Birkerts strikes again with his comments which to me, makes no sense. He is always making comments about how technology is a bad thing. But when I am reading his book, I can’t agree with anything he says. He is saying that the novelity of a book is what creates a meaning behind what you read. That is what I get from his connection to hypertext.

He claims that he feels detached from what he is reading because it is a hypertext. But no matter how I look at it I see it as the same thing. A text on a computer is the same thing if it was on page 45 of a book or novel. Reading is reading to me and Sven Birkerts just makes it sound like no matter what a text in a book is better. Even if it is the same text. Saying that it doesn’t have the same meaning because it isn’t in a book is ridiculous.

On page 154,  “Words read from a screen or written onto a screen- words which appear and disappear, even if theycan be retrieved and fixed into place with a keystroke-have a different status and affect us differently from words held immobile on the accessible space of a page.” I disagree with this very much because it is an opinion through in and through out. Birkerts makes up the most ridiculous comments about reading and technology that I can barely follow him sometimes.

So my overall feelings toward Birkerts with regards to hypertext is that I feel like he is just talking to talk. His ideas are total opposite of mine and they just are sounding ridiculous.

There is a line from the American writer Ralph Waldo Emerson, writing in the 19th century (in his essay “Nominalist and Realist”), long before digital hypertext, that makes me think of some of the issues raised and provoked by Shelley Jackson. Here is Emerson:

“No sentence will hold the whole truth, and the only way in which we can be just, is by giving ourselves the lie; Speech is better than silence; silence is better than speech;–All things are in contact; every atom has a sphere of repulsion;–Things are, and are not, at the same time;–and the like”

This notion of truthful fragmentation is where I start to make some sense of Patchwork Girl: Jackson’s interest in hypertext writing as a resistance not just to traditional views of narrative or novel, but to conventional definitions of writing as such. In “Stitch Bitch” Jackson connects her understanding of the feminine, “banished body” at work in hypertext and at play in her novel with “what we learned to call bad writing.” So hypertext is a kind of writing that traditional (masucline) literature has edited out: a body and its loose aggregations.

This suggests to me that we are supposed to spend our time looking at this body (and multiplicitous embodiment) of writing; and are greatly helped in resisting the tendency to look through it, which is to say, look past it. She goes on to use the word ‘composite’; think how this resides in ‘composition.’ Jackson also links this in to the machinery of argument: where traditionally readers are not to be given a choice.

In a text like this, gaps are problematic. The mind becomes self-conscious, falters, forgets its way, might choose another way, might opt out of this text into another, might “lose the thread of the argument,” might be unconvinced. Transitional phrases smooth over gaps, even huge logical gaps, suppress contradiction, whisk you past options. I noticed in school that I could argue anything. I might find myself delivering conclusions I disagreed with because I had built such an irresistable machine for persuasion. The trick was to allow the reader only one way to read it, and to make the going smooth. To seal the machine, keep out grit. Such a machine can only do two things: convince or break down. Thought is made of leaps, but rhetoric conducts you across the gaps by a cute cobbled path, full of grey phrases like “therefore,” “extrapolating from,” “as we have seen,” giving you something to look at so you don’t look at the nothing on the side of the path. Hypertext leaves you naked with yourself in every leap, it shows you the gamble thought is, and it invites criticism, refusal even. Books are designed to keep you reading the next thing until the end, but hypertext invites choice. Writing hypertext, you’ve got to accept the possibility your reader will just stop reading. Why not? The choice to go do something else might be the best outcome of a text. Who wants a numb reader/reader-by-numbers anyway? Go write your own text. Go paint a mural. You must change your life. I want piratical readers, plagiarists and opportunists, who take what they want from my ideas and knot it into their own arguments. Or even their own novels. From which, possibly, I’ll steal it back.

Some unconventional stuff for a writer to write, sure. But at the same time, there is in this, strange as it sounds, the hear of what we do in the conversation of academic writing.

Hayles, in her analysis of the novel and in her contextualizing of its interest in 18th century discussions of authorship and copyright, provides a rationale for understanding the body of writing and the body of bodies. She connects Jackson’s interest in the (multiple) bodies of her text (author, character, novel, computer) to her argument for media specific analysis: it matters, Hayles asserts, which textual bodies we are dealing with when we write and read. Jackson goes even further: the bodies we write and read with matter as well.

I am curious, reader. Do you also view bad writing as bodily–as those elements of your writing that are in some way too physical, in need of surgery? Do you think, as Jackson seems to think, that we read with a body I wonder, certainly, where this finds us: we, in a composition and literature course, working on our writing and reading. And I wonder, I speculate, that engaging Jackson’s Patchwork Girl, with better attention to this sense, these senses, of an embodiment of writing and reading, will allow us to make more sense of the text. I would suggest that this way of making sense is one version of what Hayles means by “cyborg reading practices.” This is not about becoming plugged in, as in the cyborg of film; it is to recognize that we already are. In other words, I think much of what we experience today with ‘web 2.0′ (as it has been called), the read-write capability of many digital applications and sites, can be likened to the characteristics of bad writing as traditionally viewed.

And, Birkerts, in his use of ‘process’ as a pejorative, as something that good writing should not reveal, would agree. See my next posting: process and privacy.

So, if you think Patchwork Girl is in some form bad writing and are having difficulties with it, you might be on to something.

By the way, for those interested, here is an electronic copy of Baum’s Patchwork Girl of Oz, one of the many sources/intertexts/bodies that are taken up in Jackson’s composite. [thanks to Joannafor the reference] There is an original copy in the Sophie Kerr room, if you want to browse through it.

          In Chapter 11 of “The Gutenberg Elegies,” Birkerts wastes no time in getting to his point.  In fact, he shortens his (expected) beginning anecdote down to a measly two paragraphs.   And at the end of them, the kicker: “I felt none of the tug I had felt with Cortázar’s novel, none of the subtle suction exerted by masterly prose” (151). This quote is in response to his first experience dealing with a hypertext – a hypertext in which “the extent of the text was concealed (and in that sense lifelike)” (151).  Are novels, then, not lifelike?  Are they merely words printed on pages?  Does Birkerts prefer not to have his novels seem lifelike?  To not want to be affected by a book strips the book of its purpose; books provide us with images and stories that we can engage in, hypertext or not.  And while he says that he “wait[ed] patiently for the empowering rush that ought to come when worlds upon other worlds and old limits collide,” his previous words almost contradict such a statement (151).  How can the “empowering rush” felt from reading a novel not be considered lifelike?

