Doctoral Consortium Review of Cole by Millard

Please read these comments, and decide which comments you agree with and which you disagree with. Do any of the questions indicate that the commentator has not understood your work correctly and therefore means that you need to modify your presentation? Alternatively, how can you best answer the questions that they raise?

summary

The author argues that little is understood about the way in which readers tackle a hypertext. He makes the case that many existing literary works are really hypertexts forced into linear form by the technology that existed at the time of their creation. In particular he presents The Cantos by Ezra Pound as an example. The author then goes on to explore ideas of hypertext theory with The Cantos as a canvas. As I am not familiar with the work I cannot comment of the suitability of The Cantos for this goal. However I do feel that the author is right in that little is understood about a readers interaction with a hypertext and that there is an interesting opportunity to examine this interaction by looking at pre-hypertext hypertexts!

clarification

I would have liked to have seen more precisely the authors arguments as to why The Cantos is a hypertext! Is it truly a hypertext or does it become hypertextual in the context of other literary and worldly works such as the KYBERNEKYIA link (at the bottom of the Position Statement) implies. On a lesser note, I was a little confused at the point where the author starting discussing the primacy of the link : “The primacy of the link in hypertext theory was introduced by Bush and Nelson …. Another of the objectives of my dissertation is to explore the genealogy of this belief…. a belief that has often been accepted as axiomatic in hypertext theory. ” The author implies that he disagrees that the primacy of the link is an axiom. Is this really his belief? And if it is what does the author think a link actually is?

debate

At one point the author states that : “I find that "surfing" may be the more apt metaphor [for hypertext reading]… a fusion of freedom and constraint that I find inherent in the act of hypertextual reading” This is all very well other that the fact that there is danger in the flexibility of surfing. Surfing implies browsing large quantities of material looking for the occasional gem, a big wave etc – an apt analogy for the web, but not I feel for hypertext reading. Even a linear text can be broken into a hypertext, it is just that the links merely take the reader from one point in the story to the next - hour by hour, scene by scene. The linear author’s role in this situation is to guide the reader through the material such that he or she can gain full satisfaction from it. The challenge for hypertext literature seems not to find a role for the hypertext but a role for the author! In this worst case the material is presented in its raw form and the reader has to ‘surf’ it to get the best out of it. But perhaps in the best case the author is still evident, guiding the reader through the material, collecting scenes together into linear sequences and presenting alternate chronologies and paths through the text. That’s not to say that all paths must be preordained but it does imply that the material is structured in such a way that the author’s touch is always evident in the grand design.

information

effectiveness

I found this presentation extremely informative and interesting. Spoilt slightly only by the ambiguity of why The Cantos actually is a hypertext, and in what way.