Feral Hypertext: When Hypertext Literature Escapes Control

Feral Hypertext Hypertext Jill Walker, Dept of Humanistic Informatics, University of Bergen ACM Hypertext 2005 Salzburg, 6-9 September escapes When Literature Control

Definition of feral Feral (a): Of an animal: Wild, untamed. Of a plant, also (rarely), of ground: Uncultivated. Now often applied to animals or plants that have lapsed into a wild from a domesticated condition . (Oxford English Dictionary)

Image of Vannevar Bush Vannevar Bush

Image of Vannevar Bush
Consider a future device for individual use , which is a sort of mechanized private file and library . It needs a name, and to coin one at random, “memex” will do. A memex is a device in which an individual stores all his books, records, and communications, and which is mechanized so that it may be consulted with exceeding speed and flexibility. It is an enlarged intimate supplement to his memory.

You can and must understand computers NOW!

First hypertext systems developed on mainframes in research labs

MEMEX The dream of home hypertext

Early hypertext system bred for domestic use Example of a HyperCard hypertext Jakob Nielsen, www.useit.com/alertbox/ hypertextmodels.html

Tame hypertext literature Michael Joyce: afternoon, a story , 1987. Written in Storyspace.

Patchwork girl Shelley jackson, ”Patchwork Girl” Shelley Jackson, ”Patchwork Girl”

Shelley Jackson: Skin “ Author announces mortal work of art.”

Concerns in 1990s hypertext research and literature:
cognitive overhead
lost in hyperspace
closure

“ How can one reduce the great peril, the great danger with which fiction threatens our world?” Foucault, 1969

Foucault wrote that we keep fiction under control though authors.

“ The author allows a limitation of the cancerous and dangerous proliferation of significations within a world where one is thrifty not only with one’s resources and riches, but also with one’s discourses and their significations. The author is the principle of thrift in the proliferation of meaning. ” Foucault, 1969

Nelson: authored Hyper-media are branching or performing presentations which respond to user actions, systems of prearranged words and pictures (for example) which may be explored freely or queried in stylized ways. They will not be “programmed,” but rather designed, written, drawn and edited, by authors, artists, designers and editors.

Unruly texts The concept of intertextuality and much other late twentieth century critical theory expresses an idea of texts as unruly and fundamentally beyond discipline. Much hypertext research, on the other hand, attempts to find ways to discipline and tame our thoughts, at the same time as its admits that our mind works associatively and that there are multiple ways of viewing connections in texts.

Trying to keep hypertext disciplined and tame
typed links
Semantic web
web standards
+ + + ?

Then, the web... http://www.cybergeography.org/atlas/topology.html

battery farmed hens

Same Day Test

The Company Therapist

Links get messier... http://www.unknownhypertext.com/utah.htm

Everyone publishes

The Impermanence Agent Noah Wardrip-Fruin, Adam Chapman, Brion Moss and Duane Whitehurst, 1998-2002

The Impermanence Agent

“ folksonomies” The opposite of the semantic web?

Flickr

Discipline by categorisation
Professionals
Authors
Users
(All these assume there’s an object to classify.) Who creates the structure, the metadata?

Feral? Or a balanced ecology?

Killer hypertext?

Should we attempt to manage feral hypertext? (myxomytosis for hypertext? a rabbit-proof fence?)

No... Relax. Accept chaos. Forget closure. It belongs to the past.

[email_address] (jilltxt.net)

http://sunyit-shawj2.tiddlyspace.com	31
http://jilltxt.net	25
http://localhost	1
http://www.slideshare.net	1

Feral Hypertext: When Hypertext Literature Escapes Control

by Jill Walker Rettberg on Mar 10, 2007

Accessibility

Categories

Tags

Upload Details

Usage Rights

4 Embeds 58

Statistics

Feral Hypertext: When Hypertext Literature Escapes Control — Presentation Transcript