          Birkerts moves on to say that hypertext does not “occupy a position in space” and only has “potential” (155).  However, text is still text, off screen or on screen.  He believes that text on a computer “affect[s] the way the words are registered when present” (155).  So is that to say that if a novel in its entirety was put online to be read, we would experience the novel differently than if we read from its actual, physical binding?  I don’t think so.  If the words aren’t changed, how would the experience of what you’re reading change?  To him, the origin of the words ties into the experience: “The words on the page, though they issue from the invisible force field of another’s mind, rive from some collective elsewhere that seems more profound, deeper than a mere writer’s subjectivity” (156).  Still, someone somewhere is writing and publishing the text online; it’s not coming from a “collective elsewhere.” 

          Birkerts cannot emotionally connect with online text.  The experience of reading from a computer makes him feel detached from the journey a novel produces and the actual meaning a novel possesses.  But text online does not give new meanings to words; it’s not like you’re forced to enter a technological world in which words are foreign.  I think, if anything, the fact that he knows the hypertext is essentially text intermingling with technology disengages him.

Via Google Books by way of Google Scholar (what a great combo): Computer-supported cooperative work: a book of readings.

À muito que se procurava maneiras de categorizar e compilar informação. As notas com referências a outros trabalhos, de lado ou no rodapé, eram o que de mais parecido existia com o hipertexto antes do aparecimento do computador. As enciclopédias também desenvolveram um antecessor do hipertexto ao colocarem em letras maiúsculas todas as palavras que tivessem uma entrada própria dentro da enciclopédia.

No início do século XX várias personalidades mostraram preocupação quanto ao facto de a humanidade se estar a afogar em informação. Era necessária uma nova forma de organizar e interrelacionar os conhecimentos. O primeiro a introduzir um conceito parecido com hipertexto foi Vannevar Bush que em 1945 conceptualizou uma secretária robótica (o Memex) que continha a informação armazenada em micro-filmes e em que o utilizador seleccionava a informação a partir de links. Foi com base nesta invenção que, mais tarde, Ted Nelson e Douglas Engelbart desenvolveram o conceito de hipertexto actual.

No dia 9 de Dezembro de 1968 Engelbart apresentou numa conferência o hipertexto juntamente com a vídeo-conferência, a teleconferência, o e-mail e o primeiro rato desenvolvidos por ele e pela sua equipa no Stanford Research Institute.

No final dos anos 80’ Berners-Lee da Organização Europeia de Investigação Nuclear inventou a World Wide Web como modo de partilha automática de informação entre cientistas de universidades e institutos diferentes. O hipertexto desenhado por Engelbart foi a forma usada para relacionar as temáticas, e hoje é uma das imagens de marca da Internet bem como uma forma eficaz de cruzar conhecimentos e ajudar a investigação.

O projecto Xanadu de Ted Nelson existe desde 1960, e ainda não cumpre os ambiciosos objectivos que Nelson tem para ele. A ideia base do projecto é criar uma base de dados com tudo o que alguma fez foi escrito (livros, ensaios, revistas, cartas, etc.), e com isso criar um verdadeiro hipertexto universal. Nelson acredita que “tudo está profundamente interligado” e que tem que estar online dessa mesma maneira.

Obviamente que este projecto, para ser realizado, não poderá armazenar a literatura mundial num servidor. O sistema usaria um método de partilha de informação. Os textos depositados no Xanadu nunca sairiam dos computadores pessoais, o programa está desenhado para abrir os textos num computador a partir de outro. Quando o utilizador activa um link, o texto que lhe aparece não está armazenado no Xanadu, mas sim no computador de quem o inseriu no sistema. O Xanadu apenas faz a ligação.

Outro problema do sistema seriam os direitos de autor, mas Ted Nelson avança com uma possível solução:”In order to make this possible, the system must guarantee that the owner of any information will be paid their chosen royalties on any portions of their documents, no matter how small, whenever and wherever they are used.”

 “We need a way for people to store information not as individual “files” but as a connected literature” é este o principal objectivo do projecto. Os documentos devem permanecer acessíveis ad eterna sem o perigo de se perderem, serem modificados, censurados ou removidos, a não ser pelo autor. Seria uma ferramenta rápida de consulta, investigação e estudo e Ted Nelson faz questão de frizar que seria acessivel a todos.

Mangen, Anne  Journal of Research in Reading, Nov2008, Vol. 31 Issue 4, p404-419

Mark Bauerlein blog post and discussion of that post (and Mangen’s article) here: http://chronicle.com/blogPost/Screen-ReadingPrint/8551/

            Hypertext, by definition, is “a method of storing data through a computer program that allows a user to create and link fields of information at will and to retrieve the data nonsequentially.”  Patchwork Girl is an early form of hypertext, its release being in 1995.  Essentially, it is hypertext at its rawest form.  Simple windows serve as the frames of the program and story; there is nothing exceedingly fancy about it.  The most intricate thing of Patchwork Girl is the embedded, hidden links that are necessary to the user’s progression of the overall story.  These links are the only challenges presented, because without them all, every user experiences a slightly different story, forced to piece the puzzle together on their own.

            In my own short time spent with Patchwork Girl, I feel as if I’ve only gotten a small sample of two sections: ‘Graveyard’ and ‘Journal’, two separate paths you’re able to take at the opening Title Page.  I’ve gotten fully through five links in the ‘Graveyard’ section and thirty-three in the ‘Journal’ section.  Are these links embedded in other main sections?  I wouldn’t be surprised if they are.  I also wouldn’t be surprised to know if I missed any links.  Despite intently reading each new window, the real focus of working with Patchwork Girl lies more in attempting to establish some sort of order with the links, some way to make sense of the story being told (and shown).  When I was working my way through the program, I started randomly clicking on every possible space in each window in hope of finding a new link.  That was when I discovered that even sub-sections had a level of their own sub-sections.  The sub-sub-sections revealed more specific details of the story.

            Another interesting aspect of Patchwork Girl is the way the story appears to progress backwards.  In my experience, I started with the death of the monster and worked my way to its resurrection (which happened to just be a figurative way of showing the start of the story).  By working backwards, the story reveals itself in a way that entices me to continue my search for the missing pieces.  After reading about the death of the monster, I learn about its relationship with its creator, Mary Shelley; once Shelley enters the picture, I learn about her relationship with her creation.  When both sides are told, I then read about their experiences as one entity: creator and creation become entwined, causing the story to narrow its broadness.  But while the text itself narrows its focus, the program does not.  Multiple windows and links still guide me.  This is when it’s most apparent that the two different mediums (text and media) are literally combined as a program yet are able to stand alone or co-exist within that program.  Katherine Hayles puts it best in her essay, “Flickering Connectivities in Shelley Jackson’s Patchwork Girl: The Importance of Media-Specific Analysis,” when she says “The effect of Patchwork Girl’s creative juxtapositions is to shake us awake from the dream that electronic fiction is simply “text” that we read on screen instead of on paper. If Patchwork Girl insists through its appropriations that the past can never be left behind, it also shows through its transformations that new media create a new kind of literature and a new sense of cyborg subjectivity.”

Copyright © LJH

What the hell? We have it all wrong again.

