The mnemonic medium can be adapted to author an experience which unfolds over time

The mnemonic medium keeps readers in contact with material over time. This means that texts in the Mnemonic medium—particularly the prompts—must be written to be consumed not only in some initial reading session, but on dozens of occasions over the following weeks and months (Timeful text).

The initial instantiation of the medium in Quantum Country doesn’t do much with this, authorially. Readers see the same material every review session. Insofar as that material changes (e.g. via Application prompts should vary when repeated), the evolutions aren’t constructed with calendar time specifically in mind.

The medium creates a context in which readers repeatedly return to the author’s material. It should be possible to use that context to unfold an authored experience over time. This would be unusual in a mass medium: Mass mediums mostly lack an authored time dimension beyond a day

One simple example would be to add increasingly holistic, synthetic questions with time. Another example would be to unlock new passages from the author over time, presented either within the review session or via the review notification mechanism (as in Execute Program’s lessons don’t unlock until you’ve successfully reviewed their prerequisites; but warning: Efficient review scheduling is in tension with gated course sequences)

Another approach: we rebrand “the 5-day level” as “level 2”, “the two-week level” as “level 3,” and so on; then authors could require that readers succeed in a “boss fight” of sorts before a level is completed. This might be a somewhat longer task, like writing a paragraph-length response to one of a selection of prompts.

Yet another approach: Mnemonic texts could be serialized in small sections over time, timed to reader recall

Last updated 2023-07-13.