there were some points raised in the unlecture about how navigation is trivial and hypertext isn’t about navigation. it is merely present due to necessity and creating an interface which readers can navigate.

using language or quotes in a different context > taking what adrians said and putting it in a different context > we infer our own meanings and take different things > gap between delivering information and receiving information

hypertext is a form that willingly embraces the fact that writing has multiple meanings and the reader can infer what they desire, we can’t guarantee the delivery of our message and the way we intend it because there is always a level of subjectivity to the receiving and interpretation to certain information. we bring our own knowledge, mood, perception and links to everything we digest, therefore one person’s reading of a text might differ dramatically to somebody else’s. in fact, given the day and your own mood, your own reading of a text might change in a different sitting. you take different things from the text on different days, see different meanings, the interpretations are endless.

this made me digress mentally and think about grammar and text itself, and how sometimes what you want to say gets seriously misconstrued, due to forgetting a simple thing as a comma –

reading text on a computer or in a message or blog is very different from spoken or delivered text. while there are already problems with interpretation in person (there is always a void between delivery and acceptance, something we looked at in another of my subjects, communication histories and technologies) there are even more when you are reading a couple of typed keystrokes or letters on a screen. you might message somebody with one intention, but have it come across in an entirely different way because that person interpreted the lack of punctuation, number of characters or choice of words as anger or shortness. it is very difficult to gage what somebody says or means with written or typed text as there isn’t the delivery to affirm the mood or intention you have.

I suppose this is true of hypertext as well. you can never really gauge what the author specifically means, because generally there aren’t specific meanings or one set way of interpreting something.