From Text to Hypertext

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From Text to Hypertext

• Continuity or discontinuity?
• Technological hyperbole or real change?

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contents

• Defining hypertext and hypermedia
• Historical development of the form
• The author/reader inversion the decentred text
• Beyond Hypertext

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Scientific approach and Poststructuralist approach
Technical practical functions
Theoretical function and potential
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Part One

• Defining hypertext and hypermedia

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Sequence
Hierarchies
Grid
Semantic webs
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technical approach

• Gygi (1990) definitions
• two groups

• Group 1
• popular press, advertising and marketing
• Group 2
• technical journals and computer-based research

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Group One Definitions

• association rather than indexing
• non-sequential representation of ideas
• abolition of the traditional, linear approach  

• non-linear and dynamic
• content is not bound by structure and
  organisation

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Group Two definitions

• representation and management around a network of
  nodes connected together by links
• an electronic document
• viewed and manipulated through interactive
  browsers

• a complex, non-linear way to facilitate the rapid
  exploration of large bodies of knowledge

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defining hypertext

• Jacob Nielson
• all traditional text, whether in printed form or
  in computer files, is sequential
• Hypertext is non-sequential
• http//www.useit.com/

• Although traditional text
• can be non-linear as a narrative structure
• restrictions of print make it a
• linear experience

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Echoes McLuhan

• A shift from dominant print paradigm (hot) to
  electronic media (cool)

• Hot
• Linear
• Authority
• Cool
• Non-linear
• End of authority

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Paradigm Shift

• Print
• Linear
• Hierarchical
• Information is limited to fixed text and still
  images

• Some communication theorists and web design gurus
  suggest that the print paradigm is
• Counter to how the mind works
• Intellectually limiting
• BUT many websites are still linear and
  hierarchical

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Paradigm shifts

• Hypertext paradigm
• Non-linear
• Organic information space
• borderless
• Semantic web
• Associated links
• User-Navigation
• Interactive paradigm

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Multimedia paradigm

• Multimedia becomes possible with broadband (ADSL,
  cable etc) delivery

• Broad use of hypermedia
• Video
• Animation
• Graphics
• 3D
• VR
• Multisensory
• Immersive

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Historical development of the form
Vannevar Bush

• Part Two

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As We May Think

• Article published in 1945 by Vannevar Bush
• A device called a MEMEX
• Purpose
• to extend human memory by organising information
  associatively
• http//www.isg.sfu.ca/duchier/misc/vbush/

• The MEMEX would
• externalise the associative processes of the
  human mind so that access to information was
  equidistant, in effect equa-linkable, to any and
  all ideas (Levinson, 1998).

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MEMEX Human Brain

• Bush (1945) considered that the human brain

• 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.

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Association (Hume to Bush)
the human mind 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.
1945
ideas are naturally associated with one another
and form large groups, and these groups in turn
are related, to form still larger groups
1711-1776
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Hypermedia and GUI Systems

• During the 50s and 60s Douglas Engelbart develops
  
• the mouse
• electronic mail
• interactive hypermedia

Douglas Engelbart
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Ted Nelson and Docuverse

• Coined the terms hypertext hypermedia in 1965
• Nelsons (ongoing) Xanadu project

• http//xanadu.com/
• Global library
• Library containing all of humanities literature
• A Docuverse
• Nelsons hypertext is non-sequential writing

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Part Three

• The author/reader inversion
• the decentred text

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Hypertext discourse

• Much hypertext theory is utopian in its outlook?
• It places great faith in
• technological change
• Poststructuralism

• The author/reader inversion typical of this
  discourse
• Blurs the roles between author and reader
  George Landow

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Reader Control

• Landow discusses
• The reader-centred encounter with text
• Power and authority is transferred to the reader
• The reader is
• Self-directed
• Self-organised

• The sense of
• Authorship
• Authorial property
• Creativity
• Move away from restrictions of the print paradigm
• Landow believes that hypertext will fulfill
  certain claims of poststructural criticism

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Poststructuralism and the decentred text

• Meaning in semiotic structures structuralism
• Signs (a dog)
• Signifiers (d.o.g or c.h.i.e.n or h.u.n.d)
• Signified (dogness)
• Poststructuralism The notion that a centre in a
  text (a definite meaning of a text) is illusory

• No one word has a definite signified meaning
• Textual order and structure are abandoned
• The endless play of the signifier
• Signifiers lead to other signifiers

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Death of the Author

• Poststructuralism and the author
• The death of the author needs to be considered in
  relation to Poststructuralism and its
  liberationist tenor typical of the 1960s (Sims,
  1998. p.221)

• Roland Barthes (1968)
• The book
• product of language rather than the author

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Barthes

• book merely an object woven out of signs
• Texts as
• readerly
• writerly
• (similar to hot and cool?)

