(International Society for the Study of European Ideas, University of Helsinki, Finland, July 28-August 1, 2008.)
The western-bound pioneers in nineteenth-century America sought a new way of life for themselves. Whether this involved prospecting for precious minerals, escaping religious prejudice, starting a business in a new western town or farming the land provided by the Homestead Act, these pioneers were seeking new frontiers, where they would, in effect, have more authority over their own actions. The computer revolution has provided people with a similar freedom today; anyone can freely stake out a digital homestead, writing journals, or blogging, about their daily lives, posting videos and pictures, socializing in new ways and, in many cases, irritating copyright holders, such as television and music companies, by freely distributing content without permission. Printed media is also taking advantage of this new technology; many newspapers, for example, have online editions. Similarly, authors and editors are now exploring new ways of writing and reading texts. Hypertexts enable an author to provide multiple "readings" of a single work, as pages can be networked together by means of links. Jay David Bolter first wrote in 1991 about hypertexts and the possibilities they offer authors and readers in Writing Space: The Computer, Hypertext, and the History of Writing. Ten years later, he published a second edition of his book, retitled Writing Space: Computers, Hypertext, and the Remediation of Print.
Bolter's book traces the way the craft of writing has progressed from the days of ancient civilizations until today. The ancients wrote on rolls, in a linear fashion (1991; 37-38). The medieval codex and bound manuscript continued the use of linear writing, but texts were often annotated and glossed, giving multiple readings of a text on a single page (68). The printing press brought about a technological revolution; books could now be quickly mass-produced and the annotations and glosses, if they were present in a book at all, eventually became footnotes, endnotes, or volumes of commentary completely separate from the main text (39,68).
In most cases, the text in a book progresses in a linear fashion - we read one page, then its companion, before turning the page to access the next two in sequence. Hypertexts do not necessarily have to be read in a linear fashion; each hypertext offers multiple readings. A book is limited in size, and so is the text contained within it. Hypertexts can theoretically provide an infinite reading space, as the reader continues following links indefinitely. A hypertext is defined by its unique structure, which is a network of various pathways. Early ideas of hypertext systems were conceived in the mid-twentieth century, such as the Memex, which was described by Vannevar Bush in an article in Atlantic Monthly in 1945, or Project Xanadu, a lifelong project of Ted Nelson, who coined the term hypertext in 1965 (Bolter 2001; 16-17). Neither of these theoretical projects has been realized. Hypertext developed instead with the Internet and the World Wide Web: the most familiar hypertext to us is found online: websites, which are often programmed in HTML (the Hypertext Markup Language) or some variation of that language, are often anchored to other sites or pages by links. Other times, instead of completely navigating away from the current page in view, a link will change some of the elements on the open page, such as commentary in an annotation box.
Hypertexts, however, are not strictly bound to electronic media. Bolter describes how writers like James Joyce and Jorge Luis Borges, as well as philosophers like Nietzsche and Wittgenstein, often employed links or non-linear structures in their writings (2001; 107-109, 142-146). A "Choose Your Own Adventure" book is an excellent example of a hypertext in print. Often, as implied by the series title, the books are written in a second-person perspective, to further cement the idea that the reader, who makes the choices which control the action and therefore the good or bad outcome of the story, is the protagonist. The reader begins on page one, reading the text setting up the story. At the bottom of the page, the reader then encounters a set of instructions: either "Go on", meaning that the reader should continue with the next page in sequence; "Stop" or "The End," meaning that the reader has followed one particular network trail as far as it goes and has reached the ending of that particular reading; or the reader is faced with some sort of choice. These choices form the main bulk of the narrative progression. In the Skylark "Choose Your Own Adventure" book Dragons!, the reader who reaches page 44 during any given reading is given the following choice: choose either the green or purple door (Razzi). Behind one of them awaits treasure and riches, while the other leads to certain death. If the reader decides to take the purple door, which actually leads to the treasure, he has to ignore the linear structure of the book and flip ahead in the book to page 51. Rewarded with treasure and a happy ending, the reader is now able to start the book over, making different choices. This particular adventure book has seven good endings and four bad endings.
Another precursor to today's hypertext is the text adventure. Predominant in the 1980s, these non-graphical video games responded to short commands, such as "north" or "use key," in order to progress the story. The first widely distributed text adventure, Willie Crowther's "Colossal Cave," which is also simply referred to as "Adventure," originally had 350 possible points. The game followed how many moves it took the player to reach a conclusion, compared it to how many points the player had amassed by solving puzzles or collecting necessary objects, and assigned the player a rank based on the result. "Adventure" was later ported, or made available on other platforms, and adapted by other programmers, who would add material. There are multiple versions of "Adventure", some with 500 possible points or more. Other text adventures followed. Some, like "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy," were adaptations of other media - in this case, Douglas Adam's radio drama. The company "Infocom," which developed many successful adventures such as "Zork," went in an opposite direction: they adapted some of their best-selling text adventures, such as "Wishbringer," into traditional, printed books - in this case, a comedic fantasy by Craig Shaw Gardner.
