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(Post-)Human Nature v.2.1 |
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A Technological Writing Space:George Landow's Introduction to Hypertext, an Overview
by Winnie Mah
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By connecting a small computer to a phone, a professional will be able to read “books” whose footnotes can be expanded into further “books” which in turn open out onto a vast sea of data bases systematizing all of human cognition (24). What is Hypertext? According to Landow, hypertext is a “text composed of blocks of words (or images) linked electronically by multiple paths, chains, or trails in an open-ended, perpetually unfinished textuality described by the terms link, node, network, web, and path (2). It is a mode of publication, an electronic interactive text with verbal and non-verbal components. It is intangible, without any physical components. Therefore it is hyperreal. Hypertext allows the reader/writer to interact and work with verbal and non-verbal data, such as text, graphics, animation, and sound, etc. It is multi-linear and multi-sequential since the links, and different paths a reader takes varies from person to person, and link to link. The interaction that is produced by links between the reader and the text gives the reader more power over the text itself, than the author. The author can no longer direct a reader from page to page. S/He can only suggest it. Thus, “changing the ease with which one can orient oneself and pursue individual references within such a context radically changes both the experience of reading and ultimately the nature of that which is read” (4). The reader/writer boundaries become blurred since the reader can now, in some manner, produce his/her own text by controlling the direction of his/her path by adding links to the text s/he is reading. Binary ways of structuring and thinking about literary criticism expand.
What are the Effects of Hypertextuality? The act of reading is changed by the experience of hypertext. Here are some dis/advantages to reading hypertext as suggested by Landow: Dis/Advantage
The
Memex and Hypertext The memex is "a device in which an individual stores all his books, records, and communications, and which is mechanized so that it may be consulted with exceeding speed and flexibility" (102). A memex resembled a desk with two pen-ready touch screen monitors and a scanner surface. Within would lie several gigabytes (if not more) of storage space, filled with textual and graphic information, and indexed according to a universal scheme. All of this seems quite visionary for the early 1930s, but Bush himself viewed it as "conventional" (103). The memex, as theorized by Vannevar Bush would act as an “information retrieval machine,” a machine that would give the reader the ability to add his/her notes and comments to the text presented on screen. He “reconceived reading as an active process that involves writing,” and by doing so, “recognizes the need for a conception of a virtual, rather than a physical text.” Also the memex would involve “associative indexing… the basic idea of which is a provision whereby any item may be caused at will to select immediately and automatically another,” hence linking (8). Memex versus Hypertext: Both these technologies (one theorized, the other in actuality):
Issues at Hand: The Virtual, Hyper and the Print No one method of producing text, whether linear, or hierarchical can meet the needs of all readers. Therefore, manuscript culture developed pages, chapters, paragraphing, and spaces between words. The book was enhanced by pagination, indices, and bibliographies (21). So what will electronic text do to the written word, and our methods of producing it? What does hypertext do to the conceptions of scholarship, originality, and authorial property? As we move from “ink to electronic code” we are able to manipulate texts through “computer-manipulated codes” (22). However, direct “access” to a text is “not on a human scale” (22). We are faced with a virtual text, something that is intangible, and where the idea of the “original” becomes abstract. In the electronic form, we are faced with the idea of all copies, and no original. The boundaries of reader/writer become blurred, as well as the boundaries between one text and another. The shift from a readerly text, to Barthe’s writerly text is less dependent on traditions and conventions of a printed text (25). The notion of the author and the experiences of a reader become “reconfigured” by a movement from a print text to an electronic text. With the development and advancement of information technology, how can the author be defined and what will happen to the print technology? The book is now a de-centered technology, one that is becoming sidelined by information technologies. In this way, hypertext poses a threat to print. Some of the arguments against information technology act as a way to miniaturize its cultural, and political significance. Some of the arguments are as follows:
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