Thursday, September 14, 2006
Hypertext
Hypertext
In "Hypertext, Hypermedia and Literary Studies: The State of the Art", Landow and Delany suggest that “hypertext can be expected to have important institutional as well as intellectual effects, for it is at the same time a form of electronic text, a radically new information technology, a mode of publication, and a resource for collaborative work… Hypertext historicizes many of our most commonplace assumptions, forcing them to descend from the ethereality of abstraction and appear as corollary to a particular technology and historical era. We can be sure that a new era of computerized textuality has begun; but what it will be like we are just beginning to imagine."
This passage was written in 1991, at a time when hypertext systems were available in somewhat limited forms such as Hypercard and Intermedia, use of the Internet was largely confined to academic institutions, and the term “World Wide Web” had only just been coined. Now, 15 years later, comment and reflect upon the impact hypertext has had on the world.
As I was thinking about large complex hypertext systems, Google and Wiki immediately came to mind. Google (mode of publication) is not only a directory made up of hypertext, it is in fact intelligent enough to determine an entire link structure of a webpage and sort according to relevance of your search. Wiki (resource for collaborative work), on the other hand, is not just one hypertexted encyclopedia. It allows anybody to edit its entries, and becomes "both an author's tool and a reader's medium". Moreover, not only is hypertext limited to the academics, it has now spread its reach to the masses.
What this means is that there is now an information abundance. Almost every word, thing, idea exists as part of a much larger system, which is boundless and indefinite. Proponents of hypertext would argue how this whole wealth of knowledge has served to shrink the world as this phenomenon has bridged the gap between people, location, and time. Hypertext also widens our knowledge, as we can now see the explicit interconnections between ideas, almost without a dead end, especially useful in Research.
However, information being so abundant and accessible, loses it's value. Society assumes a higher level of knowledge in each and every one of us, since it's so accessible anyway, and thus places less appreciation on original thought and the actual knowledge in a person. Also, collaborative hypertext loses it's credibility and can spark off conflicts. There is also the issue of ownership, as now all text are part of a whole, and collaborative work entails revisions and changes so there is never a final text.
I do feel that hypertext has effected some revolutionary changes in the way knowledge is held and used in society. However, it is crucial to identify the problems and limitations of this de-centralisation of text, so that we can better the system.
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