afternoon, a hypertext written by Michael Joyce in 1987, operates very similarly to the text adventure. afternoon uses StorySpace, a software package developed by Bolter, Joyce, and John B. Smith, to manage all of the links between the scenes. Altogether there are 539 "writing spaces", or displayable text segments, and 951 links connecting them in various ways. The user begins on the first "writing space," aptly named "begin." This segment ends with a question. The user can hit enter, answer the question with a yes or no, or click on one of the words in the text. Each of these options leads to a different "writing space." Some links only become available if other prerequisite segments have been read. The user can save his progress through each reading, bookmark particular pages, and annotate them. The user can also use various features of the software to jump around, such as an alphabetical list of the segments or the "History" box, which displays, in order, all of the segments which have been encountered. Electronic fiction like afternoon does not have to rely on special software today; they can be programmed from free, open-source software solutions, such as HTML or various database systems, such as MySQL. It is even easy with these systems to introduce randomness into the networks; a user could click on a link and the computer program can pick a random next page from a list the author creates.
I wish now to examine current examples of hypertexts, but will do so by first jumping, in a hyperlink of my own, back to 1911 and the eleventh edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica. Bolter uses this encyclopædia and its various incarnations as an early example of a hypertext, and with good reason. In 1911, the encyclopædia's full title was The Encyclopædia Britannica, A Dictionary of Arts, Sciences, Literature and General Information. It consisted of 28 volumes, with all of the entries arranged alphabetically, plus a separate index volume. Why an index? In addition to providing "links" to topics which did not have their own specific subject heading, as well as pointing to other references to a particular topic in other articles, the back of the Index volume contained a new feature: a classified table of contents. The introduction and usage instructions for this section explain its purpose: "It is not perhaps commonly realized that a general Encyclopædia is more than a mere store-house of facts. In reality it is also a systematic survey of all departments of knowledge. But the alphabetical system of arrangement, with its obvious advantages, necessarily results in the separation from one another of articles dealing with any particular subject. [...] The ensuing pages of this volume contain what we believe to be the first attempt in any general work of reference at a systematic subject catalogue or analysis of the material contained in it" (879). The "Classified Table of Contents," in essence, provided its users with an alternative way of reading the encyclopedia, making it a hypertext, albeit a very heavy one.
Skipping forward to the fifteenth edition of the encyclopedia, now named The New Encyclopædia Britannica, with all references to being a dictionary dropped, we now see many alternatives for reading. The fifteenth edition's 2002 version is comprised of 32 volumes. The first twelve volumes, titled the Micropædia, or Ready Reference, contain shorter articles arranged alphabetically. The next seventeen volumes, the Micropædia, or Knowledge in Depth, volumes, are also arranged alphabetically, but feature longer, more in-depth articles. There is a two-volume Index, similar in function to the index of the eleventh edition, and a one volume Propædia, or Outline of Knowledge. This outline volume expands greatly on the Classified Table of Contents, providing a guide for systematically exploring a particular topic, with links to articles in both the Macro- and Micropædias.
The Encyclopædia Britannica is also available in electronic formats, including CD-ROM and online versions. The online version, available by subscription, offers the same search methods as the printed version - alphabetical listings and a categorized listing of topics, as well as a search box. Additionally, the articles feature clickable links to other topics mentioned within its text. The electronic version of the encyclopedia is thus the easiest to use as a hypertext, as the reader does not have to flip back and forth between several volumes to compile a specific reading of a topic. The online Encyclopædia Britannica has competition, however, from a free source.
Wikipedia is perhaps the most recognized and most used hypertext on the Internet today. Even though Wikipedia appeared after the last edition of Bolter's book, it embodies hypertext capabilities mentioned in the first edition. "Electronic writing," Bolter writes, "emphasizes the impermanence and changeability of the text, and it tends to reduce the distance between author and reader by turning the reader into an author" (1991, 3). Edited by its users, Wikipedia blurs the line between reader and writer as no published book can. Each change is logged, so other users scan double-check the edits to make sure they are useful and comply with the standards of the encyclopedia. Articles can be labeled "biased" or "lacking citations," for example, if they need to have further editing. These articles have several hypertext features. Often, the user can choose to view the article in a different language. Longer articles feature a contents box, with links to different sections of the article. Within each article, certain words are hyperlinked; clicking on these takes the user to an article about the linked word. Because both pages are articles in their own right, rather than simply footnotes, this hypertext allows the user to jump around without the implication that some information is of more importance than others (see Bolter 1991; 15). The user can find articles in many fashions as well. Besides a simple text search, the user can browse Wikipedia alphabetically, by category or by academic theme. At the bottom of many articles, links are given to category lists, which allow users to see other articles related to similar subjects they may wish to browse.
