Hypertext
In the reading of Nelson, Theodor Holm. Literary Machines, Nelson discusses on the subject of hypertext. How hypertext is unrestricted by sequence, how it has assisted us in creating new forms of writing which better reflects the structure of what we are writing about, how readers are given a chosen pathway through links and tabs via the internet. It creates a framework of reunification, to organize us in the right way, to clarify and simplify our computer and working lives with massive overload of information, creating new heights and growth in literature, the understanding of our civilization, art and science through the use of hypertext.
I must say humanity has come a really long way. We are constantly immersed and dependent in technological advancements that promote non stop communication and instant gratifications in the society that we are living in today. Whilst we are adopting media technologies in a way to remediate our lifestyles that we live in, one media grows out of another, creating an entangled vine. None exists or even makes sense without those that came before. With that, there is this hunger to fufill our apparent insatiable desire for immediacy. I’ve got a love hate relationship in relation to hypertext. I’ll use our academic references and the use of blackboard for example. I quote Nelson in this, he says
” Computers should bring simplification rather than complication to our lives, they should handle the minutiae the snobbery details of our day to day existence.”
Gone were the days where we’ve been spoon fed with tons and tons of PAPER notes in school, and as they years passed, institutions have caught up with the technological age, where everything else, from lessons, to power points, to our academic notes are all set to be put up on the web. Sadly, the majority of us have to keep up and be subservient to e-learning and accustomed to having our notes read through a screen. Indeed it provides easier access to information, but I still think jotting down notes with a pen and paper helps us to understand and take in information better. I prefer my notes printed out and have them highlighted instead! Who’s with me!
Talk about emails. Sending emails has eliminated a lot of face-to-face social communication. While I feel that there is absolutely nothing wrong in this when one is pressed for time or when there are problems of distance but nowadays we have got so used to e-mail that it has made us lazy. Positive social interaction is very often being superseded by communication through e-mail when there is no need for this. Quite often, when we ask somebody to meet about something, we get the standard reply: “Send me an email about it”.
The point I am trying to make is that we are becoming technological robots, eliminating the traditional forms of human communication and substituting them by mechanical ones instead.
We become complicit in our own plot, in this case, the use of computers to assimilate information, the invention of the google glass, sending emails, the invention of technologies like the ipad, they gives us an 360 authentic emotional experience. Is the obsession of immediacy in today’s world, a result of hiding from a superficiality or a void, in our “real” lives? Do they help to simplify or complicate our lives instead? We have to ask ourselves important questions: “Have we become slaves of modern technology?”; “Are we slowly abandoning a lot of what makes us human?”; “Have we come to the point where we prefer impersonal forms of communication to personal ones?”; “Are we changing human life into a robotic one?” New technology are presented as pruding to old ones, but it’s just something we can’t take for granted.