Listen up everybody. This isn’t about Facebook.

It’s like this. Consider the crime of stealing a credit card number in two scenarios, one offline and one online:

^*Fraudulent vendor who sells legitimate hot dogs.  Not to be confused with legitimate vendor who sells fraudulent hot dogs.  That’s a whole different crime.

In the sequence of events, the only place to really solve this problem is between smelling the bait and performing the innocent act. Right? Right?

So allow me to announce my shiny new patent-pending Anti-Fraudulent Hot Dog Vendor Detector Method and Apparatus.  The features of which I describe in my next entry.

Where the hell is Ron Popeil when you need him?

Hypermedia literature is a hot topic of interest for literary and internet theorists alike, and the “online poem” is no exception. Poetry has struggled with finding an definitive identity for centuries, from Sir Philip Sidney’s An Apology for Poetry in the late 16th Century to Theodor Adorno’s On Lyric Poetry and Society in the 20th Century. I’m not exactly concerned with what makes a poem a poem. My focus for this rhetorical analysis has become more concentrated on what makes online poetry different from the printed versions we’ve been exposed to since grade school. There are obviously going to be many gains and losses resulted from this transition.

For instance, the particular online object I chose to analyze is Stephanie Strickland’s The Ballad of Sand and Harry Soot (http://www.wordcircuits.com/gallery/sandsoot/). The original poem was published traditionally (http://bostonreview.net/BR24.5/strickland.html) and later adapted into a hyper textual arrangement of HTML pages, encryption, and formatted images. There is, surprisingly, much more threaded analysis on this poem than I expected to be on the web considering I was randomly introduced to this poem by another professor at the University of Georgia. Unlike most of the discussions you will come across after typing the poem’s name into a search engine, my thoughts on the topic will not center around the actual thematic possibilities of the the work as a piece of a literature. There are three areas I would like to explore in my next three blogs on this subject. The first will be about the poetic agent—how does the creation process shift for a writer wishing to implement their poem(s)  into the web? Is it better or worse than being published on paper? The second blog will be about me, you, us—the reader of the poem. What aspects of this new form of literary media changes the audience that beholds it? Is it a good change or bad change? And the third and final blog of the series will explore the images in the Ballad and also how the Coda portion of the linkages helps and hinders the audience.

When Lily Hoang told me that she was working on a choose your own adventure novel, I immediately thought of the Choose Your Own Adventure series of children’s books originally published by Bantam Books from 1979-1998. I remember coming home from the library when I was a kid with piles of those books in my arms. When I had exhausted those books I went ahead and read a similar series called Which Way? books, or something.

And then I thought about the translation of this idea into the digital realm, about hypertext narratives.

Today, I read Vincent King’s afterword to Gert Jonke’s The System of Vienna (an excellent book, by the way, forthcoming from Dalkey Archive) and he mentioned Geoff Ryman’s hypertext novel 253: a novel for the Internet about London Underground in seven cars and a crash.

So what hypertexts or choose your own adventure stories do you recommend?

Copyright © 2009 LJH

It’s easy to jump to conclusions.  I illustrated this to my youngest, who are twins, when they were five.

[Sidebar:  I wanted to do this when they were four.  But that being the year they learned that racehorses used to end their careers in glue bottles, I figured it was in everybody's best interest to hold off a year.]

Me (high energy): Hey kids – what’s corn oil made of?
Them (suddenly interested): Corn!
Me: Good!  And what’s peanut oil made of?
Them: Peanuts!
Me: Right!  And what’s baby oil made of?
Them: Babies…hey Mom, Dad is teasing us again!

But they got the point.  Knowing that good dadhood equals good managerhood, I figured I’d try my luck at work the next day.

Me (high energy): Hey staff – what’s operating system security made of?
Them (suddenly interested): Operating systems!
Me: Good!  And what’s network security made of?
Them: Networks!
Me: Right!  And what’s Web security made of?
Them: Web…hey CEO, Boss is teasing us again!

Silly me.  I mean, we all know that Web security is made up of SQL injections and cross-site scripting and hostile javascript and stuff like that.  Not of Web.  Right?  Right?

Not so fast.  OWASP rightly calls out those problems as Web Application Security issues.  Not Web Platform Security issues.  Web Platform Security issues, if we admitted they existed, would pertain to…well…the Web platform.  The cornerstone of which is hypertext.  The security of which is non-existent.

See where I’m going with this?   Here:  Hypertext Sand cannot support the weight of Trillion-Pound Savings & Mall.

Which leaves us with three options:

1. Shore up the sand, or
2. Try a different building, or
3. Abandon the marketplace altogether

Number three is a dumb idea of course; that would be throwing the shoping cart out with the bankwater.  Number two is nearly as dumb; non-Internet consumer services like AOL and MSN had to jump on the Internet bandwagon in the mid 90’s just to survive, and those that didn’t will be unearthed in sixty million years as fossil fuel.

That leaves number one: shoring up the sand.   Security-enhanced hypertext: the wave of the Web future.

In Chapter 1 of Gaming: “Gamic Action, Four Moments,” Alexander Galloway explores video games as a mass medium. He does this without delving specifically into the more creative comports of gaming or the social and specific significance of the playing of video games, but focusing on the semantic makeup of the video game design as a whole and play as medium-specific actions.

First, he explores the differences between video games and previous media. “If photographs are images, and films are moving images, then video games are actions” (2). This is not the same as “active audience” media, where an audience can apply their own subjectivities to media, such as an interpretation of a film. While films and images are passive in our intake of them, in that we cannot affect them directly in how they affect us, video games are an “action-based medium” which requires our input to engage us (3). This concept can be compared to children’s toys.

First, there is the image, the photograph—or in children’s toys, the action figure. Think specifically of the action figure that you are not supposed to play with, or one of the shoddier type you get in Happy Meals: the one that doesn’t have moveable bits, where you must invest your own interpretations into the toy. This could range from anything to fighting aliens to having a tea party, but the main point is that while the toy might look like Iron Man or Barbie, it doesn’t have to be played with in a certain way.

Next, there is the moving image, the film—or the active toy, like the Furby. Furbies were these toys from the early 2000s. If you don’t remember, here’s a commercial:

However, once bought, one quickly realized that while when you turned them on, they would warble and giggle and move their eyes in a semi-terrifying way, there wasn’t much else left after that. Certainly, you could hug them (they were furry), but the mechanics inside got in the way. Otherwise, there wasn’t much you could do but watch them, or have them wake you up in the middle of the night when they suddenly decided to talk (as it was extremely difficult to fully turn them off.)

Finally, there is the video game, the action—one could see this sentiment echoed in a coloring book, or a board game, or legos. You can’t just look at these toys, because there is no fun at looking at a coloring book. These toys are essentially useless unless you act upon them, and it is that action that is its purpose.

