Hypertext
In a few years, most students will have lived their entire
lives in a world where information is grossly available via the smart
phone. The internet has become so ingrained in global culture since Bolter
wrote Writing
Space in 2001 that it’s almost inconceivable to imagine a world without
it. Hypertext is the foundation for which the majority of the world functions
and communicates. Bolter says that “The Web is a vast network of links to pages
that may remain the same for years or disappear tomorrow. Its popularity means
that hypertext has become an integral feature of our culture’s reading and
writing.” (40). This has become increasingly true since the advent of social
media. Most of us remember a time before Facebook and Twitter. We survived. We
communicated. We received newsworthy information via print, radio, or
television. But, try to conceive of a society that doesn’t even use email. It’s
a very post- apocalyptic thought. Therefore, it’s necessary to think about
hypertext as playing an intrinsic role in the way our students receive
information daily and have received information throughout the entirety of their
lives.
Bolter states “where printed genres are linear or
hierarchical, hypertext is multiple and associative. Where a printed text is
static, hypertext responds to the reader’s touch” (42). In about 5 years, most
middle to high school students will not have lived in a world without such
widespread touchscreen use. Put the average American 5 year old in front of a
computer that isn’t touch screen and see what happens. It only makes sense that
pedagogy keep up in the way we teach reading and writing. If the argument that “a
printed page of paragraphs is by comparison a flat and uninteresting space” (32)
and hypertext, conversely, reflects the nature of the human mind itself- that
because we think associatively, not linearly, hypertext allows us to write as
we think”(42), then this is especially true. We are going to start seeing students
who are increasingly desensitized to the influx of stimuli that comes with
living in a hypertextual/hypermedia based world. Even with the use of indexes
and the idea that “a printed novel or essay actually gives the reader greater
freedom to interact with the ideas presented,” (43) the need to evolve how we
teach our students to read and write has been approaching for quite some time.
This is not to say that print is of no value. As Bolter says,
“electronic writing is the remediation of print” because both have come to rely
on the other. The argument that we have to follow the paths that have been
tried and true before us, because canonical literature was written in a
specific way, to be read in a specific way, is valid. However, through
adaptation, we can bridge the gap. The
Wasteland via hypertext is a great example of how this can be done. It’s accommodating
to
the reader who feels overwhelmed by footnotes. The poem has not changed. The
reader has the option to navigate the hyperlinks as they see fit. Even if “letting
the reader choose links only gives an illusion of control, which is really withheld
from the reader,” the experience of reading is individual based to begin with
(43).
Questions to consider: Do you agree that there is value in
the fact that hypertext can “turn vocal writing into spatial writing” (45)? How
can you incorporate this in the classroom? Is there enough push to remediate
pedagogy in a way that is more inclusive to future students whose brains are
wired completely different from those before them due to hypertext being so
infused in the way we communicate and receive information now?
I keep thinking year after year that my focus on hypertext in this class will become increasingly outdated, but as Jessica mentions, it is still an important basis for us to understand the functions of the internet and our increasingly hyperlinked world. On the one hand, I find hypertext incredibly liberating and exciting, opening up associative connections like never before. On the other, I do worry about writing becoming "spatialized," mostly because writing that becomes more associated with a place than a writer has some serious consequences, I think. For one, it makes writing a property, one that can too often lead to barriers being erected around it. I worry that hypertext begins to lose its corporeality, or its connections to the writers/artists that produced it. And when we begin to efface the creators, we begin to forget the labor behind it. It leads to a situation that empowers those who have the power and capital to obtain and control digital writing properties (e.g. eliminate net neutrality).
ReplyDeleteIn your opening point you note that in a few years we will be seeing students who have never lived in a non-digital age, and I think that time is actually upon us now which is interesting to think about. When I was teaching before this program my students were born in 2001-2002 and the article we are working with mentions 2001 as a time where you cannot imagine a world without technology already. Now those students I was teaching are in their junior year of high school so by the time we are all done and in front of the classroom even those of us who are teaching college will in all likelihood have those kids in front of us that have never lived in a world without technology being so prevalent.
ReplyDeleteOn another note - I like the idea of using things like The Wasteland via hypertext to teach, but I still have some qualms about it. For example as you point out - kids become desensitized to the endless stimuli on the internet and how often do all the hyperlinks you just don't care about become part of that white noise that you ignore in favor of being able to say "OK my homework is FINALLY done" and you lose all that extra information because you never click on anything? I could easily see large quantities of students who just never click the hyperlinks. Although I did use an online textbook for my classes which had vocabulary as hyperlinks and I think some students clicked on those.
