Unspun - Chapter 10 – Hypertext

Chapter 10 – Hypertext

Matthew G. Kirschenbaum starts this section off with a play on words, calling a hyperlink a word with a wide Web of connotations and associations”. Hypertext (or hypermedia, when images and sound are employed), as defined by the author of this section, is “electronic text organized as a nonsequential system of links and destinations.” These destinations are Web “pages” or “sites”. Users of the web use these hyperlinks to jump from page to page, “following” them to construct a “path” or “trail through the connected documents”. Because there are many various ways to construct this path, no two people read the same page in the same way and they have an active participation in the reading process. The author doesn’t stop there. He goes as far as to tout it as the “technological realization of large-scale changes in human thought and perception” and even further as to quote someone who called it “a new relationship between thinking man and the sum of knowledge.”

He continues by sensationalizing the internet as a “Xanadu” and placing hypertext at the center of it. He links it to a “universe of knowledge” in a “kinetic” Information age. Hypertext is also a technical term dealing with its nature of being involved with HTML itself, whose first two letters of the acronym are translated as HyperText. “Hypertext is both a text and a technology”, but since texts ARE technologies, the line between the two is blurred. Hypertext is also both a “genre and a medium”. This affords the question of whether hypertext is limited within the confines of the concept of HTML or if it holds its own merit outside of it “aesthetically, conceptually, or computationally” rather than “just the mechanical processes of linking”.

Hypertext is older than the World Wide Web itself. Developed by a physicist named Tim Berners-Lee in 1990, it was first thought by the inventor as a “convenient system that would allow scientists to use their computers to exchange their research with one another”. Its roots are found even earlier—even earlier than the birth of the Web-- if one explores deeper. The Association for Computing Machinery held the first of many “annual international conferences” on Hypertext three years prior in 1987. That same year, Apple introduced a device called a Hypercard, “the first widespread hypertext authoring system for personal computers”, which came standard on all Macs. The first writer to utilize hypertext was Michael Joyce, whose “hypertext novel”, afternoon: a story, was circulated on floppy disks. (Eastgate Systems later re-released it in 1990, along with many other examples of “electronic fiction”.) Hypertext has its beginnings in the mid-1980’s and the term itself dates back even earlier to 1965. Theodore Nelson lectured about “hyper-text” at Vassar College, calling it “a more flexible, more generalized, non-linear presentation of material on a particular subject”. Hypertext as a concept, not as a term or as a concrete system, was first discovered in 1945 in an article of Atlantic Monthly written by Vannevar Bush called “As We May Think”. Bush proposed “an interactive desk” called the Memex that allowed people to link together microfilm much like we hyperlink text today. He pointed out that it used the same “associative thinking” that the brain uses naturally. In literature, the concept of many different endings can be linked back to 1941 with Jorge Luis Borge’s story “The Garden of Forking Paths” and to the eighteenth-century with Lawrence Sterne’s Tristram Shandy. The author even references the Talmud when citing examples of literature that is set up like hypertext.

Hyperlinks have often been compared to footnotes. Footnotes, often overlooked as a useful tool, “stratify the linear presentation of conventional prose”. It is used to reference information without interrupting the flow of the book, allowing the reader an option of whether to read it or not. There are many kinds of hyperlinks, much more than the usual click through type. While an example of hypertext is still clicking a word to open a new window with new information, there are still older examples. Drawing on the concept that hypertext is older than the Web and that systems for it were in existence before the Web, one can see that there were many different linking examples. In fact, earlier systems utilized a “one-to-many” link system, where a single click opened up many related windows with other writings and images. Systems like Storyspace tracked the user’s response and only opened windows to the degree which the user navigated through “guard fields”. Some pages were not at all accessible unless the user clicked a certain window. Guard fields “present information in carefully controlled contexts” that is individual to each user. This “one-to-many linking and guard fields” transcend the footnote.

Because of its physical nature, a footnote is limited by the book in which it is printed. While in a book, only the information that is required to find the reference is provided, the electronic footnote would be able to show the entire article or even media about the author. This new nature of hypertext requires a new study of the writing and reading of it. Some have explained it in a visual way, calling it a “map” of sorts. Bolter, a co-developer of the aforementioned Storyspace, called hypertext “topographic”, a veiled reference to the “garden of forking paths” that is cyberspace. Hypertext also allows re-examination of the structure of texts themselves. In a physical book, there is a clear distinction between the footnote and the main text and a “hierarchy” is present. In cyberspace, there is really no distinction between the two. The different structures “also result in very different reading experiences”. Michael Joyce makes it a point to distinguish between “constructive” and “exploratory” hypertexts. “Constructive hypertexts, which are more ambitious, are those that involve the reader’s active participation. Exploratory hypertexts are simply linked assemblages of materials, presented for the reader to passively browse.” Those who study this topic find the Web more exploratory, due to the multitude of lists and basic linkage systems.