Wikipedia is a hypertext encyclopedia, but other hypertext genres exist. An upcoming hypertext, the Mitteldeutsche Selbstzeugnesse aus der Zeit des Dreißigjährigen Krieg (Middle German Ego-Documents from the Time of the Thirty Years War), due to be online later this year, presents four very different testaments of life during the Thirty-Years War. Each testament is a hypertext. On the right-hand of the screen, the reader finds a photograph of the current page of the manuscript, which is transcribed on the left-hand side. Various words are highlighted and/or presented in a different color font. Moving the mouse over one of these keywords brings up a small box containing additional information about the selected term, such as an archaic definition, information about a mentioned place or battle, or a biography of one of the figures mentioned in the document. The reader can move through the text in a variety of ways. Pressing "nächste Seite" or "vorige Seite" progresses the reader either one page forward or one page backwards. A selection box at the bottom of the screen allows the reader to jump to a specific folio page. The reader can look at various alphabetical lists of keywords, places, or important figures, which are hyperlinked to each of the various references to them in the texts. Finally, the user can perform a text search of all four of the documents.
Many libraries today feature access to digital editions, like the aforementioned German testimonies, as well as searchable article databases and book catalogs. A few fully digital library projects, such as Project Gutenberg, offer thousands of out-of-print books in multiple languages as ebooks, available in HTML and plain text formats. The texts themselves, however, are not hypertexts. A better example of a hypertext library is the specialized Perseus Project. Now in its fourth incarnation, the Perseus Digital Library presents classical and renaissance works, such as Virgil's Aeneid, as hypertexts. Readers of the Aeneid in its original Latin, for example, can follow the text linearly, or they can instead jump around, using either the "Table of Contents," which is structured in a tree hierarchy; the visual "Book" and "Card" bars, or by entering text in the search box. The readers have other options for exploring the text, however. If a word is unknown, a reader can click on it, bringing up a small, separate window containing the appropriate definition from one of the Lewis and Short Latin dictionaries, as well as a declination or conjugation chart. On the right-hand side of the screen, a reader can decide to open or close boxes containing various English translations of the Latin lines currently in view, as well as boxes containing links to sources where the text is quoted, such as the aforementioned dictionaries, or links to commentaries.
In closing, I wish to express my belief that hypertext does not mean the death of the book. To further exploit the metaphor in the title of my paper, the situation can similarly be compared to western expansion in the United States. The eastern coast continued to develop and thrive after the migrations of gold-seekers, farmers and other pioneers. The two coasts today have rather different lifestyles. Similarly, some literary forms will continue to be best served by the conventional book, such as the linear novel, while others will flourish with the possibilities offered by hypertext, such as interactive fiction, daily news sources and encyclopedias. In the introduction to their compilation Imagining the Renaissance Computer, Neil Rhodes and Jonathan Sawday expressed it succinctly so: "One consequence of these new conditions is not so much the death of the book, so often predicted, as the fact that we no longer take the book for granted as the natural medium for storing and transmitting knowledge" (2). The book may no longer be the only repository of writing now, but, like linked pages within a hypertext, books are not necessarily better than or subservient to hypertexts. It is yet to be seen whether or not the progression of technology will produce an electronic book substitute that is easy on the eyes and on the wallet. The second edition of Bolter's book, with its new title focusing on the "remediation of print," explains that culture determines which writing system has the most value at any given time. For the ancient Greeks, it was the handwritten papyrus roll; for Renaissance scholars, it was the printed book. Hypertext remediates print by enabling multiple, non-linear readings. Our collective culture will have to determine whether or not this new format betters or compliments the printed book.
Bolter, Jay David. Writing Space: The Computer, Hypertext, and the History of Writing. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1991.
Bolter, Jay David. Writing Space: Computers, Hypertext, and the Remediation of Print. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2001.
The Encylopædia Britannica: A Dictionary of Arts, Sciences, Literature and General Information. 11th Edition. 29 vols. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1911.
Encyclopædia Britannica Online: Academic Edition. 2008. Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. 21 July 2008. (http://search.eb.com).
Joyce, Michael. afternoon, a story. 3rd Edition. Diskette. Cambridge, MA: Eastgate Press, 1992.
Mitteldeutsche Selbstzeugnisse aus der Zeit des Dreißigjährigen Krieg. Ed. Hans Medick and Norbert Winnige. 2008 (projected). Thüringer Universitäts- und Landesbibliothek Jena. (http://www.mdsz.thulb.uni-jena.de) (not yet accessible). Test version accessed 20 July 2008 at (http://www.tasc.mpg.de/mdsz/sz/).
The New Encylopædia Britannica in 32 Volumes. 15th Edition. Chicago: Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., 2002.
Perseus Digital Library 4.0 Ed. Gregory R. Crane. 2008. Tufts University. 21 July 2008. (http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/).
Project Gutenberg. (http://www.gutenberg.org).
Razzi, Jim. Dragons! Sylark Choose Your Own Adventure #16. Toronto: Bantam Skylark, 1984.
Rhodes, Neil and Jonathan Sawday, Ed. The Renaissance Computer: Knowledge Technology in the First Age of Print. New York: Routledge, 2000.
Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia. 2008. 24 July 2008. (http://en.wikipedia.org).