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ReplyDeleteI think you make a good point about younger children being so use to using technology with touch screens. I definitely agree that "[i]t only makes sense that pedagogy keep up in the way we teach reading and writing". It seems almost counter-intuitive to not use the technology that children are use to using in the classroom. I do like the idea of hypertext as being an alternative to the printed word. Although I do not think teachers should completely dismiss printed texts, I do think hypertext has distinct advantages such as allowing students to choose what background information they would like to learn about. For example, reading T.S Elliot's "The Wasteland" as hypertext was a much quicker read. I think it was easier to get through as hypertext than it was as a printed piece in an anthology was because the notes in the former were not as evident as they were in the latter.
ReplyDeleteHello Jessica! I have to say, you have asked some very compelling questions in this post. I am going to try to answer some of them, but I might not be able to answer all of them. To start, I'm going to address the question of whether hypertext can be integrated into the classroom easily and how it can be more inclusive. I have mixed feelings about that. You see, hypertexts are great because they can link to other pages. Whether it is putting a footnote at the bottom of the page or using allusions, the printed word has a lot of parallels to hypertexts.
ReplyDeleteI might be wrong, but I agree with the Bolter when he compares the hypertext to the written word. The point of this response is to say that it is to soon to determine the role of writing woth hypertext or to claim to fuly understand all of these new modes of reading, writing and teaching. For now, technology is at a time where it is trying to compete with the printed word for trust and access into the classroom. Only when they manage to get any kind of access shall we fully understand what it is about.
In terms of being more inclusive to students who think differently, it is a good time to think about that because it is still the earlier parts of introducing tech in schools and thinking about thise questions now can be very helpful if schools do turn to rely more on technology. I do not have the answer to that question, though. Maybe I can come up with one when I begin to understand the vastness of these new ways of teching myself.
Do you agree that there is value in the fact that hypertext can “turn vocal writing into spatial writing” (45)?
ReplyDeleteI think hypertext allows students to branch out their ideas and more actively incorporate sources in their various class projects. My high school required students to participate in National History Day, and I elected to make a website for my project. Being able to link to pages that better explain a certain idea makes that information spatially incorporated. It's more than a footnote: it's an expansion of the idea onto a new page.
Like Alex already discusses a little above, I'm a little worried about the way in which hypertext can remove the author from his/her writing. It reminds me a little bit of New Criticism, which views pieces of writing as both self-contained and self-referential--once written, a work of literature is separate from the author and the external factors in which it was written. This is a strange connection because hypertext, in its ability to build associations, creates context for readers; New Criticism seeks in part to take context out of our interpretation of texts.
ReplyDeleteSide-note: while reading Jessica's discussion of how the hypertexted "The Waste Land" can help those overwhelmed by length footnotes, I thought of Flann O'Brien's book, The Third Policeman. This book has footnotes at the beginning of almost every chapter, which get progressively longer, more overwhelming, and less relevant to the actual text--they ironically act as dramatic digressions from rather than clarification for what's happening in the novel. I think they're funny, and I imagine hypertexts can be used similarly--in fact, we have probably already grown so used to hypertexts and resultantly, have expectations on what a hypertext link will provide us, there's plenty of space for satire.
Great post, Jessica! I love how you point the emphasis on remediation of the text in the reading to that of a remediation of the pedagogy of writing and literature. I feel that such a remediation for the classroom is appropriate in a world where students will never experience an existence without the internet. I see the internet as a tool to facilitate and augment a student's understanding of texts like the ones mentioned in the reading. These are likely texts that educators have either avoided or excessively labored over in teaching in their classrooms. To use technology to make such works more accessible to their audience (however unintended by the author) is worthy in my opinion. Many of these works were bringing into question the rules around narrative and artist form of their time. I see those authors and artists embracing the breaking down of our current forms through digital writing, even if that means a new approach to their own work.
ReplyDeleteAs Keiran points to The Third Policeman in his reading of the hypertexted "The Waste Land", I could not help but think of Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest, another novel almost consumed by footnotes. I agree with the his point that the hyperlink can be used as a useful tool for to engage more deeply with the text and make it less daunting a task. It also made me think of programs for eBooks that allow the reader to look up the definition of a word they may be unfamiliar with. These tools were in most cases in the mind of the author when the text was written but are useful in helping the reader understand what the author is saying without necessarily needing to be acquainted with his or her vocabulary before or while reading their work.
