Thoughts and Ends...    

High-speed transfers and computer age technology are shaping our ways of seeing.  The lines of reality are becoming blurred while certain forms of virtual technology and reality are becoming clear and very real.  Chat rooms, instant messaging, websites and email have infiltrated our daily activities—so much so that a loss of these technologies would have a crippling affect on our lives.  Computer media have infinitely sped up communication and cultural exchanges, and they’ve also changed the way we look at the world.  The systems are still in their formative stages, still clinging onto existing styles and forms, but as hypertext evolves, new boundaries are explored and traditional conventions are tossed out the window.  Although hypertext has yet to divorce itself fully from the traditional conventions of linear prose, it has changed the way readers view literature in terms of conventional form and the function of the author. 

            It is impossible to talk about the ways in which hypertext and online media are changing the way we view literature without first discussing how the concepts are metaphorically based.

Our ordinary conceptual system, in terms of which we both think and act, is fundamentally metaphorical in nature.  The concepts that govern our thoughts are not just matters of the intellect.  They also govern our everyday functioning down to the most mundane details.  Our concepts structure what we perceive, how we get around in the world, and how we relate to other people.  Our conceptual system thus plays a central role in defining our everyday realities. (Lakoff and Johnson 3) 

In their book entitled Metaphors We Live By, George Lakoff and Mark Johnson explore how metaphors shape our reality.  “The essence of metaphor is understanding and experiencing one thing in terms of another” (Lakoff and Johnson 5).  Take, for example, the time is money metaphor.  Time, in this sense, is viewed as a commodity, a resource that can be wasted or wisely invested.  If there is more time, more labor can be produced, resulting in more work being done.  More work means more money.  Metaphors like this have become an essential cultural system, revealing many cultural values.  In America, for example, up, more, and higher are good, but down, less and lower are bad.  Metaphorical concepts structure the way we think and live; they don’t tell us what to think, but rather, they just structure the possibilities. 

            The Internet and hypertext are intensely rooted in metaphorical structures.  The new media are comprised of a vast web of information, waiting to be explored.  It is a self-guided safari, with information lurking in every corner.  Imagine a spider spinning a web.  First, she begins with the locus, then branches off in many directions, adding on to her foundation of silk.  Or, imagine a “limitless expanse of gigabytes that presents itself to the storyteller as a vast tabula rasa crying out to be filled with all the matter of life.”  These are the concepts that have shaped how we see hypertext and the Internet.  We can navigate through pages, click on links, and explore the seemingly endless space of search engines and websites.  Viewing the Internet as a clean slate has helped promote the growth of this medium into a full web.  “The new digital environments are characterized by their power to represent navigable space” (Murray 79).  Unlike the spacial texuality of linear media, the user can actually navigate through the text.  With a click of a button, one creates his or her own path of exploration.

            This web-like form is the essence of hypertext, or rather, it’s medium is the message (see McLuhen).  “ ‘The medium is the message’ because it is the medium that shapes and controls the scale and form of human association and action.  The content or uses of such media are as diverse as they are ineffectual in shaping the form of human association” (McLuhen 9).  Unlike the experience with a leather-bound edition, the reading of actual hypertext is not dictated by linear form.  The reader’s interaction with hypertext is much more involved than that of just reading.  Instead, there are limitless possibilities to click and choose, scroll down, and page back.  With every click of a finger the reading changes, allowing for multiple interpretations from different readers.  The knowledge, or rather, information of the world seems to fall immediately into our grasp. 

            Through the ages, literate culture has undergone dynamic shifts--from the collective voice of the oral community, through print culture, and finally feeling its way through hypertext.  In the oral culture, the author/speaker has to deal with an absence of writing, rather he or she commemorates what needs to be expressed.  Word in oral culture is just a sound, transmitted from one person’s lips to another’s ear.  It is an act of immediacy, of living in the moment.  It is based on true memory and commemoration of lived experiences.  “Commemoration binds the community together as a living entity rather than passively storing information about it” (Hobart and Schiffman 15).  The speakers pass on knowledge by way of formulas and themes, sort of like the pneumonic devices of today.  Their knowledge was cultural poetry that serves to “preserve and transmit the information necessary for the survival of society” (19). 

            There exists a critical distance between thinker and thought in print culture.  We think about something, rather than living that experience.  “The participatory nature of the [oral] epics prevented the attainment of that critical perspective” (21).  It is because of this separation that true knowledge has moved over to make room for encyclopedic knowledge.  If someone pose the question, “What is a tree?,” all we would have to do is sift through our stored, encyclopedic knowledge.  It’s quite possible that our answers would include much about a tree’s phenotype, what it’s bark is like, it’s branches, and leaves.  In print/hypertext culture, there is a lack of the actual experience of remembering.  Our answers would be devoid of the collective experience of sights, smells, touch, taste and sound.  Our sense of memory has shifted, and what we think we know is completely proscribed by encyclopedic knowledge.  And this knowledge/information is generally imparted by what we might view as a single, expressive author. 

            In The Order of Books, Roger Chartier attempts to demystify our notions of the author.  The author is essentially an association we make with a collective identity, or rather “the intersection of the various texts that they read.” Imagine that The Color Purple had not been written by Alice Walker, but rather by an elite white woman. We, as readers, construct the text to reflect preconceptions that we want to acknowledge about the situation of the poor, southern black woman.  Since we know the author, we interpret the work to mean what we want it to mean, and the author that we think we know becomes the authoritative voice on the subject.  The novel would assume a much smaller role of social significance had it been written by a wealthy white woman.  Yes, it is important to acknowledge that years of orality, years of print culture, and years of change have made the novel into what it is.  It is not just the voice of the author resounding through the masses, yet we desire to hear that voice because it makes the text more coherent.  The author, as a person, is just a culturally assigned value of interpretation.  The authorial-function is problematic because it creates a fragmentation of identity and originality.  If we acknowledge that no texts echo the intrinsic feelings of a single person, we force ourselves to ask the question of whether or not we are truly unique.  For example, the text that you’re reading has been shaped by McLuhen, Hobart and Schiffman, Chartier, and various other forms of media culture, yet they are spoken by me.  So is what I have to say original?

   As hypertext becomes more intricate, authorial-function will assume a less significant role.  The author is no longer a sort of God.  With the Internet, one cannot automatically make assumptions about a sites author based on his or her name alone.  We can no longer give automatic legitimacy to anyone who is published, for anyone can make a web page. 

It is not just the words on the page that shape our ways of “seeing,” but it is also the visual media.  Ours is a world comprised of signs and increasing abstraction.  Postmodern politics have completely decentered the subject and have created a fragmented reality full of popular culture and information.  We adhere to what’s COOL, spending millions of dollars and minutes in search of whatever that may be.  With technology expanding in exponential proportions, I think it’s safe to say that the Internet and virtual technology have become what is COOL for old and young alike.  People spend hours in the chat rooms in search of love while email bridges the communication gap.  Visual media is becoming reality while the function of literate culture (as we know it) is being tweeked.  Welcome to the technology age.