Then, Galloway goes into the “Four moments” of gaming action. First, he writes about the diegesis of video games:  “[It] is the game’s total world of narrative action. As with cinema, video game diegesis includes both onscreen and offscreen elements. It includes characters and events that are shown, but also those that are merely made reference to or are presumed to exist within the game situation” (7).

Then, throughout the chapter, he breaks down the four moments, actions, suggestions of the video game thus:

First, there is the diegetic machine act, which he describes as an informational and atmospheric process, specifically the “ambience act” (10). This is when the player has temporarily ceased playing, but it is the “inverse of pressing pause” because while the game is going unplayed, certain acts are still going on. The trees might rustle, a bird might caw, and your character is still there, usually bobbing up and down in an uncomfortable fashion. The game is still within the created universe, allowing it to live and breath mechanically while it waits for you to pick it up again. This can be seen in more cinematic video games, such as Myst, or Ico, in which the “experience of ambience, of nonplay,” is more desirable to the actual game (18). However, Galloway feels that “formally speaking, cinematic interludes are a type of grotesque fetishization of the game itself as machine” (11).

In the following video, game review Ben “Yahtzee” Croshaw deliberates on why cinematic gameplay does not work.

(Disclaimer: Ben uses some NSFW language, but he has several good points nonetheless.)

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/zero-punctuation/981-Wet

Second, Galloway describes the nondiegetic operator act as a “subjective algorithm,” in which the action is material and subjective (37). This is about pausing the game, or gathering cheats to flout the game’s original intentions to win. This is applicable to gameplay heavy games, where one seeks to buck the system and skip ahead, or even just freeze the game because there is little time for rest in the actual game.

Then there is the diegetic operator act, which is simply the gameplay: shooting, running, climbing trees, etc. He calls it “ritualistic dromenon” and refers to Huizinga’s ideas of gameplay as “an activity that is (1) free, (2) separate, (3) uncertain, (4) unproductive, (5) unregulated, and (6) fictive” (20). Huizinga also calls out Jodi (remember them?) as “spoilsports” because “their games intentionally deviate from the enchanting order created by the game” (28). Huizinga, Galloway explains, see video games as perfect order in an imperfect world.

Finally, there is the nondiegetic machine act, which are simple actions that are coded within the machine: the disabling or enabling of gameplay (which could be simple shutting off the game via a button or cutting off the play via death) which is based in the “play of structure” (37). A game in connection to this would be DDR, or Guitar Hero. Here I’d like to return to Yahtzee when he reviews the new Guitar Hero 5 and Beatles Rock Band (same disclaimer applies):

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/zero-punctuation/941-Beatles-Rock-Band-and-Guitar-Hero-5

You’ll notice that at the end Yahtzee mentions that he realized that after a while it wasn’t about the music anymore, it was about how quickly he could press a bunch of buttons.

One last point: when I was reading about video gaming, I wanted to see if it was cybertext or hypertext. It seems to me that video games are cybertext in general, in that they are supposed to be linear (in terms of levels and advancement) and are also set up to be orderly. However, within the game’s frame, one could see it as hypertext. In the diegesis of video games, one does not need to follow the set rules. For example, when my friend would play Fable 2, he would often ignore the game’s hero aspects (save this village, avenge your sister, etc.) and do things like kick people to see if they noticed, or marry one woman per town, and have children with each of them, and see if he could fight the children with his sword (he couldn’t).

Any new technology is usually met with skepticism. To become fully appreciated, it must be accessible, functional, and reliable. Once it has demonstrated these qualities, people generally begin to adapt the once ostracized technology to their lives (Baron, From Pencils to Pixels). This was the same case for the internet.

            Even in 1998, when the internet was buzzing with hypertext, information, and newer technology than it had ever had, my parents refused to get one. My mom remembers that suddenly all her friends had one, and it seemed like we were the only ones who didn’t. She recalls that dial up was extremely slow and expensive, and so she held out as long as she possibly could. In sixth grade, I typed all my projects and reports on our rustic typewriter. We finally got one when I was in middle school.

             What is more, I do not believe the internet’s hypertext created a phenomenon in which people can suddenly link information and do multiple things at once. Many people play different roles in the same place at the same time. Take, for example, moms. My mother, in the same day, can be a: doctor, cleaner, cook, psychologist, driver, launderer, repairman, plumber, and mentor. She can do most of these things at the same time. She can’t do everything altogether, but one really can’t have ten tabs open, access all of them, and still keep his/her sanity.

            The internet, though, and all of its complexities, will be around until the end of time. The computer is not just a calculating machine; it has truly transformed society with its upgraded programming and modernity. I’ll bet ABC wishes they had seen this coming.

*Spiro, R.J., & Jehng, J.C. (1990). Cognitive flexibility and hypertext: Theory and technology for the nonlinear and multidimensional traversal of complex subject matter. In D. Nix & R. Spiro (Eds.), Cognition, education and multimedia: Exploring ideas in high technology. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.

The authors discuss the necessary application of cognitive flexibility theory when promoting knowledge acquisition and application in ill-structured domains. The complexity of such domain are best addressed through nonlinear learning aids, such as random access media. The Cognitive Flexibility Hypertext approach applies tenets of CFT in a computer learning environment. A hypertext program called KANE is used throughout to illustrate important principles.

The authors limit their discussion to situations of advanced knowledge acquisition in a content area, what they refer to as “ill-structured domains.” Hallmarks of such domains include (p.168):

• non-uniformity of explanation across range of phenomena to be covered
• non-linearity of explanation
• non-additivity following decomposition
• context-dependency
• irregularity of overlap patterns across cases (reducing effectiveness of prototypes and simple analogies)
• absence of wide scope defining features for category application

Learning of complex content material in ill-structured domains:

• Requires multiple representations (e.g., multiple explanations, analogies, and dimensions of analysis)
• Mental representations must be open
• Nonlinear instructional sequences need to be followed
• Irregularity and heterogeneity must be acknowledged

Cognitive flexibility: being able to restructure one’s knowledge spontaneously, in many ways and in an adaptive fashion. Function of the way knowledge is represented (along multiple rather than single conceptual dimensions) and the process that operate on those mental representations (schema assembly rather than retrieval) (p.165-6).

“Learning that has these characteristics of openness and plurality produces cognitive flexibility: the ability to adaptively re-assemble diverse elements of knowledge to fit the particular needs of a given understanding or problem-solving situation” (p.169).

CFT leads to a reconceptualization of instructional incrementalism (p.185). “…instruction starts with complex treatments but situates them in cognitively manageable mini-cases…So the student learns from the outset that the cases they will have to apply their knowledge to are complex (in that they require that multiple aspects of their knowledge representations be simultaneously and interactively superimposed) and they receive an easily graspable set of lessons about how some specific conceptual themes get instantiated in a particular context” (p.185). Use of mini-cases helps to avoid any reductive bias (p.187).