Jessica:
ReplyDeleteIn response to your question, I think it is important to remind students exactly what hypertext is and what tradition it is a part of. As stated in the Bolter reading, hypertext is not fundamentally new. It is a new (and albeit super speed) iteration of other forms of associative knowledge, like the index. As you point out, students in the schools of today and tomorrow have lived almost or all of their lives with smart technology and hypertext. They likely don't even know that it is called that. It is important to remind them that there was a time before it and that it serves a purpose and fits into a longer tradition of providing access to information to the reader. Also teaching a lesson on the associative nature of human learning and knowledge would be a great place to start. This is why we have hypertext because this is how we think. It is perfectly natural to associate and link pertinent types of information to one another. So, in short, I think contextualizing the phenomenon that seems the most natural thing in the world to them is very important.
Jessica, I think your points on how hypertext is changing the way we interact with texts is exactly my thought on the way many read today. Just thinking from the outside of the obvious hypertexts to that of Instagram and Facebook, each link takes us to somewhere different and it could possibly keep going if we allowed it to. As I was reading the chapter "Hypertext" and reading parts of Michael Joyce's website, I was brought to the notion that hyperlinks have also become hashtags found on almost every website, but especially sites like Twitter and Instagram. It is almost like a never-ending adventure into the parts of the web we would never think to explore on our own, and this can have positive influence in that it breaches the familiar and standard texts we have grown up reading and engaging in. However, in the same thought I do believe there are limitations to reading literary elements through a hypertext. For example, when trying to read Michael Joyce's story based on the colorful lines you chose, I was very frusutrated and confused as to how the story should be progressing, or whether there was any order to it whatsoever. I guess that means I am used to the linear order of reading, which may account for my reservations on the use of hypertext. Yet how do we have students understand the importance of structure within what we write if we simply "write the way we speak?" Furthermore, to touch upon your question, I think that as educators we must be careful with how we teach our students to use hypertexts and engage in material or we could end up teaching them that there is no rhyme or reason for order, and that could cause a lot of problems later on in their educational careers.
ReplyDeleteJessica, your post and all of these comments have me thinking about how the experience of reading a physical book has changed over the past 15 years or so. Am I the only one who regularly reaches for my smartphone while reading a book or article, in order to look up a word, an allusion, a summary or a fact? In some sense, I treat tangible books as hypertexts - though the links aren't clickable. I think many people do.
ReplyDeleteThis has me thinking about teaching The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao to my college class last year. Online, there is a page that annotates the entire book, translating the Spanish and suggesting explanations for all of the historical and sci-fi allusions. The book text isn't there; just page numbers and notes. I told my students about it and I know they used it regularly while reading their print books. Since it was made my an amateur who was open to corrections, I offered them extra credit for writing to the author of the notes, and getting something corrected if they knew better. This way, they were interacting with the online text while still reading the original printed text. I think there are many ways we can integrate hypertext and printed texts, and maybe that's one way to avoid this separation of author and text that Alex and Kieran mention.
"The reader has the option to navigate the hyperlinks as they see fit. Even if 'letting the reader choose links only gives an illusion of control, which is really withheld from the reader,' the experience of reading is individual based to begin with (43)."
ReplyDeleteJessica, I love this point! I do think hypertext allows for a sort more in-depth customization of an already individual experience of reading. When we read any regular old text, the reader decides what to focus on. If they want to look something up mid-way through a paragraph or keep going, that's their prerogative. Hypertext replacing footnotes or setting down a book to do research actually, in my opinion, DOES give a student more choice and autonomy. They get to decide what's most interesting to them in a text, which footnotes they want to explore more in-depth, easily, with a click of a button.
Hi Jessica! To discuss your first question : is there value in the fact that hypertext can “turn vocal writing into spatial writing” (45)?
ReplyDeleteI think there is value in it. I think of it as a way to connect with the generation that only knows what digital technology is, and not much of the "old" technology. I agree with what Tim had said, that these hyperlinks and hypertexts are not new, they are simply in a new form. Students might not realize that, much like I did not even think about it until now, and we can use hypertext in the class to bridge that gap. When using this "vocal writing" in the class, the students can have a better understanding for "spacial writing," and they can see how these too are connected.
Thanks for this post. I like your point about the abundance of footnotes in "The Waste Land," and I hadn't considered that in hyperlink format the footnotes are potentially less daunting. I agree with this, although I still found myself feeling the need to click on all of the hyperlinks for fear that I would miss something important. I also like your final question, specifically the one about the pedagogical push / imperative to accommodate for future students. It's hard to imagine, but I do think a lot of our "forward thinking" pedagogy (in terms of technology, at least) is automatically outdated by the time that we use it because digital tech develops at such a speedy pace. So the question then becomes one of whether we can ever actually account for these future technologies in our current pedagogies.
ReplyDelete