The Gaurdian has an in depth Look at the history and future of hypertext. They look at the hypertext revolution and what it means for literature.
\”When Apple decided to supply a copy of a little
program called Hypercard on all Macintosh
computers back in the 80s, it prepared the way
for what would become the web\’s most distinctive
feature, hypertext. It also unknowingly launched
a small literary revolution.\”
The Gaurdian has an in depth Look at the history and future of hypertext. They look at the hypertext revolution and what it means for literature.
\”When Apple decided to supply a copy of a little
program called Hypercard on all Macintosh
computers back in the 80s, it prepared the way
for what would become the web\’s most distinctive
feature, hypertext. It also unknowingly launched
a small literary revolution.\”Hypertext proponents say that hypertext enables
a writer (and reader) to break free of the rigid,
linear format of the print book. They point to
Sterne with Tristram Shandy, Woolf with To The
Lighthouse, and Joyce with Ulysses, as authors
who struggled to do this in print. Hypertext, they
argue, pushes literature into places it has been
trying to go for decades.
Critics say hypertext is a lot of complex and
pointless literary nonsense, merely a vehicle for
testing out the pet theories of convoluted
postmodern theorists like Roland Barthes and
Jacques Derrida. But their longstanding
complaint that it\’s annoying to read a work on a
computer may have to be abandoned with the
availability of new, small reading devices.
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