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As George Landow suggests in Hypertext and Critical Theory, we are currently undergoing a "revolution in human thought." Simultaneous paradigm shifts in apparently diverse disciplines are converging, creating a new conceptual system based in "multilinearity, nodes, links, and networks" rather than "centre, margin, hierarchy, and linearity."
It is becoming clear from Landow's and other theorists' work in hypertext and critical theory that our move from printed text to electronic text is not only affecting the way in which we relate to that text itself, but also how we order our knowledge about ourselves and the natural world in which we live.
Just as Marshall McLuhan predicted, the structure of western thought is changing to reflect the structure of its newest technology of communication— the hyperlinked, multisequential computer network. But McLuhan also saw that any technology of communication has built-in biases. For example, the development of the phonetic alphabet and the later invention of the printing press brought changes in the way we human beings thought about and experienced our world.
Before print, we lived in an oral /acoustic world of what McLuhan called "multi-dimensional resonance, every word.... a poetic world unto itself, a ‘momentary deity’, a revelation" (25). Each word existed only in the perpetual NOW of the unified human senses, and ceased to exist outside of the human brain at the very moment it was spoken. Human experience was holistic, flowing, contextual.
Written symbolic language and the invention of the printing press changed not only the way we communicated with each other, but also the way we formed thought itself.
Just as printed text allowed us to store information outside of ourselves, separate what we knew into discrete branches, and arrange those branches into convenient hierarchies, so printed text also encouraged us to perceive information about the world as disconnected from ourselves, think about it without context, and assign each branch a lesser or a greater level of value.
Of course, looking back is always less difficult than looking forward. We see the truth in the rearview mirror. The effect of a print bias on our modes of thinking is easier to analyze now that we are beginning to move outside the old paradigm. Our tendency might be to embrace this new technology as uncritically as we embraced the old one, seeing it as some kind of saviour. Tech-gurus of the Internet seem manic in their fervor for the new media, but we might remember that similar tech-gurus became just as manic over the invention of the printing press. And as we become enmeshed in the new mindset, it will become more difficult to see how hypertext may affect— or be affected by— our patterns of thought.
One way to regain perspective is to step outside of the discussion surrounding the technology itself, into parallel or convergent areas of discourse. For example, George Landow uses existing critical theory to discover how hypertext responds to the biases of the traditional printed book. However, I notice that at least in this first chapter, the biases of hypertext itself are not really explored in any depth.
I find Landow's description of hypertext in terms of Roland Barthes' ‘writerly’ versus ‘readerly’ texts particularly interesting. While the idea of being able to instantly post a formal response and create an online link from the text is exciting, I think the ease of the process may invite a glut of inappropriate or off-the-cuff responses that will only serve to confuse subsequent readers. Still, the disappearance of boundaries between reader and writer could encourage access to the media by those who have been excluded from or silenced by traditional printed text, and by the hierarchical mindset that accompanied it.
Landow also suggests in the hypertext block entitled Reading and Writing in a Hypertext Environment that the reader of Landow's hypertext version can "take notes..... or write against [his] interpretations, against [his] text, "while the reader of the book cannot."
I think Landow may be over-stating his case here. The margins of my own books contain extensive notes, and I often place pages of my response inside the front of the text. I believe many readers of classic 'readerly' texts respond very actively— and in writing— to what they read. Too, the tactile experience of reading and writing to a printed text is far more satisfying than reading or writing to a hypertext. I printed out the first chapter of Landow's book, not only so that I could be comfortable reading it, but so that I could write all over it as well.
In fact, what I find most attractive and most problematic about hypertext is the way it allows the reader infinite choice in the form of spontaneous links between parallel blocks of text, pictures, and even multimedia.
There is no doubt that the reader's engagement with the information presented in hypertext becomes more active and personal. But along with the temptation to instantly follow a ‘link within a link within a link’, comes the risk that the reader will be entirely distracted from the text, possibly never returning. And even for a reader dedicated enough to find her way back, the meaning of the whole may become lost in the sum of the parts— a particularly postmodern dilemma. Either way, the fragmented experience is unlikely to lead to any Gestalt understanding of the actual text, though the reader may loosely place that text in relationship to the larger network to which it is linked.
Landow recognizes this built-in resistance of hypertext to a whole, beginning-to-end reading, but he views it as positive, saying that "the multiplicity.... calls for an active reader." I'm not so sure. Active, or hyperactive?
Resistance to closure seems to be a fundamental characteristic of hypertext. As theorist Diane Greco puts it, "hypertexts resist endings, final validations, or refutations of the reader's point of view." Perhaps we should not take such satisfactions for granted. Maybe our craving for closure is conditioned, merely a case of the ingrained desire to objectify and classify, and a denial of subjectivity to others with equal, if occluded, claims to it.
Is my own yearning for closure a fundamental characteristic of my mind, with its modes of thought informed within a print-based linear and hierarchical culture?
Disturbing concept. As a writer, do I secretly wish to keep the ‘author’ in "authority"?
REFERENCES
Greco, Diane. Hypertext with Consequences: Recovering a Politics of Hypertext 1996. (02/20/97)
Landow, George. Chapter 1: Hypertext and Critical Theory. Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992. (02/20/97)
McLuhan, Marshall. The Gutenberg Galaxy. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1962 --http://www.island.net/~chrisbo/landow2.htm
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