“Theories of cognition and instruction too often focus either on introductory learning or advanced learning in well-structured domains…many of the strategies of learning and instruction that are most successful in introductory learning (e.g., the use of analogy) form impediments to the eventual development of more sophisticated understandings” (p.169).

The central metaphor of CFT is the “criss-crossed landscape,” originally from Wittengenstein’s Philosophical investigations (1953).  “One learns by criss-crossing conceptual landscapes; instruction involves the provision of learning materials that channel multidimensional landscape explorations under the active initiative of the learner (as well as providing expert guidance and commentary to help the learner to derive maximum benefit from his or her explorations); and knowledge representations reflect the criss-crossing that occurred during learning” (p.170).

[The authors claim that "highly connected, web-like knowledge structures" are built via this process. I'm curious to know how this was determined...]

“Because one cannot have a prepackaged knowledge structure for every situation that might be encountered, the emphasis must shift from intact shcema retrieval to flexibility of situation-specific schema assembly” (p.170-1). Random access instruction (via hypertext program for instance) is an ideal medium for criss-crossing ill-structured domains.

Knowledge transfer is facilitated by having a large number of wide-scope interpretive schemas available, allowing students to access them flexibly.

Hypertext learning environments have tended to be designed without any theoretical basis. Instead, driven by technology capabilities rather than reflection upon which stages and purposes of learning this technology may best be suited; nor with any understanding of the cognitive psychology of nonlinear learning (p.166-7).

Hypertext systems are best suited for:

• Advanced learning
• Transfer/application learning
• Complex and ill-structured domains

KANE uses mini-case scenes/cases:

• Permit rapid studies
• allow for interplay of multiple themes
• each scene “unit” coded with a vector specifying which theme and symbolic perspective has a relevant role in a given scene

[The example scene text felt somewhat didactic to me; glad to know that the program allows students to add themes they identify as important and relevant.]

The authors admit that mini-cases are no substitute for actual experience in general, though mini-cases are helpful in conveying “the criss-crossed, multidimensional representation of the structure of case-based knowledge” because:

• the conceptual structure is highlighted for the case, rather than having to be inferred
• optional expert guidance is available
• one is not dependent on serendipitous occurrences of instructionally useful cases in fortuitous sequences

Cognitive Flexibility Hypertexts

• consolidate the process of experience acquisition
• mini-cases allow one to see examples of rich case analysis and complex thematic analysis
• concepts are embedded in “practice”
• more cases can be covered via mini-cases; allows for cognitive manageability of the complex case instruction required for ill-structured domains
• prevents overreliance on prototype cases
• allows for easier situation-dependent knowledge assembly. Large number of mini-cases permits a greater range of potential precedent-case assemblies
• increases power and efficiency of the program
• easier to link mini-cases than “nonadditive” cases
• by helping the student fully cover each case by pluralistically covering it, transfer is fostered in several ways:
  • student learns how to fully interpret cases, facilitating full interpretation of new cases in the future
  • multiple coding of cases provides more access routes for their later retrieval from memory (when needed in face of new cases)
  • the interaction of conceptual perspectives is illustrated
  • allows for more flexibility in tailoring for schema assembly
• use of repetition is non-replicative. Repeated presentations aim to point out for students how the same case information can take on importantly different shades of meaning at different times and how each case has many facets.
• this approach is intended to “effect an integration of conceptual and situational learning, in which each is appropriately thought about in terms of the other” (p.192). Concepts and cases are both essential. Conceptual knowledge must be taught in the contexts of actual cases of its application (not in the abstract)

In session 5, Paul showed us two websites for enhancing reading skills in English.  The first one is bbc.com where you can find lots of online talking stories and the second one is breakingnewsenglish.com which has different reading tasks for us to do.  While viewing them, he reminded us to think about this question:  ”Can they make use of computer technology to enhance reading skills?”

For the former one, the animation in the story is well-illustrated and attractive, the narration is loud and clear and the vocabulary items are very well-presented in context. I especially love the hypertext function which helps save readers’ time and energy in searching for the meanings of difficult words in the story.  On the whole, this website is interactive and fun which can easily attract readers’ attention and arouse their interest.  However, what reading skills can the readers learn?  It seems like a listening activity rather than a reading one.  Do we have to listen while reading?  Can we acquire reading skills in this way?  This website has actually made me think a lot more about what reading is and how reading should be taught in depth.

For the latter one, I can see lists of news articles with a series of pre-tasks, while-tasks and after-tasks to follow.  My first impression is the whole screen is full of words and tasks which are quite boring to read.   If  students want to do the tasks, they have no way to type in the answers and get instant help, they need to print them out and check answers from the answer keys instead. As a result, the design of this website seems like transferring the whole texts and tasks from worksheets to computer directly without much utilization of the technology except the MP3 audio clips or the inclusion of Podcast for easy access of listening to those articles.  Indeed, technology here is under-utilized which is a pity! 

Nevertheless, when I take some time to really look at some of the articles, I can see that the ideas in designing the tasks for these articles are quite good to a certain extent.  Although most tasks are more like the back-to-the-basic-design with gap-filling, multiple-choice questions and so on, just like those we did when we were students in secondary schools, each article is actually “self-contained” with answer keys which can facilitate students’ self-learning.  I particularly like the pre-reading tasks which help to activate students’ schema before reading.  Other than this, there are also comprehension exercises to test students’ understanding of the articles in the while-tasks, and integrated after-tasks to consolidate their knowledge of the articles using different skills besides reading. 

For students, I think the whole thing is quite adequate in providing them with enough daily practice on reading.  What I really appreciate is students can have the autonomy in choosing to do the reading tasks or listening tasks or both according to their needs.  Most importantly, breakingnewsenglish.com has offered students a very good platform for instant access of different authentic, interesting news articles which can relate students to their real life and help arouse their interest in reading.  

As for teachers, all the tasks are so “teacher-friendly” that each article has a lesson plan for us to use in class, some even have warm-up activities.  All that we have to do is to log on to this website, print out the tasks and show the article to our students.  In addition, this website is very convenient to us because it saves lots of our time in preparing reading materials.  In spite of all these, when we try to look at the relationship between CALL and reading, we would still question about its superficial use of technolgy.

In order to be more reflective, as a language teacher, how can I fully utilize the computer technology in teaching reading skills?  This is an area that really interests me to have further exploration.

The Ted Nelson GoogleTech Talk presentation was delivered on January 29, 2007.  Nelson began his career in the computer world in the early 1960s; an era where the term hypertext or the concept of the World Wide Web was only a figment of ones imagination.  Known as the man who “coined” the term hypertext, Nelson attempted to create a set of constructs for a new world of personal computing and a world of electronic documentation.  Hypertext is defined as “machine-readable text that is not sequential but is organized so that related items of information are connected” (wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn). However, Nelson thinks the world of such personal computing constructs has gone all wrong.  In his introduction, Nelson states “The clearer your vision, the harder it is for you to explain.” He believes he is part of an elite group of “old-timers” or the original men who believe that they have a problem– that nobody sees their original vision.

