Reading 05.1

This week’s readings is a series of extracts from Landow’s book Hypertext 3.0: Critical Theory and New Media in an Era of Globalization. 

Landow explains that hypertextuality occurs within blogs in two main ways: firstly by “[linking] chronologically distant individual entries to each other” to create context, and secondly by the comment function.

My key takeaways from the Landow reading is all about the agency of ‘readers’ in hypertext systems. They are no longer just passive consumers, but now serve dual purpose as both readers and authors themselves.

Landow also talks about the difference between blogs and personal diaries – a comparison which I find irrelevant. As Adrian has reminded us in the lectures, all our notions of the public and private are currently being rewritten by us, and the platforms we are using. I think blogs are best used when appropriated by the user in exactly the way they want. For example, a beauty blogger who posts product reviews and so on is using the blog as a platform which expresses their intentions best. Similarly, an academic with a blog can use it to collate their research and to postulate further discussions with their peers. One must (obviously) be wary of privacy online, and abandon our assumptions that anything online isn’t 100% public. But if a user wanted to utilise their blog in exactly the same way as they would use a personal diary, good on them in my opinion! Use away. You do you, and I’ll do me.

I liked the section of Landow’s chapter which talked over the role of beginnings and endings in hypertext systems. One side of the argument says that we can assume hypertext isn’t completely absent of linearity and sequence, and instead “possesses multiple sequences” (p.110). Opponents say that every hypertext system has to have a fixed entry point which you arrive at before the system of links begin. 

Landow draws attention to an interesting point which Ong makes in Orality and Literacy, that books, unlike their authors, cannot really be challenged:

The author might be challenged if only he or she could be reached…There is no way to refute a text. After absolutely total and devastating refutation, it says exactly the same thing as before… A text stating that the whole world knows is false will state falsehood forever, so long as the text exists.” (p.79)

However, I think this is quite different in online networks. Websites and blogs are so easily edited and republished, seemingly erasing any past information which has been put out there. Yes, the previous records are still stored somewhere in cyberspace, but I certainly don’t know where! The transient nature of online is something I certainly take for granted. I think it’s been built into my generation of ‘digital natives’ to expect this kind of change so frequently, that acceptance and adjustment is the only way to survive. Facebook is a perfect example of a platform which constantly reinvents itself (aesthetically), which proves my above point.

What does this mean for hypertext? Will linkages online get lost? Will we potentially keep running into ‘Page Not Found’ error messages as the online web continues to shape shift and change? What will happen to whole systems when the nodes that keep the links alive also disappear?