Why is it that the experience of hypertext, or for us to understand hypertext we have to describe it in terms of it's devices? Does this reveal that hypertext has no real definition? Does this show the false base we have created for what is a hypertext and how we have decided to use it and apply it to our new modern day lives?
The concept of hypertext is so prevalent in our lives in today's literature world i wonder what would happen if hypertext was eliminated or if the we found a concrete definition, without using devices?
All i could think about reading this article about hypertext i couldn't help think about my WEPO and What is a Text Seminor and how we had to decode computer texts.
3 comments:
I think its an interesting question as to whether it has a real definition. I think it does but only in common understanding or knowledge. It doesn't need to be explained what you mean when you say hypertext because it is in colloquial speech all the time, but I do wonder what people would say about finding a solid definition for it. And while the notion of hypertext being eliminated is completely unrealistic at this point, I think its true that we wouldn't be able to define it without describing its devices. I wonder if it were not eliminated but minimized if these devices would still be as important to us. Because it is such a huge focus of communication, if it were minimized would our time spent on these devices be minimized as well or are we so devoted to them that we would find another use for them. Which is more important to society, the medium of hypertext or the device on which we use it?
I think that hypertext as it's used is used within this context to emphasize how it being system defined and recognized by the conventions that form it is reflective of the internalized systems of classification that we use to give meaning to language. just the fundamental meanings that we attach to the signs and symbols of words and the gramatical symbols we recognize to represent the natural pauses in speech, of which form our fundamental concept of how language functions, there are conditioned variables of which we have come to view as the concrete indicators of style or genre. I believe that hypertext in the form of a decentralized basis of compositons may provide a fundamental basis for which people can observe the context of a work of literature beyond the epistemological constraints of which the audience and author are subjected, and also to analyze a work beyond the limits of which contemporary social structure has placed on in the classification of genre.
I believe that the medium through the concepts of hypertext will change with the technological and social progression of society, but the devices or conventions by which hypertext is defined and used will remain a constant of literary form.
I think it's okay not to completly understand hypertext. It is a term you have to understand on your own. And you're right it isn't a concrete term but it's a term that does hold a lot of meaning which is why it can't be eliminated. If eliminated a lot would be lost since so much is connected to the term. So many devices are used that it almost seems a little necessary. Sort of like "need" vs "want" SO does society want it or need it?
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