However, certain misunderstanding have occurred in the present world that have skewed these old-timer’s visions regarding their original ideas for just how personal computing would take shape (back in 1960) and the trajectory it would follow in order to be the most efficient and productive system possible.  In his presentation, Nelson addresses the issue of how we can best fix electronic literature, what the original vision for hypertext was and how he personally is envisioning a way to best redesign the “current copyright fights” through selective quotation ownership that “liberates and benefits everyone.”

The first question Nelson asked is how can we improve on paper?  The rectangular constrictions of paper and lack of space were the elements that lead Nelson and the Xerox Park workers to think beyond the sheet and look for new ideas.  According to Nelson, these new ideas “would change the world.”  Although the computer screen was a scarce commodity at the time (many people had never even seen a screen, or even a picture of one for that matter) Nelson and his colleagues knew that “The computer screen would be the home of human work for the indefinite future.”

Nelson had a universal vision of the world of “self publishing hypertext” for all users. With this vision, he was the mastermind behind Project Xanadu.
On the project’s website, the mission statement claims:

PROJECT XANADU MISSION STATEMENT
DEEP INTERCONNECTION, INTERCOMPARISON AND RE-USE

Since 1960, we have fought for a world of deep electronic documents– with side-by-side intercomparison and frictionless re-use of copyrighted material.

We have an exact and simple structure. The Xanadu model handles automatic version management and rights management through deep connection.

Today’s popular software simulates paper.  The World Wide Web (another imitation of paper) trivializes our original hypertext model with one-way ever-breaking links and no management of version or contents.

Nelson’s answers to the hypertext issue was that “each quotation could be connected to its original source/context” without feeding the paper production process.  He knew from the start that it was possible to “free the human race from the prison of paper.”  He shows as a demonstration of the early Xanadu translator; a collage of quotations in different colors that when the user ran his/her cursor over a particular set of text or a quote and clicked on it, the user would automatically be taken to the original set of text in another window.  Nelson answers his own “how do we do this” question by stating that through a representation of documents, the EDL (a “Hollywood” term for edit, decision, list) that generated it and the tradition of “righteous oversimplification.” The EDL is a listing of the portions that are to be put together.  In the presentation, the document from which Nelson quotes from on the Xanadu translator is presented on the screen as a long series of characters that generally look like a long hyperlink.  Within the link, the extracted string of text from the quote that ensures that the “address of the content never change” (Nelson says this is KEY).  Such spans of content are non-breaking links and do not break with the EDL.

Nelson then presents a new version of the Xanadu Translator called Xanadu Space that his group has been working on.  He demonstrates a cluster (or Flight) of four documents in the space on the screen.  He uses the “Declaration of Independence” by Thomas Jefferson and recites the first several lines of the famous “we hold these truths to be self evident….” quote and links this section to an excerpt from the “Virginia Declaration of Rights” written by George Mason, the “English Bill of Rights” and John Locke’s “ Two Treatises of Government.”

Nelson sates “what you see is what you get” and what you see on the screen (with the four previously mentioned documents in mind) is “what you will get when you print it out.”  This “sneaky phrase,” according to Nelson, “propagandizes turning the computer into a paper simulator.”  However, as the presentation continues, Nelson moves more into his own body of work.  The notion of intercomparison side by side has been one of Nelson’s fascinating and puzzling ideas for the past 40 years.  He exclaims that there is one thing the Web does not have; the ability to place two documents side by side, be able to compare them and annotate them simultaneously.  He hopes to fix this problem.
From explaining the Xanadu Space Structures and demonstrating how the system works by way of the aforementioned paper documents/quotes famous in American history, Nelson discusses the Copyright system he envisioned over 20 years ago.  He imagined a system similar to what is now AOL (or as Nelson says, Google, with a snigger of a laugh afterward) in which a user would sign on and publish anything they wished or have access to or documents published by other authors.  In this seemingly ingenious system, the user would pull out a document to read or utilize for their personal work and under the instated copyrighted systems, the user would automatically be billed for using that quotation or segment of writing.  However, the user would then own them after paying the fee.  If one was to personally)write and publish certain articles, other users in the database that log on to this AOL-like system would have automatic access to/could use the published articles.  Then, the creator of the document would automatically be paid in royalties by the system. Creative commons is great for new small publishers, Nelson says that the big copyright holders will not let go, as well as any of the writings after 1922.  The effort is to engage the publishing industry in a new venue of micro payments whereas people then could easily purchase any number of or solely the quotations they needed for their work without ever needing to open a book.
While Ted Nelson’s idea seems like an ingenious new frontier for online publishing/copyright, as Gary Wolf exclaims in the forward of his article “The Curse of Xanadu”
It was the most radical computer dream of the hacker era. Ted Nelson’s Xanadu project was supposed to be the universal, democratic hypertext library that would help human life evolve into an entirely new form. Instead, it sucked Nelson and his intrepid band of true believers into what became the longest-running vaporware project in the history of computing – a 30-year saga of rabid prototyping and heart-slashing despair.

http://www.xanadu.net/
http://itknowledgeexchange.techtarget.com/whatis/video-ted-nelson-hypertext-and-the-web/

Jodi is a collaborative creation by two net artists, Joan Heemskerk and Dirk Paesmans. Together, they have created original artwork via the Internet, using software art and computer game modifications as their main medium.

As predicted, Jodi faces  many questions and panicked responses from viewers of their net.art. Can it be sold? Is it political? But most importantly (at least for me) is the question, what is this “net.art”? The interview addresses these questions.

To answer the question whether this kind of art can be sold, Jodi simply answers by saying that whether art is “alternative”, “normal”, or “mainstream”, if it is a material (“be it on a computer screen, videotape, an etching, whatever,” Paesmans) that is good, then it can be sold.

To answer the two latter questions, we will have to actually see some of Jodi’s art to understand its vision. Different net artists focus on different aspects of Internet art. What Jodi in particular is play with the computer monitor’s output. They break down codes, games, etc. to its basic parts and recreate them to form art:

http://map.jodi.org/

(other works at the bottom of the post)

Jodi describes its work as a “collage” of reused elements or things found on the net, such as a virus. It deals with form and screens rather than content and order. Dirk Paesmans explains by differentiating magazines on the net with their work. Magazine designers on the Internet are concerned with which features should be put in Netscape, how to put two columns of text next to each other, and other technical “stuff”. He continues by describing how aspects that seem dysfunctional or useless are of importance to Jodi. Netscape 2.0 had a background that was capable of changing all the time. This was a plus for Jodi, who saw it as a potential to make movies with them. But, Netscape decided to take this out in version 3.0, thinking it was a bug. Jodi’s response is, “where is the bug?”. Paesman responds to this change: “I can’t see the bug here, it was just a free animation effect that was in there. It was threatening the stability of a certain type of lay out, it was disturbed too easily. So they took it out.” Jodi sees in glitches/viruses an aesthetic value and creates artwork from these unique features.

