Hypertextual Juxtapositions: TBD

Thesis:

Writing, publishing and design for the Internet are effective modes of presentation when they resonate with associative linking, juxtapositions, intertextuality, and virtuality.

Introduction

How would you like to improve your writing? Is it through carefully thought out structure? How about an intrinsic sense of order? The potentials of linear writing must be left in the paper margins.

When looking at writing on the Internet, what sorts of feelings spring to mind for you?

Colloquially, it is a sea of information, overflowing with organic spontaneity. It is also a web--woven delicately with the finest threads of techno-silk. But why, then, is it such a formidable task to create an engaging, visually appealing online interface? The difficulty with online writing is the ease with which the publisher can clutter the page with animated pictures; backgrounds that would be better suited on the floor of a casino; fonts and sizes of text that make the article unreadable; and layouts that can cause headaches rather than inspired afterthought and reflection.

It’s fitting that traditional academic writing was printed on paper--a medium that oozes high, educated class--accessible only to those who could afford it. The accessibility that the desktop computer brings into the average home, coupled with vast amounts of free software and information, adds up to an incredible opportunity for staking a claim on some virtual space.

There is a trick to online writing and it appears when the word accessible is attached to its description. For an article or text to be truly accessible, the endnotes, footnotes, outside definitions, and associated information must be readily available and easy to get to. This is the added bonus of online writing. All of the additional information and supplementary reading can just be “linked” to the article. The actual task of linking will be discussed later. The method behind gathering and cross-referencing different tidbits of information with associative links was first suggested by Vannevar Bush with his description of the Memex, which eventually spearheaded the institution of online writing.

Memex:

How do you remember things? You remember what happened at this or that time because you scan your memories for certain associated recollections that occured at anytime before now.

Vannevar Bush posed this very same question in his article "As We May Think" (1945), and used an example of an index system in a library as an inefficient method for retrieving information. Bush wished to copy the same system that our brains use. He illustrates that in the library system of information retrieval, to get to a certain piece of data, there is a direct and singular path that must be followed from one section to another. If there happens to be an associated piece of data that is also needed, then a complete withdrawal from the present information thread must occur before the new data thread can be explored.

The human mind does not work that way. It operates by association. With one item in its grasp, it snaps instantly to the next that is suggested by the association of thoughts, in accordance with some intricate web of trails carried by the cells of the brain. (Bush pt. 6)

Bush is saying that the mind can instantly flip from one piece of data to another without having to back out of the current information thread. The mind can simply jump to a corresponding idea in a different piece of data through the associative properties of the data. This associative property of the mind is what Bush was trying to achieve when he envisioned the memex.

“Men cannot hope to fully duplicate this mental process artificially, but he certainly ought to be able to learn from it.” It is from this idea of linking by association that Bush and his Memex have contributed greatly to the practise of online writing.

Linking:

When thinking of associating different ideas in a hypertextual world, the concepts of links, networks, and nodes arise.

Nodes:

Nodes, or nodal points, are chunks--blocks of ideas--contained within their own page, chapter, book, or computer screen. The size of nodes is determined by their context. For hypertext documents, a typical node is considered to be a screen’s worth of text. Other examples are a book in a library, a website on the internet, and each page in this website. But nodes can communicate through more than the printed word: the text in a node can take the form of verbal text, or sound and pictures -- basically anything that effectively transmits the message that’s embedded within the node.

Networks:

A network is simply a collection of nodes, linked together to form a collection of texts. A school textbook is an example of a network. This site is also an example of a network. George Landow describes a network as “one kind of electronically linked electronic equivalent to a printed text.” He also uses the term lexia to refer to a block of text, similar to a node. For Landow, a network is “any gathering of lexias, whether assembled by the original author of the verbal text, or by some [one] else gathering together texts created by multiple authors...”

Links:

Given that nodes are texts contained within a network, how do you navigate between nodes? This is where the link becomes important. Think of a link as flipping to the endnote section of an academic text, or skipping to the footnote. In a hypertextual environment, this is enabled by a hotlink or a reference link. There appear to be four varieties of link class. The variety being used here is the referential link. As the name implies, the link refers us to a different node of text, which is akin to flipping a page in an essay or textbook.

Once a collection of nodes has been linked together and formed into a network, the paper text seems limited by comparison. Once we move into the hypertext document there is a definite difference between what Roland Barthes terms as the readerly text and the writerly text.

Hypertext:

The Readerly and Writerly Text:

George Landow and The Electronic Labyrinth distinguish between the readerly and writerly text and emphasize one major difference: control.

In the readerly text, the writer is in control. If we take a novel or academic text in the classical sense, then the reader is at the mercy of whomever wrote the material to lead them through it in an interesting and engaging manner. Direction is everything in the readerly text. It is imperative for the author to write the text in a progression of ideas that leads the reader, who follows in the hope of maintaining coherence.

