This week in Networked Media I started here: www.facebook.com/
and, I ended up here: https://www.youtube.com/user/HubbleESA/featured?nohtml5=False
But why did I even bother to venture outside of the realm of Facebook?
Well, this week’s reading discusses the idea of Hypertext being an ‘open-bordered text… that cannot shut out other texts” (Landow, pg. 114) and the idea that the “supposed end and beginning of a work” does not exist, and that there are many beginnings and endings, if any.
We could say that the internet is almost a ‘choose your own adventure’ space where all you need is a brain and an internet browser.
As Hannah went around the class, many of my classmates mentioned the different places they found themselves in, I think reinforcing the idea that there is no set path on the internet. Even if we all start in the same place i.e. Facebook, we’re all bound to end up somewhere different.
But in regards to Facebook and even Twitter, I think we must also highlight the fact that they are very open in regards to their hypertext. You can really end up anywhere when using these sites, as these social mediums rely on outside ideas and spaces to run (so if we refer to my comment above about why I bothered to venture outside Facebook, this is due to the fact that I was prompted by a sponsored hyperlink on the site to take a look at Swiburne’s Astronomy Program (I was then interested in what they had to say and ended up at Hubble NASA/ESA)). A site like YouTube on the other hand has mainly videos, that link to other videos, to other videos and to other videos within the same website. Uploaders have the ability to link to external sites, but this isn’t always the case. However, often these links are hyperlinks to their own website where they sell merchandise, rather than an external article or anything alike.
We are becoming more and more connected with the world around us thanks to these hypertexts. I cannot wait to see what I will explore next!
Bibliography:
Landow, G 2006, Hypertext 3.0, Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore. 2006. Print. 107-124
