As I began reading this chapter in Writing Space, it was with much trepidation, because I have a rather strong aversion to critical literary theory. I have been extremely disappointed by most of the literature classes that I have taken, dating back to junior high school when I had an argument with a teacher that resulted in my being sent to the principle’s office. The topic of argument was Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men and my teacher insisted that one sequence, involving "a little green snake", actually represented one of the character’s envy of the other, as well as being a harbinger of death. I disagreed, as the story was set in land that I knew, where green "grass snakes" littered the road. I argued that it was just a snake, typical of what one would likely see when traveling through California near Salinas, and that Steinbeck was simply adding some authentic detail. Neither the teacher nor I would agree to disagree. It was not a pleasant experience. My aversion to criticism was furthered by a talk with my aunt, who is a published short-story writer in Canada. She tells of a time when a local college was teaching one of her stories for some class, and she was invited to sit-in on that class, anonymously, to listen to her story be discussed. She tells how the students (and professor, for that matter) read so many things into her story, and saw meanings that she had not intended (and sometimes were actually contradictory to her intent). This makes me think that we cannot ever really criticize/analyze a work, especially for "literary merit and meaning", unless we have the author there to tell us exactly what they meant. Also, I have never really found the value in literary criticism. I do not like being "told" what some dead author really meant about something. That seems to be absurd to me. I do think it’s helpful to look at works in terms of what has preceded them and what was around them at that time, but I think it’s inappropriate to read too much into works unless one knows, incontrovertibly, exactly what they author had intended to convey.

As I finish this chapter I find that my feelings about critical literary theory are not much changed from what I began with. I still do not see much value in critical theory of literature, and feel that much of it (if not all) is fairly worthless. I do somewhat agree with Bolter when he writes "[w]hen the author elects to leave the reader alone with an episode of conventional prose, she is relying on the power of traditional narrative prose to be transparent. When she emphasizes the reader’s choices through the process of linking, she is evoking a strategy of hypermediacy." (page 186) However, I am frequently frustrated by many of the "hypertext literary gurus" who insist on arguing that a reader is in control of a hypertext, because the reader decides where to go within the story, through the use of links. This seems absurd to me, because it is the author (or designer, which may or may not be the same person as the author) who actually make the decision about where and when to include links within the text. Not only do they control the placement of links, but they also control how often they occur, where they are located, and where the links take the reader. Therefore, the reader is not in control; the reader is simply following the guidelines set forth by the author. This is in much the same way that a reader of a printed book has some "control" in that they can decide to flip to the next page to read the information, but that the information on that next page (and the following and previous pages for that matter) have been determined by someone else.

I approached this chapter with more interest than I approached the last, as I do find the idea that hypertext is changing how we view ourselves and how we express ourselves. As I began this chapter I was thinking about my oldest "chat buddy" – a man named Brian that I started "chatting" with on Prodigy in the early 90’s. Brian had taken to keeping an on-line diary of his life. He was fairly obsessive about it, making daily entries, much as one would do with a diary that was written on paper. It was interesting, though, that he chose to have it be "public", which seems to be the antithesis of diary writing. Normally, when I think of a diary, I think of something that is private and kept from others (sometimes even "locked.") However, Brian chose to have his diary, and therefore his innermost thoughts, be public. The process was fascinating (and more than a bit voyeuristic, at least on my part as a reader). I asked him, once, if he was conscious, as he was writing, that the diary was going to be read by others and if that affected what and how he wrote his entries. He said that he was aware of the fact, but that he tried not to let that stop him, as he was trying to offer the world a glimpse into his reality, with the information being given directly and not glossed-over.