• Barthes work challenged the linear form of the
  book
• the infinity of intertextual relations
  See Bolter (1991)

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readerly/writerly
Unilateral relationship between text and passive
reader Often compared with traditional text
Bilateral relationship between text and active
reader Often compared with hypertext
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Landow

• Traditional text
• Centred
• Hierarchical
• Linear

• Hypertext
• Decentred
• Non-linear
• Links

necessary to give up conceptual systems founded
upon ideas of centre, margin, hierarchy and
linearity and replace them with multilinearity,
nodes, links and networks
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The decentred text

• Structural characteristic of hypertext
• User creates own centre
• Chooses own sequence, point of access

• Multimedia promises to traverse
• logocentrism (meaning centred on words and
  concepts)
• To pictographic writing (graphic signs and
  symbols)

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The decentred text in education

• Hypermedia is not viewed as a teaching tool, but
  a learning tool (Duchastel in Landow)
• Multimedia applications facilitate student
  centred learning

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• The Internet seems to discourage the endowment
  of individuals with inflated status. The example
  of scholarly research illustrates the point. The
  formation of canons and authorities is seriously
  undermined by the electronic nature of texts.
  Texts become hypertexts which are reconstructed
  in the act of reading, rendering the reader the
  author and disrupting the stability of experts or
  authorities
  (Poster in Holmes, 1997. p.225)
  http//www.humanities.uci.edu/mposter/

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The Reanimated Author

• Bolter (1990)
• sees the role of the author as vital to the new
  media form

• Old media
• metaphorical presence previously occupied in
  the book
• New Media
• operational presence of the author

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True writing

• enhanced role of the computer programmer in the
  production of new media forms Bolter 1990

• the computer can direct the course of reading
• truer form of writing
• Platos true writing
• knows when to speak and when to keep silent

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Part fourbeyond hypertext

• intelligent machines
• and semantic webs

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Does hypertext think?

• "a hypertext system more closely models the deep
  structure of human idea processing by creating a
  network of nodes (modules) and links (webs),
  allowing for three-dimensional navigation through
  a body of information"
• 
  Patricia Ann Carlson,
  "Hypertext A way of Incorporating User Feedback
  into Online Documentation". In Text, ConText, and
  HyperText Writing with and for the Computer.
  Cambridge, The MIT Press, 1988, pp. 93-106.

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Machines to talk intelligently on Web BY DAN
GILLMORMercury News Technology Columnist
http//www.siliconvalley.com/docs/opinion/dgillmor
/dg082601.htm

• Some interesting issues
• semantics can help machines understand what
  they're displaying

• For machines to work with each other, they'll
  need a common set of words -- vocabularies, and
  rules.
• Machines will need to grasp relationships the
  way humans do

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Problem Do computers think as we may think

• Bitter
• beer
• resentful

• Human language thrives on using the same term to
  mean somewhat different things
• automation does not
  Tim Berners Lee from the reading list

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As search engines may think

• Search for the word bitter

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Hypertext model using HTML
bitter
resentment
beer
beer resentment
bitter
To drink
Beer, lager, wine etc
The pub
Semantic web model using XML RDF (simplistic)
The pub that sells bitter
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Commodification of text

• Among the difficult questions in the development
  of the Semantic Web is who will own the
  vocabularies. There's frightening potential for
  lock-in -- and monopolisation -- if certain sets
  of words become popular but are held in
  proprietary ways. DAN GILLMOR

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Exploring hypertext on the web

• http//www.eastgate.com/
• http//www.hypertextkitchen.com/
• http//carbon.cudenver.edu/mryder/itc_data/hypert
  ext.html
• http//www.lcc.gatech.edu/harpold/papers/ht_bibli
  ography/theory.html
• Hypertext fiction from hell
• http//www.tardis.ed.ac.uk/krynoid/hypfic.html

• Hypertext, MOOs, and Electronic Writing
• http//mrspock.marion.ohio-state.edu/bethainst2000
  /hypertext.htm
• http//bailiwick.lib.uiowa.edu/webbuilder/hypertex
  t.html
• Design
• http//info.med.yale.edu/caim/manual/contents.html
  
• http//cal.bemidji.msus.edu/english/gaProject/webR
  esources.html