In the writerly text, the aspect of choice takes precedence over direction. A classic example of a paper version of a writerly text is the genre of Choose Your Own Adventure. In this genre, it is the reader who basically writes the book. The reader writes the book because the story is non-linear. The author has less control over the direction the reader takes, so the reader is figuratively writing the story. Landow quotes from Roland Barthes’ book S/Z saying that “the goal of literary work (of literature as work) is to make the reader no longer a consumer, but a producer of the text.”

If we take into account the ideas of the Memex, linking, and the writerly text, then we are ready for hypertext. Hypertext is text that allows readers to write their own version of any text by following a series of links that construct the text in their own associative manner. This method of creating your own learning pathways is what makes online learning, and more importantly, online writing, so fascinating. In hypertext, it appears as though writers are allowing readers to decide which path to follow. The speed at which the readers can navigate their own texts online gives the impression that hypertext is a more efficient form writing.

Intertextuality:

Intertextuality is a notion advanced by Julia Kristeva in the 1960s. If we were to look at intertextuality as a weaving, then it would become apparent that for a piece of fabric to be intertextual it would pull together many different threads. It would be woven from threads pulled from many sources to create a new weaving. The same can be said for books. A book's intertextuality results when the author echoes or references other texts and other authors. The Electronic Labyrinth claims “a literary work is not simply the product of a single author, but of its relationship to other texts and to the structures of language itself.” The Electronic Labyrinth quotes Kristeva as saying that "[A]ny text is constructed of a mosaic of quotations; any text is the absorption and transformation of another."

Applying what Kristeva has written about intertextuality, we see that this site is a mosaic of references, links, and quotations associated by subject matter and ideas. This illustrates hypertext to a tee. In the virtual world, the source material is easily accessible by links; in the physical form of an intertextual text, the reader must refer to the citation list and track down a copy of the referenced material.

Intertextuality supports the creation of online writing through the ease with which information is gathered and shared. For a text to be intertextual, there has to be a layering of links, nodes, associations; memex style information gathering; and a hypertextual interface that helps the text achieve its own virtual intertextuality.

Virtuality:

In his book Neuromancer (1984), William Gibson describes cyberspace as being a consensual hallucination. There has to be an agreement by readers to allow themselves to participate in the virtual environment of reading. Reading, in this sense, is assumed to be virtual the readers' minds create the world of the novel through their imaginations, and it is this imaginatory world of the virtual space that has been consensually agreed upon to be a hallucination.

The same applies to the virtual environment of the internet. Echoing the ideas and words of media theorist Marshall McLuhan--what appears on the screen isn’t real. The images and worlds that we think we see on a TV or computer screen are actually visualized within our mind’s eye, thus reducing all that we see on the screen to a hallucination. To support his argument, McLuhan uses the standard cathode-ray TV set as his example. He says that there is never a complete image on the screen because the cathode ray paints the back of the screen every 30th of a second. By doing this, the cathode ray paints half of the screen each time, and for the image to appear complete, your mind fills in the faded half of the screen. A similar example can be made of old film projectors and cinema. Film shows us a series of still framed images, and runs them past us at a speed in which they appear to be moving as one complete image; in fact, they are separate frames, and our minds work to complete the movement of this virtual show.

Taking this into account, George Landow says:

We can see that the reader is not reading the actual text, but is reading a virtual representation of the original text.

Hypertext Theory:

So what exactly is hypertext theory?

Hypertext is a viable forum for exploring contemporary critical theory. George Landow sums this up by saying:

Jean Baudrillard supports this with:

To put this into context we could substitute real with text. By making this substitution, we end up with a hypertext in a hyperspace that is located in a place “without atmosphere,” or in our minds.

