Calculator of the Humanist – Bolter Chap 3
Back when I was taking my Fine Arts degree, one of the faculty, Dr. Robert J. (Bob) Belton published a book that came with a CD ROM (Sights of resistance: Approaches to Canadian visual culture, 2001). This interactive project allowed readers to conveniently access definitions of any words or phrases printed in bold type in the glossary on the accompanying CDROM. A website link was also provided. This was in a time when parts of society were realizing how many trees were being destroyed for the printing industry. New media was seen as a viable option. I now see Belton’s use of bold typeface as a forerunner of the hypertext.
Bolter’s description of the hypertext as “an electronic equivalent of the footnote” (Bolter 2001, p 27) is apropos. The reader is given a convenient choice to explore further or continue on with the original writing. “Because every path may define an equally convincing and appropriate reading, the hypertext’s multiplicity (or overdetermination) suggests a changed relationship between the reader and the text” (Bolter 2001, p 35). I sometimes find at times, though, it can be overused and become distracting for me, the reader. On page 43 (2001) Bolter states “[if] authors prescribe links, they deny the reader the choice of making her own associations.” I prefer to come to my own understanding before being directed on a particular path. Many times hypertext links have taken my off on explorations of tangents. I find I need to go back and reread the original text document to ‘get back in touch’ with the writer and concentrate on his message.
I can’t help but think when reading “that hypertext reflects the nature of the human mind itself – that because we think associatively, not linearly, hypertext allows us to write as we think” (bolter 2001, p42) of words like flighty and scatterbrained. Hypertext tends to have a start stop nature as it jumps across the World Wide Web. But this impression, I’m sure, is due to the nature and conditioning of my own early education experience.
As much as I appreciate the idea of hypertext, I wonder if writers will become too dependent on them. Will we still have writers who have honed the skills of the art of writing; the art of word use/choice for meaning and imagery? Will we, the readers, be able to escape into their mysticism? How important /memorable is the content /meaning within a writer’s work? Does this take a back step to the process that includes hypertext?
An image comes to me when I read on page 45 (Bolter 2001) “the World Wide Web offers us the experience of moving through a visual and conceptual space different from the space of the book. In the future will we see life size convex (or is it concave?) screens in the classroom whereby students are practically surrounded by ‘the book (the story)? Would they be able to touch the screen to move from illustration as big as life to external links?
Belton, R. J. (2001). Sights of resistance: Approaches to Canadian visual
culture. Calgary: University of Calgary Press.
Bolter, J. D. (2001) Writing space: Computers, hypertext, and the
remediation of print. Mahwah: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
words: 500 🙂