The interview also discusses the role (or lack thereof) in Jodi’s work. Hypertext is absolutely of no use to Jodi. They describe it as a “battle”. Instead of using works as links as in hypertext, Jodi uses simply what is in the computer or Netscape (collages of things that are found on the net). Because they do not use hypertext, Jodi finds solutions to have people navigate or “have the navigation happen as if by itself”. An example is creating “buttons that by clicking there you DO make a link. So you don’t have to invent a letter A, B, C….”

In terms of net.art becoming an institution or part of the artworld commerce, Jodi comments that the importance is not that they are in an “art.net context” or in a corner or a group. Each viewer has their “own little circuits” and each net.artists has their separate groups. Jodi believes that it is “artificial to keep people in a certain group, because in reality on the net this is not one group. It’s different sites.”

Additional examples of Jodi’s artwork:

http://sod.jodi.org/

http://asdfg.jodi.org/——————————-/——————————-/——————————-/———————–402vm981/vb661cc.html

http://text.jodi.org/

http://jetsetwilly.jodi.org/

http://wwwwwwwww.jodi.org/ (jodi’s first website)

The function of hypertext

We’ve been talking in class about the progression of media and how society has taken technologies from the past and, not only, built upon them but applied them to needs of today.  Steven Johnson’s discussion of hypertext does exactly this.  What is the function of hypertext?  Johnson connects the ideas about a machine conceived by an engineer, Vannevar Bush, in 1945 to links on the Web.  He argues that links have become a form of punctuation but have the potential to completely transform storytelling, or, more generally, how people relate to information.

In “As We May Think”, Bush observed that society had reached a point where it was incapable of handling the knowledge now accessible due to technological advancements.  He argues that information is useless until aids are developed that can provide quick access to and facilitate the processing of pertinent information—a direct path to knowledge (sect. 8).  He goes through current technologies and theorizes how each can be advanced.  Since compression technology allows the storage of data, the next step is a selection device.  Advancement is useless if it can’t be consulted for “man only profits by acquiring knowledge (sect. 5)”.  Selection devices help with narrowing down information but fail to aid the processing of data.  His ultimate answer is the Memex, a machine comparable to the internet.  The Memex is a desk with two levers (for going forward and backward), a screen, and a storage space able to hold any amount of information necessary.  It consists of a code book in order to recall information faster and the ability to allow the user to create trails and take notes on the information he is sorting.  The idea is that the user will be able to search for any information on a topic and link his findings by associations instead of using an indexing system which is inefficient.  The efficiency comes from the fact that it is not simply mimicking how the human mind works, allowing finding to hold more meaning, but improves the process by making it faster and permanent.  He projects that once a device like this exists, society will change:  “new forms of encyclopedias will appear, ready made with a mesh of associative trails running through them (sect. 8)”.

Multiple connections that can be drawn from the Memex to the internet: Bush’s code book is similar to today’s tagging feature and, the part Johnson focuses on; his trails are advanced versions of links.  Hypertext allows links of association to be formed; they can forge semantic relationships for they bind together ideas in digital prose and should be seen as a tool to bring multifarious elements together (111).  Links are inferior to trails for they do not allow the reader to create associations, and they lack permanency.  He also compares links to Charles Dickens’ “links of association” between characters which allows for the narrative to reach a conclusion.  He calls them “high-tech descendents” for they both have a stitching effect (116).  WEB 2.0 allows users more creativity than in 1997; however, it still lacks the personalization of the link back feature for readers.  The ability to embed media content allows for various types of media to be linked but a reader still cannot create their own trail, they would need additional program (to be the author of a blog, etc.) to be able to create an permanent association (though even then permanency can be contested as links die).

Even though links are most commonly used in a supplemental manner, separate from the text (as shown by recommended reading links), Johnson uses Suck’s website to show how links can progress; they take on a role of punctuation.  SUCK’S LINKS are a way to withhold information; it forces readers to be interactive in order to fully understand the column—they add another dimension to the text.  Though this is progress, Johnson’s argument is that links could be useful on the macro level of storyspace.  HYPERTEXT LITERATURE attempts this.  They are meant to allow readers control their own experiences instead of the authors (even though it had its failures).  It has yet to be actualized and Bush is still ahead of the times but progress is slowly being made.

When one considers the effect that modern technology has had upon scientific and social progression, it is nearly impossible to imagine our culture in the days of non-existent or even old technology.  As the flow of knowledge becomes greater and greater each day, the expectations of technology grow exponentially as well.  Everyday, a new technology, scientific breakthrough, artistic creation or even something as minor as a new interest posted on my Facebook page all become part of the information highway.  The Internet has allowed this constant knowledge flow to be recorded and stored in the World Wide Web, however, it is fundamentally incorrect to assume that the abilities of new media have completely surpassed and replaced old media.  Important minds in the scientific and technological fields have examined the ways in which some new media (i.e., the Internet) have appropriated and integrated old media models.  This paper will examine the works of Steven Johnson and Dr. Vannevar Bush, and the ways in which both men understand new media and the evolutionary processes that occur from old to new media.

Scientific author, Steven Johnson, posits in his book Interface Culture: How New Technology Transforms the Way We Create and Communicate that the Internet, for example, has incorporated more old technology characteristics than many would assume.  One of the first things that he focuses upon is the idea of links and hypertext.  It is literally written in code that the one page is associated with the other, thus a link was created (through hypertext) to get the user to his destination in a much more efficient manner, much in the same way that Dr. Vannevar Bush describes the mental associative processes of the brain (to be discussed in more detail below).  Steven Johnson believes that the ‘link’ has created a language in and of itself.  Links have transformed the simple written language into a more complex and technologically infused means of communication, and have also enabled an organization of the mass of information that is found on the Internet.  Through hypertext, this technology of association has evolved the early ways of navigating the Web into a more concise, meaningful process.  Johnson writes, “As the word suggests, a link is a way of drawing connections between things, a way of forging semantic relationships.  In the terminology of linguistics, the link plays a conjunctive role” (111).  In other words, hypertext has created new ways to read and write, giving multi-level meaning to data.  If one is reading an article about Dr. Vannevar Bush, for example, he/she can click on the word for his invention, the memex, and be immediately connected to an entire site dedicated to the object.  You no longer have to be fluent in computer technology to navigate through the Web.   An article is no longer limited to a two-dimensional piece of paper, hypertext provides a multifaceted way of displaying ideas.  Although these provide specific examples from Johnson’s argument, they highlight the ways in which new media have integrated the old and how these new systems appropriate old ways of thinking and recontextualize them to fit into the language of modern technology.  Newspapers, books, magazines each represent old media models, however, the new technology of the Internet and the advent of the hypertext have evolved that old technology.