[Text] no longer needs to be rational, because it no longer measures itself against either an ideal or negative instance. [Text] is no longer anything but operational. In fact, it is no longer really [text], because no imaginary envelops it anymore. It is a hyper[text], produced from a radiating synthesis of combinatory models in a hyperspace without atmosphere. Juxtaposition: For a webpage or online article to be engaging, it needs to be a little more than a screen full of text. This is where the careful art of juxtaposing pictures with text comes into focus. We all have heard the colloquialism that a picture says more than a thousand words, and in the case of supporting an argument in a hypertextual environment, it is very true. A careful choice has to be made when choosing to juxtapose one idea against another. The audience must be carefully taken into account. For this (hyper)paper, I could arbitrarily choose a picture that resembled real life, but was actually created within a virtual, hyperreal environment. * * * An entire day could be taken up in the discussion of aesthetics in online writing, and I would love to do so, but I cannot, because this is not a readerly text and that makes whatever I would like to discuss irrelevant. All that would need to be done is for readers to remember that hypertext is a writerly medium and they would just have to click on whatever caught their fancy and head off in that direction, leaving me to babble on ad infinitum, in a not-real medium... Publishing: To publish your work on the internet, you will need a few things: an FTP (File Transfer Protocol) program, a computer, a connection to the internet, and server space. Once all of these prerequisites have been arranged, then the publishing can begin! In her article Bookworms Into Butterflies, Laura Fillmore mentions five points relevant to online publishing: it's immediate it's global it's interactive it's kinetic it's multimedia. It's Immediate: This all depends on how quickly you upload the hypertext file to your server. As far as I know, I cannot edit and create files on my server. I must first write my text on my computer, then I can upload that information to my server. On the whole, I would say that internet publishing is immediate compared to paper publishing, because I can publish at home within the space of a few hours, compared to in a warehouse across the country after a few months. It's Global: This is a subjective statement. The internet is global, in that it does circle the globe, but it is not truly global because not everyone in the world has access to it. It's Interactive: The internet has the ability to engage readers with the text by adding what Janet Murray calls agency: the ability to act on the text. Readers can also link out of the text--a hazard of interactivity! It's Kinetic: The internet can cause publishing to become kinetic through the use of associative links, animations, and choice. There are so many options for the reader, making the internet akin to a large house where each room is accessible through every other room, and where links are doorways. It's Multimedia: Well, an article that has been published online is multimedia. But in being multiple media, the article changes when it is viewed online. It changes into a new medium. The Internet is a courier for these new media, and by having multiple media in a hypertext document, the publisher has morphed the older multiple media into a new medium through the combination of the previous media. The old media have become streamlined into a new medium that is quicker, more involving, and free-flowing. Design: The Yale Style Manual mentions that there are four main styles of webpage. There is the Training site, Teaching site, Education site, and Reference site. Each one has it’s own particular design agenda, and is aimed at catering to a specific audience. All of the following excerpts are from the online version of the Yale Style Manual. The picture shows "four major themes for intranet information delivery against two fundamental variables: how linear the structure of your presentation will be, and how long the typical user contact time will be." Training Sites: "Web-based training applications tend to be very linear in design, and present few opportunities to digress from the central flow of the presentation." A training site is supposed to be fairly linear, and not deviate from a readerly path because you do not want to disrupt the flow of instruction. Teaching Sites: "Good teaching applications are also built around a strong central narrative, but typically offer more opportunities for students to pursue interesting digressions from the main themes of the Web site. The information presented is usually more sophisticated and in-depth than in training applications. Links are the most powerful aspect of the Web, but they can also be a distraction that may prevent your students getting through the basic presentation." From this we can see that if your site or article wishes to teach someone something rather than train, then you have a little more flexibility in the layout and structure of the published product. Education Sites: "The audiences for heuristic, self-directed learning will chafe at design strategies that are too restrictive and linear. Often the typical user is already highly educated. Flexible, interactive, non-linear design structures are ideal for these users, because it is so difficult to predict exactly what topics will most interest an experienced professional or graduate student." An educational site should switch from the readerly style of hypertext to that of the writerly text to accommodate the “research by feel” actions performed by educated readers. Reference Sites: "The best-designed reference Web sites allow users to quickly pop into the site, find what they want, and then easily print or download what they find." Reference sites or publications are best designed with speed and accessibility in mind. The faster one can access information and leave the better. There is also an emphasis of having as many cross-references as possible. The more like a memex, the better. When publishing an article or series of articles, you must remember who your audience is. There is no point in loading your hypertext with links, when you are attempting to train; and you should not be overly linear when you are creating a reference orientated hypertext. Conclusions: It all started with Vannevar Bush's memex, and ends, now, with the ability to publish anything that is written. It’s a fascinating path to follow, and I am happy that I did. Instead of presenting conclusions that summarize the whole of this site, I would like to present my own conclusions that have arisen over the duration of this site's creation. I’ve noticed that there is a difference in layout, compared to that of the printed paper. Now, this could be a result of hypertext, and I’m sure it is. Hypertext has allowed me to create a paper that is involving and engaging, because the reader can choose where to begin. I purposefully started the site with my thesis because I wanted to let readers have full control over which direction they wanted to go. The aspect of the writerly text is one that I wanted to embrace--as does everyone who creates a hypertext for the purpose of education. What we saw with the associative linking properties of the memex was the beginning, and still hasn't reached an end. Hypertext also allows us to actually see the results of contemporary critical theory. The hypertext article comes to us as a vehicle for the thoughts of Jean Baudrillard, Umberto Eco, Jacques Derrida, Paul Virilio, Roland Barthes, Theodor Nelson, Marshall McLuhan, and Julia Kristeva among others. All of these theorists have ideas that are difficult to show on paper-based media, and the Internet--with its publishing ease--allows us to see what they mean in a medium that supports their theories. The final three sections all have to do with the aesthetics of hypertext, and attempt to answer questions about juxtaposing images with text; publishing, and who it's for; and designing hypertext. All of these factors will fall into place if there is a constant awareness of the audience, and the aesthetic you're trying to achieve. It has been made apparent over the course of this hyper-paper that publishing for the Internet is a hypertextual juxtaposition -- I can search all over and create a document that conveys my attitudes about online writing, but still present a research paper in the classical sense. As for the outcome, well, that’s to be determined. © Judsen Garside 2002. Fair dealing applies.