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EJournal Volume 06 Number 03
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August, 1996 _EJournal_ Volume 6 Number 3 ISSN 1054-1055
There are 1100 lines in this issue.
An Electronic Journal concerned with the
implications of electronic networks and texts.
777 E-mail Subscribers in 32 Countries
University at Albany, State University of New York
EJournal@Albany.edu
CONTENTS: [This is line 20]
Guest Editor's Introduction
E-PUBLISHING AND HYPERTEXT PUBLISHING [at line 72 ]
by Doug Brent
University of Calgary
dabrent@acs.ucalgary.ca
Feature Article
HYPERTEXT NOTES [at line 406 ]
by Richard Andersen
andersen@canuck.com
Notes and Comments
LIVING IN HYPERTEXT [at line 524 ]
by John December
john@december.com
MODERNITY AND POSTMODERNISM IN [at line 778 ]
"HYPERTEXT NOTES":
A call for theoretical consistency and completeness
by Charles Ess
Drury College
dru001d@vma.smsu.edu
Information about _EJournal_ [at line 1021 ]
About Subscriptions and Back Issues
About Supplements to Previous Texts
About _EJournal_
People [at line 1070 ]
Board of Advisors
Consulting Editors
*********************************************************************
*****************************************************************
* This electronic publication and its contents are (c) copyright *
* 1996 by _EJournal_. Permission is hereby granted to give away *
* the journal and its contents, but no one may "own" it. Any and *
* all financial interest is hereby assigned to the acknowledged *
* authors of individual texts. This notification must accompany *
* all distribution of _EJournal_. *
*****************************************************************
======================================================================
Special thanks to Richard Andersen for his invaluable assistance in
formatting the hypertext version of this issue of _EJournal_.
======================================================================
Guest Editor's Introduction
E-PUBLISHING, HYPERTEXT PUBLISHING, [line 74]
AND ANDERSEN'S "HYPERTEXT NOTES"
by Doug Brent
University of Calgary
Faculty of General Studies
dabrent@acs.ucalgary.ca
http://www.ucalgary.ca/~dabrent
Taylor and Saarinen ask, "If an electronic text can be published in
printed form, is it really electronic?" This issue of _EJournal_
explores that question by presenting a cluster of interrelated
hypertexts: the feature essay "Hypertext Notes" by Richard Andersen
and two shorter hypertext essays by John December and Charles Ess.
These shorter pieces are in one sense about the Andersen piece, but
they also develop independent discussions of the theory and practice
of writing in hypertext.
This issue is therefore something of a breakthrough for _EJournal_, as
it represents our first real attempt to use the hypertextual
capacities of the World Wide Web to do more than link together linear
documents which are essentially print-like in nature. (In fact,
having explored the Web in search of true hypertext documents, I can
report that they are relatively rare in scholarly discourse, and that
this issue, while far from unique, represents something of a departure
for the entire discourse community.)
This format presents some problems for a journal which was not
originally designed for WWWeb distribution. Since these pieces are
written in hypertext, they cannot be presented in the familiar
downloadable-and-printable listserve version of _EJournal_ except as
what Stuart Moulthrop calls "a paper shadow of an electronic text" (or
in this case, a linear electronic shadow of a non-linear electronic
text). If you have access to a Web browser, even a relatively
primitive browser such as Lynx [1], you should STOP READING THIS TEXT
NOW and point your browser to:
[line 109]
http://www.hanover.edu/philos/ejournal/archive/v6n3/v6n3.html
Otherwise, you will have to be content with reading only a linear
version of the December and Ess pieces, and the editorial note you are
reading now, without the rich layering of hypertextual references that
makes them what they are. The Andersen piece is so tightly connected
with the hypertext medium that it will be completely unavailable
except for a first-node teaser. (Readers of the hypertext version,
conversely, might be interested in going back to look at this
listserve/ e-mail version to see what happens when a hypertext essay
is un-hypertexted, an interesting reversal of the normal pattern. The
effect is an odd sense of discontinuity that is invisible in hypertext
but striking when the text is flattened into linear format.)
All three essays, in their content and by the example of their
structure, comment in various ways on the creation of meaning in
hypertext. Andersen attempts to exploit both the non-linear form of
the medium and its ability to link to multiple documents, weaving a
tapestry of quotations and links that challenge the reader to "make
what you will of this essay." December, a veteran of hypertext
publishing, uses Andersen's experiment as a jumping-off point for a
discussion of the characteristics of this new medium and of the
importance of good hypertext design in making it accessible to
readers. Ess, equally well versed in the philosophical aspects of
cyberspace, uses the essay as a jumping-off point for an exploration
of how modernist perspectives can be applied to what is normally
considered the most postmodern of media.
I will avoid the temptation to dive directly into this subject myself
and refer readers who are interested in my comments on the matter to
my hypertext essay "Rhetorics of the Web"
http://www.ucalgary.ca/~dabrent/webliteracies/pointer.html
Rather, I would like to use the rest of this introduction to address
some of the many questions about the nature of text that the form of
the issue itself opens up. Print has always been a highly
intertextual medium, even if its physical form has tended to disguise
the intertextuality behind the facade of the solitary Romantic author.
But the exercise of editing this issue of _EJournal_ has drawn my
attention to a particular set of questions about textuality that are
peculiar to the business of massaging other people's words into
publishable form --a business common in the academic world but
suddenly defamiliarized by the new medium of hypertext.