Dr. Vannevar Bush, a twentieth century engineer and scientific figure, also comments on the ways in which new media have integrated old media and technology in his article, “As We May Think.”  He also considers the importance of links—albeit different from the form which Steven Johnson discusses—in the organization of information and in sorting data in meaningful ways.  Bush posits that there is a constant influx of new information being introduced into our world every second, but technology’s ability to recall and retrieve the information in a useful and concise manner is not as efficient as it should or could be.  Bush wrote his article in the early twentieth century, a time when computing devices were in their most basic of stages compared to what they have become today, but also a time when he was able to truly foresee the potential that automated technology held.  Bush writes that during his lifetime, “The machines for higher analysis have usually been equation solvers,” however, their inability to sort and recall information in a logical manner limits their maximum efficacy, which in turn, is detrimental for scientific and mental progress.  Bush believed that the perpetual flow of information exceeded technology’s ability to recall it in a sensible way, an enormous deficiency of the media.  He writes, “So much for the manipulation of ideas and their insertion into the record.  Thus far we seem to be worse off than before—for we can enormously extent the record; yet even in its present bulk we can hardly consult it” (8).  Bush believed that the fundamental problem was technology’s customary ways of indexing information.  He saw the major flaw being the lack of a machine’s ability to ‘associate’ from one idea to another in the speedy, flexible way that the human mind is able to.  This form of logic thus posits the computer to actually be detrimental in a sense to man’s already rather adept mental capabilities, however, Bush does argue that where the computer lacks in adequate logical reasoning like the human mind, the mind is unable to recall data with the same exactitude that computers are capable of.^[1] Thus, he presents his invention of the memex, an automatic, mechanized device that has the ability to store and retrieve information through selection and association through a practical and constructive approach.  He refers to the ability to retrieve information through association as “associative indexing” (10), a process of correlating two ideas together (much in the same way that Johnson discusses the abilities of hypertext).  Links of association, or ‘trails’ in his language, created a way in which information could be sorted in a logical manner when chronological sorting was no possible (i.e., the information was such that chronological or alphabetical sequencing would not make sense).  Bush saw the use of trails as a way in which to link seemingly abstract, or ‘transient,’ ideas together in a sensible way.   Associative indexing would literally enable the machine to interpret data and connect information in a meaningful way for the user.  In the same ways that Steven Johnson understood the importance of hypertext and links, Dr. Bush believed that the memex would enable the user to more easily retrieve information in a more efficient manner and it would provide a way to maximize man’s scientific discoveries by providing an environment in which to store pertinent information.  It would combine the reliability of a computerized memory with the human mental process of association (although Bush did understand that the speed and flexibility of the human mind could not be mimicked exactly in computer form).  If science were to undertake the memex and create an economic and labor-friendly way to produce it, Bush believed that “science may implement the ways in which man produces, stores, and consults the record of the race” (11).

Ultimately, Steven Johnson and Dr. Vannevar Bush understood new media to be a continuation and evolution of past media models.  Both figures believe the most efficient way to store and retrieve data in a useful way is through a computer’s ability to associate and ‘link’ ideas together, much in the same way a human brain is capable of.  Giving a computer the ability to link through association provides a way for the machine to literally interpret information being inputted into it, thus, providing a very useful service for the user to relate pertinent pieces of information together.  Although the two men existed in different technological contexts, they each understood similar ideas of a computer’s capability and the method of association and the evolutionary processes that occur from old to new media.

How does/might hypertext change literature, and what are the advantages and disadvantages of such changes? Check out: http://www.rosettiarchive.org, http://www.pepysdiary.com

Hypertexts like http://www.rossettiarchive.org/ and http://www.pepysdiary.com are not just isolated reading experiences but instead they are entire resources on the subjects. Take the Rossetti Archive for example… on this site all of Rossetti’s works and influences (or those people he influenced) can be found in such a visual way (the timeline view is a great way to look at his various works and put them in context).

Besides offering a more visual approach to literature hypertext also allows for a whole environment based on the literature to be created. The Pepys diary for example just does not offer the very large diary of Samuel Pepys in a “more manageable way” but it also sets up the environment to correspond with the post. For example when you arrive at the diary you see the current post dated Tuesday 2 October 1666 (as of October 3, 2009). From what I noticed about the diary is that each day there is a blog post it corresponds to the month and day when Pepys wrote his posts in 17th century. Also when you look to the sidebar it tells you what the temperature was on the day of the diary post and what was written in the journal of the House of Commons on the day that Pepys wrote his diary post. When you read the Pepys diary online you not only are exposed to the text but to the events that happened at the same time that Pepys was writing his diary entry. It is immediate access to the context of his posts.

What is unique about the Pepys diary as a “hypertext blog” is that it gives the reader an even more interactive part in the text by allowing them to post annotations (in the comments section). People add to the conversation that Pepys was having by adding relevant links or the comment as if talking to Pepys himself. To me this means more than having links to outside sources, this is more interactive. Most people will interact with a text when they write comments or notes in the margin but by annotating a diary entry online where anyone in the world with internet access can read it and comment on your comment. This ability to interact with others creates a world around that one entry about that one day in time. As Landow suggests in Chapter 3, Gyford creates a collaborative online scholarship.

Another question brought up in response to Landow was how to we teach hypertext? Well I would use the Pepys diary as an example of how hypertext can promote an collaborative online scholarship and the Rossetti Archive as a way new way to research (because the Archive gives you historical grounding along with the texts and images created by Rossetti). And perhaps you could deliver the whole lecture on hypertext via Twitter.

Douglas Engelbart

Engelbart showcasing two of his mice

Debut of the first mouse

The image to the right shows the first computer mouse, which was invented by Douglas Engelbart. The mouse was first showcased in his 1968 demo dubbed “the mother of all demo’s”. Engelbart stated that the device earned the name ‘mouse’ due to the resemblance it bore to the creature with its tail-like wire. The modern mouse uses this same tail-like chord.

The first prototype consisited of a square, wooden outer shell and containted a large wheel inside.

View of the wheel underneath

Engelbart revealed the mouse was just “a tiny piece of a much larger project, aimed at augmenting human intellect” and one solution to “problems facing mankind”.

Engelbart is also credited with being part of the development team responsible for hypertext, networked computers and precursors to GUIs. However, Engelbart is best known for inventing the first computer mouse.

Engelbart was born on January 30th, 1925 making him eighty four years old.

Google Docs Become More Student-Friendly.

Follow the link to read about the addition of math equation tools to Google Docs. In addition to enabling students to write with these tools, this gives faculty another tool for grading online–gotta save those trees and the printer ink!

Here’s my lame English major attempt to use the equation editor:

google equation editor