Hypertext 3.0 by George P. Landow
Each week in my graduate course Writing for Electronic Communities at Rowan University, our professor, Dr. Bill Wolff, assigns a very meaty (to say the least) book based on community and/or electronic theory. This week’s book, Hypertext 3.0 by George P. Landow, explores the role that hypertext plays and whether or not it is a new thought.
Landow struck a chord with me that left me thoroughly excited to talk about this text: hypertext is not new! Of course, its use in electronic mediums is and the actual word “hypertext” is not very old, but the concept itself is. This concept is based on basic human congition to read something, feel something, and react to the feeling.
It wasn’t until Landow mentioned Jean Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea (a novel rewritten from the Caribbean woman’s perspective of Jayne Eyre) that I really got it. There are thousands of books that have been rewritten to try to understand the time period or cultural setting that the author lives in. Another great example of this is the rewriting of Shakespeare’s The Tempest in Aime Cesaire’s A Tempest, where focus shifts from love/marriage in Shakespeare’s version to slavery in Cesaire’s version.
This idea of shifting voice is undoubtedly accepted, and in the electronic world of hypertext, Landow references a shift in focus, or voice, by hyperlinking to other pages on the web. For example, there are several links already placed in this blog where I have given authority to those schools, profs, books, authors instead of accepting myself as the dispenser of their knowledge. The pressure’s off in knowing everything and space is saved. You, my reader, can now inform yourself about my references on your own. It’s fabulous.