Question 1: The Status of the Editor [line 155]
For me, perhaps the most pressing question raised by this experience
is that of the role of the author versus the role of the editor.
There has always been a collaborative relationship, usually unseen by
the reader, between author and editor. The editor may exercise no
more control than fixing up a few typos or putting references into a
standard format. At other times the editor may make suggestions for
extensive rewriting, often relayed from peer reviewers. Occasionally
the editor of unusual stamina or unusually pressed for copy may
undertake a thorough revision of an article. But always it is
understood that the author has the last word, can always choose to
accept the "or else" threat if the editorial push and pull comes down
to "accept these revisions or else we won't publish your work." The
unseen collaboration never rises to the status of complete
co-authorship.
Similarly, the role of commentators is always clearly demarcated.
Frequently an editor will solicit comments on a controversial article
and publish them either in the same issue or in a succeeding one,
usually giving the author an opportunity to respond. The text becomes
a chain of texts, but always with original article, comments and
responses arranged in linear sequence and clearly marked by
authorship. The practice of shipping material by e-mail for a
listserve journal such as this one has vastly improved the speed of
the process but it is still a quicker version of the linear sequence.
But hypertext presents entirely new possibilities. When she reviewed
this piece for publication, Nancy Kaplan made a very interesting
suggestion:
I think inviting a few well-known hypertext theorists/critics to
"comment" or respond to "hypertext notes" would be far too tame
(and anyway this sort of thing has been done before). Perhaps
commissioning some hypertextual essays and then providing
extensive cross-linking among the whole set (perhaps even some
visual blurring of boundaries, renaming whole nodes and links to
bring all the texts you receive into an indistinguishable
aggregate of nodes and links) would be more interesting, if only
because no one "individual text" would be central, the others
relegated to "comments on," yet the whole could also be read as an
integrated, communal discourse not co- authored in the traditional
way, but conjoined by the editor's activities. [line 196]
When you think about it, the natural mode of hypertext is compilation
rather than linear creation, especially as the WWWeb begins to be
dominated by sprawling hypertext documents that are chiefly made up of
links to other documents, or other lists of links. As Bolter points
out, this aspect of hypertext in some ways takes us back to the
medieval manuscript with its layers of marginalia that over time found
their way into the heart of the text.
And yet I find myself deeply disturbed at the thought of submerging
the author's text below a set of other texts as an "indistiguishable
aggregate of nodes and links." This isn't the twelfth century. The
new technologies have not yet gotten us back to a place where we can
be comfortable with texts whose voices gradually become more and more
blurred. And perhaps they weren't comfortable with this then either.
Possibly writers in a manuscript society simply lacked the means to
prevent it except by dire injunction. (See Revelation 22:18-19, in
which a curse is levelled on anyone who adds or subtracts from the
text of the book --God's copyright notice.)
And finally, I'm uncomfortable with the power imbalance this suggests.
This arrangement would give the editor supreme authority to blend
voices, an authority always in the past reserved to the author. I
remember how thoroughly annoyed I was when I found that one of my
works had, in being republished, been encrusted with other texts
interpolated into the margins. I was not so much irritated at what
had been done to "my" text: I was irritated at the fact that the new
text looked as though I, not the editor, had done the interpolations.
I am a little embarrassed by my reaction --I flamed the editor of the
reprint seriously enough that he has never asked to reprint any of my
work since. However, the incident points up the fact that, however
much we want to share our work and are flattered when it gets cited,
quoted or reproduced as a piece of the "intellectual commons," five
hundred years of print has accustomed us to treat our words as
extensions of our own identity, not to be messed with by others
without our express consent nor to be inserted into others' works
without acknowledgement. [line 233]
To exercise the editor's power to do so just seems to me unwarranted,
especially since the editor has that power, not because she
necessarily has any claim to wisdom that the author does not, but more
or less by accident: the editor, not the author, is the last person to
handle the text before sending it off to the typesetter, and therefore
has the last word _de facto_.
Therefore I have compromised. I have added links from Andersen's text
to the comments on it, but I have not blended them into an
"indistinguishable aggregate of nodes and links."
This might be no more than a "papyrocentric" attitude" (a particularly
felicitous coinage by Stevan Harnad) that I have been unable to shake
off. But in another sense, the medium of hypertext seems to invite
exactly this sort of compromise. In print, most intertextuality is
covert. Citations and acknowledgements pages cannot allow even the
most diligent author to credit the myriad of influences on her work.
But when hypertext allows many "influences" to be incorporated into a
work as discrete chunks of text, literally stored as files on another
host, it seems only natural to tag them by author. Even if all of
these voices still have other voices embedded in them, if the authors
are really no more than Foucaultean gaps through which others speak,
at least the top level of intertextuality can be tagged.
Question 2: The Status of the "Publisher"
Another question, not a new one but always it seems being asked in new
ways, concerns the status of "publication." The lead article in this
issue, "Hypertext Notes," can be said to have been "published," on
this day on this time, by _EJournal_. Yet the act of publishing it in
this case simply means setting up a link to a set of files. This
issue carries many other links to many other sets of files, including
some hypertext documents which have been "self-published" on the
author's own web site and others which have been "published" by other
electronic journals. In a very real sense the act of publishing, like
the act of editing referred to above, is becoming more an act of
compilation than of "making available to the public" in the usual
sense. Every one of these texts could have been "made available to
the public" by the author, with no intervention from _EJournal_. So
what is _EJournal_ in its role as publisher actually doing to these
texts that adds value that their authors have not already added?
