narrative Aesthetics" below).
Along with exposition, argumentation, and description, narration, broadly defined, is one of four rhetorical modes of discourse. More narrowly defined, it is the fiction-writing mode whereby the narrator communicates directly to the reader.
Industry:Literature
Narrative history is the practice of writing history in a story-based form. It can be divided into two subgenres: the traditional narrative and the modern narrative.
Traditional narrative focuses on the chronological order of history, it is event driven and tends to center upon individuals, action, and intention. For example, in regards to the French Revolution, a historian who works with the traditional narrative might be more interested in the revolution as a single entity (one revolution), centre it in Paris, and rely heavily upon large figures such as Maximilien Robespierre.
Conversely, modern narrative typically focuses on structures and general trends. A modern narrative would break from rigid chronology if the historian felt it explained the concept better. In terms of the French Revolution, a historian working with the modern narrative might show general traits that were shared by revolutionaries across France but would also illustrate regional variations from those general trends (many confluent revolutions). Also this type of historian might use different sociological factors to show why different types of people supported the general revolution.
Historians who use the modern narrative might say that the traditional narrative focuses too much on what happened and not enough on why and causation. Also, that this form of narrative reduces history into neat boxes and thereby does an injustice to history. J H Hexter characterised such historians as "lumpers". In an essay on Christopher Hill, he remarked that "lumpers do not like accidents: they would prefer them vanish...
The lumping historian wants to put all of the past into boxes and then to tie all the boxes together into one nice shapely bundle."Historians who utilize the traditional narrative might say that the modern narrative overburdens the reader with trivial data that had no significant effect on the progression of history; that it is the historian's duty to take out what is inconsequential from history because to do otherwise might commit an injustice to the reader, who might end up believing that minor trivial events were actually important.
Industry:Literature
The narrative mode (also known as the mode of narration) is the set of methods the author of a literary, theatrical, cinematic, or musical story uses to convey the plot to the audience. Narration, the process of presenting the narrative, occurs because of the narrative mode. It encompasses several overlapping areas, most importantly narrative point-of-view, which determines through whose perspective the story is viewed and narrative voice, which determines a set of consistent features regarding the way through which the story is communicated to the audience. Narrative mode is a literary element.
The narrator may be either a fictive person devised by the author as a stand-alone entity, the author himself, and/or a character in the story. The narrator is considered participant as an actual character in the story, and nonparticipant if only an implied character, or a sort of omniscient or semi-omniscient being who does not take part in the story but only relates it to the audience.
The narrative mode encompasses not only who tells the story, but also how the story is described or expressed (for example, by using stream of consciousness or unreliable narration).
The "narrator" can also be more than one person, to show different story lines of people at the same, similar or different times. It is used in film and books to illustrate the story from different points in time and is sometimes more effective than a singular point of view because it gives a better effect for a more complex story line.
Industry:Literature
Narrative structure, a literary element, is generally described as the structural framework that underlies the order and manner in which a narrative is presented to a reader, listener, or viewer. The narrative text structures are the plot and the setting.
Generally, the narrative structure of any work, be it a film, play or novel, contains a plot, theme and resolution. It can also be divided into three sections, which is referred to as the three-act structure: setup, conflict, resolution. The setup (act one) is where all of the main characters and their basic situation are introduced, and contains the primary level of characterization (exploring the character's backgrounds and personalities). A problem is also introduced, which is what drives the story forward.
The second act, the conflict, is the bulk of the story, and begins when the inciting incident (or catalyst) sets things into motion. This is the part of the story where the characters go through major changes in their lives as a result of what is happening; this can be referred to as the character arc, or character development.
The third act, or resolution, is when the problem in the story boils over, forcing the characters to confront it, allowing all elements of the story to come toAn example is the 1973 film The Exorcist: The first act of the film is when the main characters are introduced and their lives are explored: Father Karras (Jason Miller) is introduced as a Catholic priest who is losing his faith. In act two, a girl named Regan (Linda Blair) becomes possessed by a demonic entity (the problem), and Karras' character arc is being forced to accept that there is no rational or scientific explanation for the phenomenon except that she actually is possessed by a demon, which ties in directly with the theme of him losing his faith. The third act of the film is the actual exorcism, which is what the entire story has been leading to.
Theorists describing a text's narrative structure might refer to structural elements such as an introduction, in which the story's founding characters and circumstances are described; a chorus, which uses the voice of an onlooker to describe the events or indicate the proper emotional response to be happy or sad to what has just happened; or a coda, which falls at the end of a narrative and makes concluding remarks. First described in ancient times by Greek philosophers (such as Aristotle and Plato), the notion of narrative structure saw renewed popularity as a critical concept in the mid-to-late-20th century, when structuralist literary theorists including Roland Barthes, Vladimir Propp, Joseph Campbell and Northrop Frye attempted to argue that all human narratives have certain universal, deep structural elements in common. This argument fell out of fashion when advocates of poststructuralism such as Michel Foucault and Jacques Derrida asserted that such universally shared deep structures were logically impossible.