One of the things that I wonder about, with hypertext, is whether or not it is the best media in which to explore what it means to be human. It seems to be agreed, by many scholars, that print gives text a sense of being "set" and therefore unchanging. Much as Bolter has had to come out with a second edition of Writing Space because information and technology and society have changed since the publishing, so too now are many documents "antiquated" by the time they are printed. In contrast, documents that are hypertextualized can be constantly updated and evolve over time. There is little that is "set" on the Web, and this therefore shows the shifting ways of conveying information. I think that humans are like the Web, in that we as individuals and as members of various cultures and society are constantly evolving, as our life experiences expand. Therefore it would be tough to "write" ourselves into print, because by the time the text is printed, bound, and distributed, that reality may have changed. With hypertext, though, it is possible to record, cleanly and clearly, this evolution (provided, of course, that all of the information remains available for review, rather than being constantly "replaced.")

On pages 199 to 200 of Writing Space, Bolter writes

I find this to be one of the most fascinating aspects of hypertext, especially with chatrooms and other interactive areas of the Web. I myself have several "identities" on the Web; each is very different from the other, but each also is a true representation of some aspect of myself. These different identities give me an outlet to explore myself and my behaviors in a manner that I could not do in "real space". One of the hazards of this new means of exploring identity, though, is that the person that one is interacting with is not necessarily just whom they portray in a certain identity. I have a friend who only dates people that she has met on the Web, usually in public "chat" areas. She is frequently disappointed when she meets these people in "real life" as they are not how they portrayed themselves to be in hypertext. On the other hand, I met my current partner on-line almost five years ago, and when we met face-to-face, although there were some adjustments to be made, we were lucky in that our "real selves" were similar enough to our on-line identities that we meshed well.

Although Chapter 10 of Writing Space is one of the shortest chapters in the book, I found it very interesting and applicable to my life. I do believe that hypertext and the Web is changing how we function, how we view culture and subcultures. When I made the decision to move to Orlando from Northern California, I sought-out on-line communities in Orlando that represented some of my interests. Some of these communities were chat-driven and others were bulletin boards. I started interacting with the other "identities" on these areas, through real-time chats, postings, and emails. By the time I moved to Orlando (several months later) I had established a base "support network" of people that I had come to know through the medium. This meant that I was not moving someplace where I would be isolated, but rather into a community where I was already known, though not physically. As a result of this interaction before I moved, the move was relatively easy, and my period of adjustment to my new living situation was shortened and made easier. Without knowing that I had something "safe" waiting for me in Orlando, I do not know that I would have moved.

At the conclusion of Chapter 10, Bolter questions "[w]ill written verbal communication come to be regarded as an ancillary form, to be used when microphones or cameras fail or when the Internet connection is degraded? It is fair to wonder whether the late age of print may also become the late age of prose itself." (page 213) I find myself agreeing with the implied answer to Bolter’s question, in that I do believe that as technology becomes more available we may actually do away with written email altogether, and that typed emails may become something that we "fall back upon" when the technology doesn’t work as it should. My maternal grandmother used to send me a monthly, handwritten letter. However, now that she has an Internet connection, that monthly written letter has been replaced with weekly emails. And I do think that, should she ever have the technology, she would gladly move to video and voice recorded "emails" that would contain no written words. I disagree with Bolter’s argument, though, that this is a late age of print. I think that this world will have uses for print for some time into the future. It is possible that several generations from now may live in a world where nothing is printed, and printed documents are viewed as being archaic. But I think that first we need not only usable, friendly, reliable technology, but also to have that technology be available to all peoples throughout the world. And not only does that technology need to be available around the world, but the users need to have the education and cultural knowledge in order to utilize the technology. I have a friend who is an educator/public outreach person for NASA. She just returned from a four-month posting to Africa, where she was to educate various groups about the space program. She said that she ran into an insurmountable obstacle in attempting this education, as many of the people that she was sent to work with were still living in "huts" with no electricity, running water, and so forth. She said that these people did not have the knowledge of the "technology" of the world, and therefore struggled to understand the idea of satellites and space stations. The concepts were too far beyond what they had been exposed to and so they could not grasp the ideas. As my friend said "Look, they are completely tied into the cycles of nature, they have no foundation of knowledge of technology." Until and if we as a species can bring all peoples of the world to a level of education where they can use these new technological advances, only then will we have created a world-wide culture that is based on hypertext and not on print.