[line 276]
The question is made more perplexing in that it needs to be by our
traditional expectation that "publishing" has something to do with
bridging the gap between the author and the distribution mechanism
(from typesetter to bookstore). When there is no such gap, publishing
only makes sense if thought of as the type of speech act Austin called
a "performative," an utterance that accomplishes something which is
not physical but which, like a promise, a marriage, a sentence in a
court of law, is nonetheless real. Publishing in this medium collapses
together with editing as an assumption of _responsibility_ for the
integrity of the work. A speech act does not take place unless
certain "felicity conditions" are met: one of the felicity conditions
of electronic publishing is that the journal has enough reputation to
confer more status on the text that its author could by himself. This
reputation is aided by a set of systems for ensuring quality (the peer
review system, etc.), but ultimately it too does not "really" exist
except in the minds of the readers.
Print publication, too, is built on trust, but this trust has more
physical correlatives. The expense of paper publication necessitated
a set of mechanisms to ensure that the money was not expended on
material that would not turn a profit (in commercial publication) or
that would not advance human knowledge (in academic publication).
With the onset of electronic publication, this filtering function,
evolved more or less secondarily as insurance against wasted expense,
now becomes the most important value-added service that a "publisher"
performs. In short, one of the contributions of the electronic medium
to the changing of relationships and functions is the disengagement of
process of certifying value from the process of making material
available. I go into this argument in more detail in my article
"Stevan Harnad's Subversive Proposal":
http://rachel.albany.edu/~ejournal/v5n1/v5n1.html
Question 3: The Status of the "Text"
And lastly, there is the question of stability. Ted Jennings has
articulated _EJournal's_ editorial policy as follows: "If we are to be
useful in the evolution of the network culture . . . _EJournal_ has to
be "dependable" within the traditions of codex reliability" (V4N4 ll
522-25) Therefore the journal is archived on a fileserver hedged
about with restrictions to make sure that "there will be a place to
find what every issue looked like on mailing day." This issue, too,
is archived in such a fashion, so that all the internal text will be
preserved in the state in which you are reading it today. But in the
hypertext version, the "text" sprawls outside the boundaries of the
fileserver. It is full of links to other texts that will gradually
change as their authors update them, or point to nothing at all as the
unstable web makes them obsolete. So the attempt to maintain a stable
copy of this text for archival purposes begins to look more and more
like an antique practice of Bolter's "late age of print." As a
transitional policy to help ejournals earn the trust of people used to
print, it has done an important job. However, it goes so against the
grain of the WWWeb medium that the entire business of maintaining
stable copy is being called seriously into question.
Moreover, Andersen maintains his own copy of "Hypertext Notes" --the
"director's cut" if you like, free of the links that I have
interpolated-- and potentially changing as he adds new links and
modifies old ones. See:
[line 336]
http://www.canuck.com/~andersen/hypertextnotes
It is fortunate that the versatility of the medium allows a link from
this archived version to the author's developing version and thereby
renders meaningless the question of which version is the "right" one.
It all depends on one's purpose in reading it.
The degree to which the new media complexify the relations between
authorship, editorship, publication and librarianship is no longer
surprising. But it always seems as though, just when you think that
the major questions have all at least been asked if not answered, a
new set of experiences brings you face to face with a whole new set of
questions which are outpacing their answers. As Taylor and Saarinen
remark, "Our dilemma is that we are living at the moment of transition
from print to electronic culture. It is too late for printed books
and too early for electronic texts. Along this boundary we must write
our work."
NOTES
[1] Many people who don't have access to a SLIP/PPP account, and
therefore can't use the latest slick Web browser such as Netscape or
Mosaic, think that they have no access to the World-Wide Web at all.
However, many internet service providers (such as the academic
computing services that many readers of _EJournal_ use) do provide
access through Lynx, a decidedly unsexy but completely workable text-
based browser that runs on a UNIX host. Try exiting your mail reader
and typing the following at your top prompt:
lynx http://rachel.albany.edu/~ejournal/v5n1/v5n1.html
If nothing interesting happens, contact your computing service and see
if Lynx is available anywhere on the system. You may have power that
you never knew you had!
REFERENCES [line 372]
Bolter, Jay David. _Writing Space: The Computer, Hypertext, and the
History of Writing_. Fairlawn, N.J.: Erlbaum, 1991.
Jennings, Ted. "Archiving Electronic Journals: Permanence, Integrity,
Linking, Citation, Copyright." _EJournal_ V4N4, 1994, ll. 521-612.
http://rachel.albany.edu/~ejournal/v4n4/edit.html
Moulthrop, Stuart. "Shadow of an Informand."
http://raven.ubalt.edu/Moulthrop/hypertexts/hoptext/
A_Beginning07084.html (raven was not responding, 8/20/96)
Taylor, M. and E. Saarinen. "Telewriting." _Imagologies: Media
Philosophy_. New York: Routledge, 1993.