Northrop Frye in his Anatomy of Criticism deals extensively with what he calls myths of Spring, Summer, Fall, and Winter.
A non-linear narrative is one which is composed with a branching structure where a single starting point may lead to multiple developments and outcomes. This is the typical narrative approach of most modern video games and hearkens back to a minor genre, "books where you are the hero", sometimes referred to as "game books". The principle of all such games is that at each step of the narrative the user makes choices that advance the story, leading to new series of choices. Authoring non-linear narrative or dialogue thus implies imagining an indefinite number of parallel stories.
In a non-linear book readers are told to turn to a certain page according to the choice they wish to make to continue the story. Typically, the choice will be an action rather than dialogue. For example, the hero hears a noise in another room and must decide to open the door and investigate, run away or call for help. This kind of interactive experience of a story is possible with video games and books (where the reader is free to turn the pages) but less adapted to other forms of entertainment. Improvisational theatre is similarly open-ended but of course cannot be said to be authored. Cinema can only provide the illusion through broken narrative, the most famous example of this being the 1994 film Pulp Fiction. The film is ostensibly three short stories, which, upon closer inspection, are actually three sections of one story with the chronology broken up; interestingly, Quentin Tarentino constructs the narrative without resorting to classic "flashback" techniques. Flashback movies are often confused with true non-linear narratives but the concept is fundamentally linear. Although they appear to open (very briefly) with the ending, flashback movies almost immediately jump back to the very beginning of the story to proceed linearly from there and usually proceed past the supposed "ending" shown at the beginning of the movie.
An even more ambitious attempt at constructing a film based on non-linear narrative is Alain Resnais's 1993 French film Smoking/No Smoking. The plot contains parallel plot developments, playing on the idea of what might have happened had the characters made different choices. But because the user experience is that of a spectator in a movie theatre, the public has no control of the direction of the narrative.
Recently tools for non-linear authoring have emerged, such as Adobe Captivate, a popular elearning authoring tool for presentations, quizzes and simulations that enables authors of elearning to construct links between slides in a PowerPoint style document to produce non-linear sequences. Zebra Zapps, a sophisticated elearning authoring system developed by Allen Interactions has recently added the possibility of linking objects to construct a non-linear scene. Chat Mapper, created by Ben McIntosh, founder of Urban Brain Studios is clearly the authoring system most closely focused on the creation and management of non-linear logic for dialogue and narrative. Initially intended as a tool to enable the creation of dialogue in video games, Chat Mapper gave authors a wide range of programming features that made it possible to manage events, assets and characters as they compose the branching narrative and dialogue of a video game. Chat Mapper led to the creation of a derivative product designed for authoring video-based training applications, GameScaper,created by the SkillScaper team led by Peter Isackson. GameScaper permits non-linear dialogue and narrative by associating specific events or spoken text that can take the form of video or animation with interdependent nodes created and managed visually. SkillScaper has also created a highly simplified authoring system for teachers and trainers, ChatScaper, which makes it possible to author dialogue or narrative that can be immediately viewed and played back as a video game. The dialogue or narrative is activated thanks to text-to-speech technology and the user can choose avatars and specific expression for each scene, enabling the immediate creation of a non-linear narrative or dialogue. Designed specifically for "learning by creating", ChatScaper enables teachers and learners to work together creating the learning content of any subject involving human activity or communication. It is also being used by experimental screenwriters as a means of exploring the multiple possibilities of character and plot direction in particular scenes.
The emergence of the video game industry, a marketplace that has overtaken film and television in global revenue, and the trend in marketing towards gamification as a major industrial activity would indicate that non-linear narrative will be a staple of both entertainment and advertising in the coming decade.
Industry:Literature
Narratology refers to both the theory and the study of narrative and narrative structure and the ways that these affect our perception. While in principle the word may refer to any systematic study of narrative, in practice its usage is rather more restricted. It is an anglicisation of French narratologie, coined by Tzvetan Todorov (Grammaire du Décaméron, 1969). Narratology is applied retrospectively as well to work predating its coinage. Its theoretical lineage is traceable to Aristotle (Poetics) but modern narratology is agreed to have begun with the Russian Formalists, particularly Vladimir Propp (Morphology of the Folktale, 1928).
Industry:Literature
Nature, in the broadest sense, is equivalent to the natural, physical, or material world or universe. "Nature" refers to the phenomena of the physical world, and also to life in general. It ranges in scale from the subatomic to the cosmic.
The word nature is derived from the Latin word natura, or "essential qualities, innate disposition", and in ancient times, literally meant "birth". Natura was a Latin translation of the Greek word physis, which originally related to the intrinsic characteristics that plants, animals, and other features of the world develop of their own accord. The concept of nature as a whole, the physical universe, is one of several expansions of the original notion; it began with certain core applications of the word φύσις by pre-Socratic philosophers, and has steadily gained currency ever since. This usage was confirmed during the advent of modern scientific method in the last several centuries.
