Jessica B.

Steele Master of Arts Candidate Communication, Culture & Technology '12 Georgetown University

As Presented by George P. Landow in

Hypertext 2.0: The Convergence of Contemporary Critical Theory and Technology (Parallax: Re-visions of Culture and Society)

 1970: Roland Barthes describes an ideal text

it has no beginning :we gain access to it by

several entrances, none of which can be authoritatively declared to be the main one it is reversible the codes it mobilizes extend as far as the eye can reach the systems of meaning can take over this absolutely plural text, but their number is never closed, based as it is on the infinity of language"

S/Z. Paris: ditions du Seuil, 1970. S/Z. Translated by Richard Miller. New York: Hill and Wang, 1974.

 1945: Vannevar Bush introduces the memex

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c539cK58ees&feature=related

 1976: Michel Foucault, in The Archeology of Knowledge (23) The "frontiers of a book are never clear-cut," because "it is caught up in a system of references to other books, other texts, other sentences: it is a node within a network . . . [a] network of references" (Landow 3-4)

Foucault, Michel. The Archeology of Knowledge and the Discourse on Language. Translated by A. M. Sheridan Smith. New York: Harper & Row, 1976.

 1960s: Theodor H. Nelson coins

term Hypertext "By 'hypertext,' I mean non-

sequential writing -- text that branches and allows choices to the reader, best read at an interactive screen. As popularly conceived, this is a series of text chunks connected by links which offer the reader different pathways
Nelson, Theodor H. Literary Machines. Swarthmore, Pa.: Selfpublished, 1981.

 1992: Professor George P. Landow, in Hypertext 2.p Electronic links connect lexias "external" to a work -- say, commentary on it by another author or parallel or contrasting texts -- as well as within it and thereby create text that is experienced as nonlinear, or, more properly, as multilinear or multisequential. Although conventional reading habits apply within each lexia, once one leaves the shadowy bounds of any text unit, new rules and new experience apply (3-4).

Landow, George P. Hypertext 2.0: The Convergence of Contemporary Critical Theory and Technology (Parallax: Re-visions of Culture and Society). 2nd. Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997. Print.

Hypertext versus Hypermedia, according to Landow

Hypermedia simply extends the notion of the text in

hypertext by including visual information, sound, animation, and other forms of data. Since hypertext, which links one passage of verbal discourse to images, maps, diagrams, and sound as easily as to another verbal passage, expands the notion of text beyond the solely verbal, I do not distinguish between hypertext and hypermedia (3-4)
Landow, George P. Hypertext 2.0: The Convergence of Contemporary Critical Theory and Technology (Parallax: Re-visions of Culture and Society). 2nd. Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997. Print.

 1945: Vannevar Bush introduces the memex

1960s: Theodor H. Nelson coins term hypertext

1971: Idea of Project Gutenbeg 1974: Dungeons & Dragons a proto-hypertext 1980s: Choose You Own Adventure a prot0-hypertext Mid-1980s: Interactive computer games 1982: Guide first hypertext system for personal computers

 1987: First hypertext novel by Michael Joyce 1990: World Wide Web 1991: Brown Universitys hypertext fiction program founded

1997: Norton Anthology of Postmodern American Fiction

published with two hypertext stories

2001: Wikipedia Present: Hypertext 2.0

 Maryanne Wolf describes a Reading Revolution

Deep analysis leads to intelligence as a species

In music, in poetry, and in life, the rest, the pause, the

slow movements are essential to comprehending the whole (Proust and the Squid, 213).

 Stoicheff & Tyaloys The Future of the Page

Book acts as a a vertical and hierarchical display of

information (5-7) Hypertext alters hierarchical notions of traditional design (13-14)

 John M. Slatins Reading

Hypertext: Order and Coherence in a New Medium Interactive reading co-authorship

 Where as in a conventional text the only thing you

want the reader to do is to go on to the next sentence, in the author/creator faces a number of possible next sentences or nodes for the reader to go on to resulting in decisions about what ought to happen next (Slatin, 879).

 By creating a new method of organization and

progression, hypertext grants both readers and authors an unprecedented degree of freedom to arrange materials as they deem best. As this permits interaction between readers and authors to an unprecedented degree, hypertext authors are required, to find new methods of indicating relationships, representing and constructing knowledge, and achieving coherence (Slatin, 882).