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Doug Brent
University of Calgary
Faculty of General Studies
dabrent@acs.ucalgary.ca
http://www.ucalgary.ca/~dabrent
--------------------------------------------------------------------
[ This essay in Volume 6, Number 3 of _EJournal_ (August, ]
[ 1996) is (c) copyright _EJournal_. Permission is hereby ]
[ granted to give it away. _EJournal_ hereby assigns any and ]
[ all financial interest to D. Brent. This note must ]
[ accompany all copies of this text. ]
===================================================================
HYPERTEXT NOTES [line 406]
by Richard Andersen
andersen@canuck.com
http://www.canuck.com/~andersen
This is a sort of experiment in what can be done with hypertext. My
purpose is to exploit the medium of hypertext in a way that is only
rarely done, especially on the web, in order to make some points
about a wide variety of aspects of digital text.
I've seen several essays on the web (or generally speaking on the
'net) which mimic the paper paradigm and possibly include either:
- links to any word within the document that seems "linkable" (for
example every mention of Microsoft linked to www.microsoft.com --
usually useless, but a novelty none-the-less, and novelty means a lot
these days) or
- links at the bottom to the "next page," amounting to little more
than a digital page turner.
Others actually exploit the hypertext, but some of those echo the
linear experience of traditional (paper) text. One scholar notes that
"one is reminded of the incunabula period of the book trade, during
which books were printed to look as much like manuscripts as
possible." (Doug Brent. "Stevan Harnad's 'Subversive Proposal'"
_EJournal_, V1N5 [June 1995]) Ironically, the quote comes from this
publication (_EJournal_), which although currently available via the
web as well as via an ftp plain-text archive, still more or less
maintains much of the "look and feel" (broadly speaking) of a paper
publication. Such a format is currently dominant with scholarly work
available on the 'net, including essays and articles by the digirati
(although notable exceptions include commercial fiction and
non-fiction available at the Eastgate site). One reason may be that
even basic html mark-up involves investing extra resources which may
be unavailable to largely volunteer publications run for scholarly
brownie points at most (see Fytton Rowland's "Electronic Journals:
Neither Free nor Easy," _EJournal_ V4N2 [June 1994]).
[line 444]
There's a lot to be said about accessibility and the digital library,
but hypertext offers a chance to do something radically different with
essays (discounting "multimedia," which is another ball of wax
entirely and for that matter apes a mode of face-to-face/ one-to-many
presentation which has been around for decades) to the extent that
they bear little resemblance to what we currently think of when we
think of textual works.
Making up the header of each page of principal, WWWeb version of this
essay is what, for lack of better term, I will call a "hyperdex" (by
distant analogy with "index"). The hyperdex is the rows of symbols;
if you connect to a page that doesn't have the hyperdex, you've
escaped from this (again, for lack of better term) essay. External
links are accompanied by an asterisk. The hyperdex represents links to
each page in this essay.
With regards to content, the hyperdex symbols and their respective
pages are in no particular order outside of what the reader creates
--I have intentionally chosen symbols as independent of order as ISO
characters will allow so as to avoid imposing my own order onto the
text. I've steered more or less clear of text formatting (the
appearance of the text from the web browser page) and structure within
the html mark up (such as <blockquote> and <cite>) for the same
reason. For convenience, internal links to each page's hyperdex are
strewn throughout the text, although depending on your settings this
might not always be necessary, as some pages may fill only one screen.
I have used no graphics, sounds or image maps because I think such
defeats the purpose of a hypertext experiment.
This text is authored with Netscape in mind; a germane advantage to
Netscape and its ilk is that when you've read one of the files within
this whole document, the respective symbol in the hyperdex will turn
red (or perhaps another colour, depending on your custom preferences).
In this way you'll be able to know what you've covered and what you
haven't; you can connect to as many or as few of the pages as you'd
like via either the hyperdex or via links within the pages, some of
which merely move you about on the page. Some browsers allow you
(with cursor positioned over link) to look at the bottom of the screen
and see which URL the link will take you to.
[line 485]
Make what you will of this essay. I've intentionally avoided
explicitly outlining the manner in which the document is written
--it's a kind of a puzzle or tapestry which can be put together on
several levels, for example what I'm saying and why I'm saying it this
way. The work is different every time it's read, and I suppose the
meaning varies. In some ways this kind of document seems
unfathomable, maybe because of how we've been trained to read, and
trained to think.
The writing is more or less colloquial, i.e. it leans more towards the
way people talk than the way they write. I don't know whether that's
a good idea or not, but I wanted to by design reflect a bit of what
I've been reading on the 'net. On the same note, some of the sources
are rather unconventional, e.g. e-mail messages or typo-infested
net-documents with relatively unknown origins.
[Editor's Note: That's all for this first-node teaser. To see the
rest of this hypertext, you'll need to look up the WWWeb version at
http://www.hanover.edu/philos/ejournal/archive/v6n3/
andersen/andersen.html
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Richard Andersen
andersen@canuck.com
http://www.canuck.com/~andersen
--------------------------------------------------------------------
[ This essay in Volume 6, Number 3 of _EJournal_ (August, ]
[ 1996) is (c) copyright _EJournal_. Permission is hereby ]
[ granted to give it away. _EJournal_ hereby assigns any and ]
[ all financial interest to R. Andersen. This note must ]
[ accompany all copies of this text. ]
===================================================================
LIVING IN HYPERTEXT [line 524]
by John December
john@december.com
http://www.december.com/web/text/index.html
DREAM
Early in my education in the World Wide Web as viewed through Mosaic,
I had a dream in which I was in second grade again, playing soccer. I
was in the stream of legs scrambling, and the colorful ball on the
grass in my dream was a node that linked to some other place, a lake
where I fished in high school, years and miles away from that soccer
game. In my dream, I need only mentally "click" on the ball to get to
the lake, and then the lake was a broad expanse, rippling in sunlight,
the smell of summer hot and languid, the crickets chirping in the
early evening.