Within the various uses of the word today, "nature" often refers to geology and wildlife. Nature may refer to the general realm of various types of living plants and animals, and in some cases to the processes associated with inanimate objects – the way that particular types of things exist and change of their own accord, such as the weather and geology of the Earth, and the matter and energy of which all these things are composed. It is often taken to mean the "natural environment" or wilderness–wild animals, rocks, forest, beaches, and in general those things that have not been substantially altered by human intervention, or which persist despite human intervention. For example, manufactured objects and human interaction generally are not considered part of nature, unless qualified as, for example, "human nature" or "the whole of nature". This more traditional concept of natural things which can still be found today implies a distinction between the natural and the artificial, with the artificial being understood as that which has been brought into being by a human consciousness or a human mind. Depending on the particular context, the term "natural" might also be distinguished from the unnatural, the supernatural, or synthetic.
Industry:Literature
Natural theology is a branch of theology based on reason and ordinary experience. Thus it is distinguished from revealed theology which is based on scripture and religious experiences of various kinds; and also from transcendental theology, which is based on a priori reasoning.
Marcus Terentius Varro (116–27 BC) in his (lost) Antiquitates rerum humanarum et divinarum established a distinction between three kinds of theology: civil (political) (theologia civilis), natural (physical) (theologia naturalis) and mythical (theologia mythica). The theologians of civil theology are "the people", asking how the gods relate to daily life and the state (imperial cult). The theologians of natural theology are the philosophers, asking about the nature of the gods, and the theologians of mythical theology are the poets, crafting mythology. The terminology entered Christianity after having been adopted by the Stoic tradition; it is used by St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas.
Natural theology therefore is a branch of philosophy, whose object is the nature of the gods, or of the one supreme God. In monotheistic religions, this principally involves arguments about the attributes or non-attributes of God, and especially the existence of God - arguments which are purely philosophical, and do not involve recourse to any supernatural revelation.
The related term Physico-theology describes a theology based on the constitution of the natural world. This often proceeds by invoking the need for a designer. One of the first examples of this approach to theology was the fifth of St. Thomas Aquinas's "five ways" to prove the existence of God.
Industry:Literature
The New Testament is the second major part of the Christian biblical canon, the first part being the Old Testament. Although Christians hold different views from Jews about the Old Testament, Christians regard both the Old and New Testaments together as sacred scripture. The contents of the New Testament deal explicitly with first-century Christianity. Therefore, the New Testament (in whole or in part) has frequently accompanied the spread of Christianity around the world. It reflects and serves as a source for Christian theology and morality. Both extended readings and phrases directly from the New Testament are also incorporated (along with readings from the Old Testament) into the various Christian liturgies. The New Testament has influenced religious, philosophical, and political movements in Christendom, and left an indelible mark on its literature, art, and music.
The New Testament is an anthology, a collection of Christian works written in the common Greek language of the first century, at different times by various writers, who were early Jewish disciples of Jesus of Nazareth. In almost all Christian traditions today, the New Testament consists of 27 books. The original texts were written in the first and perhaps the second centuries of the Christian Era, generally believed to be in Koine Greek, which was the common language of the Eastern Mediterranean from the Conquests of Alexander the Great (335–323 BC) until the evolution of Byzantine Greek (c. 600). All of the works which would eventually be incorporated into the New Testament would seem to have been written no later than around AD 150.
Collections of related texts such as letters of the Apostle Paul (a major collection of which must have been made already by the early 2nd century) and the Canonical Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John (asserted by Irenaeus of Lyon in the late-2nd century as the Four Gospels) gradually were joined to other collections and single works in different combinations to form various Christian canons of Scripture. Over time, some disputed books, such as the Book of Revelation and the Minor Catholic (General) Epistles were introduced into canons in which they were originally absent. Other works earlier held to be Scripture, such as 1 Clement, the Shepherd of Hermas, and the Diatessaron, were excluded from the New Testament. The Old Testament canon is not completely uniform among all major Christian groups including Roman Catholics, Protestants, the Greek Orthodox Church, the Slavic Orthodox Churches, and the Armenian Orthodox Church. However, the twenty-seven-book canon of the New Testament, at least since Late Antiquity, has been almost universally recognized within Christianity (see Development of the New Testament canon).
The New Testament consists of
Industry:Literature
Nevi'im is the second main division of the Hebrew Bible (the Tanakh), between the Torah (instruction) and Ketuvim (writings). It contains two sub-groups, the Former Prophets and the Latter Prophets.
Many of the writings of the Latter Prophets are thought by scholars to be older than the narratives of the Former Prophets which precede them in the canon, and were profoundly influential on the direction and development of Hebrew religion. The Latter Prophets have also had a wide influence on literature and on political and social activism in cultures outside of Judaism.
Industry:Literature