To fully define hypertext, one must define text. It is commonly defined as “simply made up of words”, more specifically “sentences and paragraphs strung together to form some larger whole, be it a novel or a textbook or a technical manual”. However, in the act of reading, it becomes so much more with the addition of images and color and other embellishments. While the act of reading a novel is simple, the reading of a newspaper is closer to the idea of hypertext. Many other reading materials mimic the newspaper in the variance of ways to read it. In fact, the novel is primarily the “exception”, not the rule. Those who study literature know that “some of our most compelling works and writers have been obsessed by the pliability of textual structures and narrative forms.” From the illustrated manuscripts of the monks to authors like Blake and Dickinson, writing became more than just a simple linear, inartistic run of words. Writers like them are “identified as ‘proto-hypertexts’, meaning that they emulate in print many of the characteristic features of electronic hypertext despite the fact that they predate digital computers by decades or even centuries.” Blake is especially referenced as “the first multimedia artist”. In fact, his illuminated printing can be considered one of “the oldest language experiments on record”. This “nonlinear narrative” is not only found in hypertext, but also in art and literature in the past. However, Blake was not multi-media, as his medium was just in book form. In this way we realize that hypertext cannot really be compared and should only be considered a “computational phenomenon.”

Hypertext, by nature, is “immaterial”. There is no concrete form to hold on to; it is merely a pattern of “light projected on a computer screen”. It is both a positive and a negative aspect, as it can be seen as a “freedom” and a deficiency. Hypertext is like the book in that its “cover, binding, or typography” is dependent on the platform it is viewed. The difference between the Mac and the PC are important, with large changes in “appearance, behavior, and performance”. Hypertext is also not “ethereal”. It is “an electromagnetically coded signal in a computer’s storage system.” The concentration on platforms and systems “historically evolved to support the conceptual ideal of ‘hypertext’.” No one person owns hypertext. The variations in the programs regarding it show how varied it all is. These variations show how there are “material differences in the technology”. While annotation used to be used frequently, with the advent of cyberspace, it has become obsolete. Annotation does not exist in this medium, and the one time it was on the Web, it failed as a concept. “The way in which we use and understand hypertext is shaped not by the inherent limitations of the medium, but rather by software engineering and product design.” It should also be thought of “as part of the broader social contexts in which information technology operates.” Changes in the portrayal of it are attributed to changes in “computing, communications, and information in society and culture”.

The Web is often seen as a “vast global hypertext”, with HTML being its language. The Web is different from other hypertext systems through the involvement of the internet. These “global network protocols”, along with browsers, allow anyone with a working internet connection to access it. Furthermore, the hypertext documents can be all over the world. HTML is the “lingua franca of the Web”. It is not a “programming language”, but a “markup language”, based off of a larger language called SGML. This would make HTML “simply plain ASCII text files that include certain specialized ‘tags’”. These tags are read by the browser and translated into what one sees onscreen. Creating these documents can either be done by hand or by using programs that need little to no knowledge of the language itself. Even though it has evolved, the basic tags still apply.

Text is not just words and sentences. It has a “pronounced visual and material dimension”, as evidenced by programs like Photoshop where one can manipulate text in many ways to turn it into graphics. Because of this new penchant for images, many have abandoned the ordinary ASCII text and used images and the like to decorate the pages and embellish the content. Even without graphics, the text can be manipulated so that there are different fonts, font colors, and sizes, among other effects brought about by certain HTML codes. The first HTML code was simple, lacking even the simplest tags. Tables were introduced and are now used in ways that are totally different than the original usage. “The advent of Dynamic HTML and Cascading Stylesheets (CSS) promises to continue increasing the range of visual control over text.” Even though it’s still “primitive”, HTML is steadily being swayed to the side of graphics. Compared to earlier hypertext documents, the range is noteworthy.

Because it is “global”, at one time, the personal homepage was at the same level as a corporate one. However, the presence of corporate America is strong through “spam”. Now, the HTML link is being used to tout wares and is being controlled through “link licenses” and the like. Web rings are an example of “how the social and economic dynamics of the Web are refashioning hypertext in more restrictive modes”. These “Web rings” are ways to link together sites with similar content. All these examples of “white-collar hypertext” point “to hypertext having transcended the narrow concerns of computer science and cognitive philosophy and emerged as a major commercial asset.” Hypertext “is part of the Web’s emerging digital economy”.

Although there is a lot of emphasis on “white collar hypertext”, the author points out that it still catches the eye of artists and writers. Other than Michael Joyce, many writers have used the internet to display their writings (the author of this blog included). “Artists and writers will continue to help expand the horizons of hypertext development, much as they were some of the most aggressive adopters of the technology in the late 1980’s and early 1990’s.” Furthermore, there are still many new developments that will catch their eye in the form of “kinetic or animated text” (Macromedia Flash) and “three-dimensional writing spaces”. The author closes with a very accurate statement. “What is avant-garde today online often becomes mainstream tomorrow. Such is the inexorable dialectic of the Web.”