Nothing about hypertext I've learned since then has made as strong an
impact on me as this dream. I've found no over-arching theory which
has laid bare hypertext's essential nature; the books I've read about
hypertext seem oriented to another kind of language, a brand of
hypertext intended for stand-alone proprietary systems, hypertext that
is very different from the open, global, chaotic, dynamic play of
meaning and association on the World Wide Web.
REACTION [line 549]
I find Richard Andersen's hypertext notes intriguing.
Sometimes, however, the motivation for the jumps seems too arbitrary
to satisfy me, but I expect this in an experiment; and I admire the
limits he's pushed. As a notebook of doorways to new meanings, this
text works well.
Andersen claims that his essay is "a puzzle or tapestry which can be
put together on several levels." Structurally, I can see how the
"hyperdex" binds multiple levels together, like the table of contents
or the index of a book. As a reader, I feel immersed in this
structure --I feel responsible for putting together the meaning of
the text myself, rather than relying on the author to lead me through
it. When I follow the links from the symbols, I find so many branches
and quotes that I have difficulty discerning the argument that this
text is making --unless this text is making the argument that hypertext
encourages an abundance of viewpoints, like a documentary without a
narrator.
What I find most intriguing is the way Andersen's text binds other
texts into its hyperdex. The hyperdex, to me, is the structure that
makes this essay "hang together." Andersen seems to be saying that it
is the job of the hypertext writer to "point the browser" and then ask
the reader to take from that abundance what he or she will.
Poets, notably Neruda, were said to "leap" from meaning to meaning,
utilizing the central feature of poetry, the metaphor, as the basis
for creating meaning. The high-energy metaphors of Emily Dickinson,
the universality in the particular, the leveraging of what is known to
the unknown, is perhaps what I think hypertext, like poetry, can
approach. Andersen's text evoked this idea of "leaping" for me.
I like Andersen's use of a symbolic table to create new meanings, and
most of his criticisms and observations are apt and accurate.
However, some of his observations don't have the depth you might
otherwise expect. For example, his critique of "links to any word
within the document that seems `linkable' (for example every mention
of Microsoft linked to www.microsoft.com --usually useless, but a
novelty none-the-less..." (Andersen 1996) is a fair criticism of
"over-linking" in most cases. This "over-linking" criticism is a
frequently-stated critique of Web hypertext, but it is not usually
analyzed further.
[line 593]
An over-linking scheme in hypertext such as what Andersen (and many
others) describe may be very useful for certain purposes and
audiences. For example, a technical manual may contain key phrases,
terms, and concepts, and these may be linked to their explication
everywhere they occur in the hypertext. Why? Because the author of
the hypertext cannot depend on the reader to choose the proper path(s)
through the manual. This makes it important to cross-link key terms
and phrases throughout. The reader, with intelligent use of his or
her browser (i. e., paying attention to the shading/ color-changing
cues that record which hypertext links have been visited in graphical
browsers such as Netscape) --and self-control (not following every
possible link just because it occurs on a page)-- can make very
effective use of such an "over-linked" document.
In the end, Andersen's text is a strong experiment and a useful tapestry
for encountering many issues involved in the creation of meaning with
hypertext.
CHARACTERISTICS
The World Wide Web has inherent characteristics that affect its
expressive possibilities (December, 1996a):
--- Unbound in space/ time: Information provided on the Internet is
available every day, around the clock, and around the world (pending
network operation).
--- Bound in use context: Web-based hypertext fosters associations
among works through links, giving rise to networks of meaning and
association among many information sources that may be scattered
across the globe and written by many authors.
--- Distributed, non-hierarchical: The Web's technical organization as
an application using the Internet for a client/server model influences
the disintegration of user focus on a single outlet for experiencing
content.
QUALITIES [line 631]
The World Wide Web's hypertext gives the author opportunities to
create works which are:
--- Multi-role: The Web's users can be not only consumers of
information, but can be providers as well.
--- Porous: A web doesn't have just one entry point; any of its pages
can serve as the starting point for a user. The user may find that
different pages in the web give them the best viewpoint into the
information for their needs. Other users may enter a web at a certain
page because of a keyword search. The result is that designers can't
depend on (nor should they expect) users to follow a particular
starting point and path through a web.
--- Dynamic: The Web is characteristically, notoriously changeable,
with new technologies (servers, browsers, network communication) as
well as new content being introduced continuously.
--- Interactive: Web developers can do more than "broadcast"
information. They can elicit feedback from users (through electronic
mailto links and forms), and provide Web-based threaded discussion
boards or Java-based interactive applications.
--- Competitive: Because of its distributed characteristic and dynamic
qualities, the Web's content developers face extreme competition for
user attention.
METHODOLOGY
In response to these characteristics and qualities, I have created a
web development methodology
http://www.december.com/present/webweave.html
that addresses how I think information might be shaped on the Web,
borrowing from my experience in computer software development,
technical communication, Web development, and Internet information
resource tracking and indexing.
REALITIES [line 672]
But the human response to online hypertext doesn't always conform to
the neat steps of a methodology. I'm surprised by the frustration some
users feel upon using hypertext on a screen; they report:
- "I get tired of clicking."
- "I want to print out the whole thing so that I can use it in my work."
- "I don't know where to go."
- "I don't see the transitions from one file to another."
- "I get to a file and I don't know why I'm there."
- "I follow the links from the pages and get lost."
- "I follow the links from the pages and then spend a lot of time
looking at things I don't think are very useful."
- "I don't like things that are so fragmented."
These frustrations may arise from many sources:
- The structure of a hypertext may not meet the needs or expectations
of a particular user.
- The user may not like reading text on the screen.
- The user may be unfamiliar with hypertext and the Web.
- The user may have not be motivated to read/use the information.
- The user may have a low ability to use hypertext (hypertext reading
ability has been associated with spatial reasoning ability).
- The user may not know how to use their Web browser effectively.
- The user may have trouble applying information found on line, leading
to feelings of "information overload," "getting lost," and spending
time sorting out "useless information."
Despite the problems that some users report, I think that, given good
methodologies to exploit them, there are potential benefits of
Web-based hypertext.
POTENTIALS [line 706]
On one level, I see hypertext as a way to play with metaphor and
association; at a more pragmatic level, I see hypertext as a way to
layer information.
LAYERING FOR MEANING
I like the idea of layering, of the potential for a text to expand and
elaborate on itself. In literary works, the process of revisiting, or
narrative recursion, as in Faulkner, adds a texture based on an almost
hypnotic re-working of a point of view.
Information, I believe, can benefit from using layering techniques, in
which different views of information are shown to different audiences.
I've implemented a simple kind of layering in Internet Web Text
(December, 1996b) by providing alternate views of information.
Internet Web Text covers the basics of Internet and Web-based
information navigation and use. For each topic I cover in the text, I
provide a simple list of important resources. I also provide the same
set of resources with an expanded narrative describing each item in
the list.
The overall structure of Internet Web Text consists of an index page
linked to sets of list and narrative pages. The resulting structure
helps users navigate the text based on their desire either for a
quick-summary list of the resources discussed or a narrative
describing those resources. This is an example of layering hypertext
for meaning.
LAYERING FOR SCALE
Hypertext can also be used to layer information to help users focus on
a particular part of a large body of information. A simple
hierarchical subject tree such as "Lycos" helps users get increasing
detail with each selection of a branch.
TOWARD A DIALOGIC WEB [line 743]
Ultimately, the layers of meaning within and among hypertext works can
give rise to a global, collaborative text that is constantly in flux.
No doubt there are serious questions for which Web authors will need
answers --questions about intellectual property, economic models,
security and privacy, and information quality. But in order to
approach these questions, we need hypertext critics and practitioners
alike to engage in a detailed analysis of how hypertext is used on the
Web and how to reveal and explicate its potential.
REFERENCES
December, J. (1996a). Web Development. Troy, NY: December
Communications, Inc.
http://www.december.com/web/develop.html
December, J. (1996b). Internet Web Text. Troy, NY: December
Communications, Inc.
http://www.december.com/web/text/
--------------------------------------------------------------------
John December
john@december.com
http://www.december.com/john/index.html
--------------------------------------------------------------------
[ This essay in Volume 6, Number 3 of _EJournal_ (August, ]
[ 1996) is (c) copyright _EJournal_. Permission is hereby ]
[ granted to give it away. _EJournal_ hereby assigns any and ]
[ all financial interest to J. December. This note must ]
[ accompany all copies of this text. ]
====================================================================
[line 777]
MODERNITY AND POSTMODERNISM IN "HYPERTEXT NOTES":
A call for theoretical consistency and completeness
by Charles Ess
Drury College
dru001d@vma.smsu.edu
"Hypertext Notes," a self-described experiment, serves as a rich and
rewarding example of hypertext. Its opening premise --that most
hypertextual work retains the linear structure familiar to us from
print-- is clearly correct, and the author's effort to develop and
explore the non-linear possibilities of writing in hypertext promises
to enhance our understanding of both the possibilities and limits of
hypertext.
I believe that "Hypertext Notes" nicely succeeds in this project,
though not necessarily in ways it may have intended. (This is not a
criticism: the author is intentionally vague about the various
intentions of the project.) For me, "Hypertext Notes" raises some
central theoretical problems which I believe hypertext authors and
readers must confront more directly, if we are to avoid potentially
fatal contradictions and conceptual muddles.
As I raise these problems, however, I fear that I may sound
excessively reactionary and curmudgeonly. To help offset this
impression, you may want to indulge me in a little autobiography (and
a lot of shameless bragging) --the point of which is to establish that
I come to hypertext in general and "Hypertext Notes" in particular
with a long and respectable record of involvement and enthusiasm.
I also come to hypertexts *primarily* with the intentions of a
classroom teacher. My authoring of hypertexts is almost exclusively
focused on exploiting the medium to (a) help students better
understand difficult material, in part by (b) using the links to
articulate the often complex and multiple conceptual relationships
between different sorts of material. My primary model for hypertexts,
then, includes the simple notion that authors have a rather clear
notion of what they want to say to their readers --including just what
the web of links and linked material *mean*.
Admittedly, much of the literature surrounding hypertext calls my
simple paradigm into question. It may be helpful to remember here
that poststructualist and postmodern theorists --who dominate most of
the theoretical discussion of hypertext-- attack my simple paradigm in
various ways. Roughly, this paradigm is seen as modernist and
structuralist, precisely because it assumes that authors intend
meaning for their readers, meaning that is partly conveyed through
structures (logical, syntactical, etc., especially as these structures
are bound up with the linearity of printed texts). More horrifically,
this paradigm is associated with an Enlightenment meta-narrative, one
that surreptitiously accords totalitarian power to something called
"reason," as the meta-narrative overtly but deceptively claims that
human liberation and fulfillment will come through the expansion and
victory of this reason over earlier forms of knowledge and social
organization. [line 831]
The poststructuralist/ postmodern alternatives to the allegedly
totalizing/ totalitarian reason of Enlightenment include
"decentering," a process of undermining centers of authority and
meaning allegedly privileged by the Enlightenment meta-narrative.
Hypertext is celebrated as embodying this process of decentering,
because the hypertextual medium dilutes, if not obliterates, the
"authority" of the author, throwing the full weight of constructing
meaning onto the "reader" who, now freed from the ostensibly
unnecessary restrictions of print media --including the dreaded
"linearity" of print-- can manoeuvre through hypertexts in whatever
sequence and fashion he or she chooses.
My point is not to argue for an either/ or --a simple right/ wrong
choice between modernist and postmodernist paradigms. Such an either/
or itself represents the classically modernist dualism of Descartes
--one rather inconsistently urged upon us by postmoderns who assume
just such an either/ or as they urge us to reject modernity in favor
of postmodernism!
Rather, using "Hypertext Notes" as an example, I argue first that the
modernist paradigm of an author who seeks to convey meaning --in part,
through logical and syntactical structures, including the linearity
associated with print media-- cannot be easily abandoned by even the
most ardent proponents of poststructuralism and decentered hypertexts.
More broadly, "Hypertext Notes" itself stands as an example of *both*
paradigms operating helpfully side-by-side. My large point is that
instead of accepting the either/ or between modernism and
postmodernism enjoined upon us by many postmodern enthusiasts --we as
theorists, authors, and readers of hypertexts will be better served by
a theory of hypertext which explicitly acknowledges the role of both
paradigms. [line 863]
The opening page of "Hypertext Notes" announces its function as
something of an experiment. The author explicitly states, "My purpose
is to exploit the medium of hypertext in a way that is only rarely
done, especially on the web, in order to make some points about a wide
variety of aspects of digital text." Obviously, the author intends to
convey multiple meanings to his audience: not everything is left up to
the reader. The author must further explain to the reader the
semiotics and the structure of "Hypertext Notes." We have to know
what all those interesting but baffling ISO characters at the top of
the page *mean* in this context if we are to navigate this hypertext,
and so the author obligingly --but also out of necessity for our
understanding as readers-- tells us: they are the link markers that
will take us somewhere, though the *order* of our journey is left up
to us. Indeed, the author explicitly states, "...I have intentionally
chosen symbols as independent of order as ISO characters will allow so
as to avoid imposing my own order onto the text." This seems to be
integral to the author's larger project for his readers:
Make what you will of this essay. I've intentionally avoided
explicitly outlining the manner in which this document is
written --it's a kind of a *puzzle or tapestry* which can be put
together on several levels, for example what I'm saying and why
I'm saying it this way. The work is different every time it's
read, and I suppose the meaning varies. In some ways this kind of
a document seems unfathomable, *maybe because of how we've been
trained to read, and trained to think*.
http://www.hanover.edu/philos/ejournal/archive/v6n3/
andersen/zdog.html
This certainly sounds respectably postmodern. In particular, the
effort to avoid "imposing" one's own order may be seen as an admirable
respect for the reader's autonomy of choice, as it ostensibly allows
the reader to create his/ her own structure or reading of the
available lexia (text units). But it should be equally clear by now
that this effort to avoid imposing order is only partial. The author
*has* chosen for his readers a limited set of lexia, linked in
specific ways, accompanied by an opening set of instructions which
tell us the overarching meaning of this hypertext --a meaning defined
by its purposes (to exploit the medium and "to make some points" about
digital text), its navigational signals, and its structure. Over
against the possiblity of navigating the linked lexia in different
ways --the texts within the lexia, beginning with the carefully
articulated instructions, are themselves robustly linear, and the
links themselves often constitute a linear, indeed logical connection
between the elements of thought, the claims and propositions,
contained within the lexia. [line 911]
In these ways, the author has retained to a considerable degree the
modernist paradigm: the hypertext still stands as an effort by an
author to convey meaning to an audience, and part of this project
includes the familiar elements of logical and syntactical structures,
including linearity. My point is *not* that the author has thereby
failed in his apparently postmodern project. Rather, it seems that
any hypertext constructed by an author for an audience *must* include
these elements of the modernist paradigm. Otherwise, why offer one's
hypertext to an audience who will hopefully understand at least part
of what one *means*?
It might be thought that I'm making an obvious point: of course
postmodern hypertexts cannot abandon wholesale every element of modern
conceptions of the author attempting to convey meaning to an audience.
If this is an obvious point, however, it is not one suggested within
the hypertext itself. Rather, the author specifically calls into
question linear argument: "This [preservation of linear structure in
hypertexts] may well be because it is the most suitable form. But what
if it isn't? What if discursive texts do not need the structure of an
'argument'?..." [line 932]
http://www.hanover.edu/philos/ejournal/v6n3/archive/
andersen/zprune.html
The suggestion seems to be here the typically postmodern one --that we
*can* abandon modern concepts entirely, including the notion of
linear argument. Let me emphasize here that at least some members of
the philosophical community are indeed quite excited and interested
in the potential of hypertext to open up at least *alternative* forms
of argument. Perhaps the best known of these, David Kolb, has in
fact argued that hypertexts will make possible the *recovery* of
argument forms (e.g., Hegel's dialectic) which are only awkwardly
expressed in the (largely) linear frameworks of print. But if
hypertexts open up the possibility of discovering (or recovering)
forms of argument only awkwardly articulated in print --in our rush to
abandon linear argument, we run the danger of abandoning a body of
knowledge which, in my view, has much to teach us still regarding what
makes for a valid and sound argument, in contrast with what may be
simply persuasive but ill-grounded. In point of fact, the author's
essay inadvertently confirms this fear in at least one instance. The
author's rhetorical suggestion that discursive texts do not need the
structure of an argument is ostensibly supported by a link to quotes
from Bolter's _Writing Space_. The author writes:
Bolter says the writer of hypertext designates these signs in the
act of creating connections. The reader is left to make choices
more than ever before --*an argument is no longer a linear
statement* of "Here's what I think and this is why I think it,
1-2-3-4," and instead puts the burden of responsibility more than
ever before on the reader to make the connections-- as if to say
"Here's a map, the sites are clearly marked --now where would you
like to go." The specific textual experience that was a tour bus
had turned into a lone hitchhiker with a backpack. Go where you
wanna go, do what you wanna do. What you put into the experience,
what you put into your brain, what you put into your "trip," is
what you will get out of it. The spirit of manipulative
propaganda may live on in the text, but it must become more
sophisticated if it is to thrive. [line 970]
http://www.hanover.edu/philos/ejournal/v6n3/archive/
andersen/zcat.html#choices
How are we to read this link? Is this itself an *argument* about what
argument in hypertextual documents *is*? If it *is* an argument --it is a
fallacious one. At best, what's at stake here is Bolter's (admittedly
considerable status as an) authority regarding hypertext. But it should
hardly take a logician to point out that accepting a claim (that we do not
*need* the linear structures of argument) on the strength of an appeal to
an authority (who simply states that linear argument is no longer to be
found in hypertextual media) is not a logically satisfying move. Rather,
as students learn in their elementary logic course, this is an example of
a fallacious argument, usually referred to as appeal to authority. To be
blunt: *if* these linked lexia are intended to constitute an example of an
alternative hypertextual argument, they unfortunately read as fallacious
argument as well. This apparent logical weakness is not unique to
"Hypertext Notes." Rather, it turns out that the postmodern tendency to
abandon the ostensibly confining restrictions of linearity and linear
argument quickly become mired in a fatal series of contradictions.
Again, my point is not to trumpet the victory of modernity over the
postmodern. Rather, it is to urge us, on the occasion of the "Hypertext
Notes" experiment, to recognize more clearly how our hypertexts represent
a theoretical mix of both modern and postmodern elements. If "Hypertext
Notes" succeeds --as I believe it does-- as an interesting and fruitful
experiment in hypertext, I would argue it succeeds precisely because it
conjoins modernist notions of the author-reader relationship, linear
argument, etc., with a postmodern interest in exploring the nonlinear
possibilities of hypertext and the role of the reader in constructing his
or her path through the lexia offered by the author. By exploring this
conjunction more explicitly --by examining carefully how the modern and
postmodern elements work together to create rich experiences of authoring
and reading-- I believe we will make progress towards a more complete,
consistent, and useful theory of hypertext.
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Charles Ess
Drury College
dru001d@vma.smsu.edu
--------------------------------------------------------------------
[ This essay in Volume 6, Number 3 of _EJournal_ (August, ]
[ 1996) is (c) copyright _EJournal_. Permission is hereby ]
[ granted to give it away. _EJournal_ hereby assigns any and ]
[ all financial interest to C. Ess. This note must ]
[ accompany all copies of this text. ]
===================================================================
[line 1019]
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Board of Advisors: [line 1070]
Stevan Harnad University of Southampton
Ann Okerson Association of Research Libraries
Joe Raben City University of New York
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---------------------------------------------------------------------
SENIOR EDITORS - August, 1996
ahrens@alpha.hanover.edu John Ahrens Hanover
dabrent@acs.ucalgary.ca Doug Brent Calgary
kahnas@jmu.edu Arnie Kahn James Madison
nrcgsh@ritvax Norm Coombs RIT
richardj@bond.edu.au Joanna Richardson Bond
ryle@urvax.urich.edu Martin Ryle Richmond
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Consulting Editors - August, 1996
bcondon@umich.edu Bill Condon Michigan
djb85@albany Don Byrd Albany
folger@watson.ibm.com Davis Foulger IBM - Watson
gms@psu.edu Gerry Santoro Penn State
nakaplan@ubmail.ubalt.edu Nancy Kaplan Baltimore
srlclark@liverpool.ac.uk Stephen Clark Liverpool
twbatson@gallua.gallaudet.edu Trent Batson Gallaudet
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Editor: Ted Jennings, emeritus, English, Albany
Editorial Asssociate: Jerry Hanley, emeritus, Theater, Albany
--------------------------------------------------------------------
University at Albany Computing and Network Services
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University at Albany, SUNY. Albany, New York 12222 USA
