Code and literature have come together before — for the first time and most famously in hypertext. Whereas literary programming embeds bits of writing in code, in an attempt to further the communicative potential of that code, hypertext embeds bits of code in writing so as to make that writing more navigable. Simply put,
hypertext is writing that contains links to other pieces of writing. There is really nothing more, in principle, to it than that. Hypertext is one of those curious technologies that was widely theorized about in advance of being created and used. The theory of hypertext, as devised and disseminated at this institution (Brown University) and others like it, positioned hypertext as the reification of post-structuralist theory. Many grand claims have been made for it, and many lines drawn in the sand. The tendency to idealize it into some sort of potential textual utopia is what leads to the (tongue-in-cheek) name of this website. Post-structuralist literary theory has a series of tropes which align around the idea of the demotion of the author as fountain-head of meaning ("Death of the Author"), the radical plurality of texts (multi-vocal, eclectic), and the decentered nature of some avant-garde literature. Hypertext, it was thought, would be the literal embodiment of these ideas. It would usher in a new era of 'wreaders' (from writer/reader) who would take up these shiny hypertextual scalpels and remake texts in their own image. Instead of passively submitting to a linear (and therefore, the argument ran, hegemonic and authoritarian) stream of text, the audience was supposed to jump in and choose the textual strands that they favored, reading in an order chosen by themselves, entering and exiting the text at any moment.
Out of all the hyperbolic visions of the future present, hypertext was to have an interesting destiny. It's now a household item, delivered to homes and businesses across the country on telephone lines, fiber-optic cables and radio waves. A sizable portion of our national economy and some of our most prosperous and well-regarded corporations do, literally, nothing more than the mass production of hypertext. Many children grow up reading more hypertext than books. Despite all this, only a small fraction of the population is aware of the term "hypertext," and an even smaller fraction is aware of the revolutionary ways in which it was supposed to allow them to consume media. There are no 'wreaders' in this brave new world, and with every year that goes by, even less a chance of their arrival.
The simple point is that a hypertext does not give the reader
any greater power over a text. The paths through a hypertext, although multiple, are still finite, and subject to authorial craft and intent just as much as the path though a linear narrative. Instead of asking how hypertext hands authorship to the reader, we should be asking how it can potentially help the author. This is something that the inventor of hypertext, Ted Nelson, heartily agrees with:
"And this new world [...] will be built from [...] the "author" as we
have long known him or her [...] rather than what some people, such as
McLuhan and the video freaks and the CAI folk, have been telling us
would be anonymous, collective, scrambled, psychometric, and/or
boolean."
— Literary Machines 1/10
Hypertexts that pay tribute to post-structuralist theory are often plagued with problems of navigation and
disorientation. In a heavily networked structure, where there is no definite forward or backward path, and time's arrow has flown out of the picture, it's difficult to figure out how to get from where you are to where you want to be. One book on information confusion,
Data Smog, has this to say about its style: "To avoid being part of the problem, this book aims for brevity and word economy. It is also linear, not fit to surf." The preponderance of these qualities which make it difficult or (at least) annoying to read a hypertext have lead, over years of exposure, to some extremely negative feeling surrounding the whole idea.
When this site received its
first significant review, from Ben Vershbow at The Institute for the Future of the Book, he focused on the failures of hypertext as a form:
"Hypertext's main offense is that it is boring, in the same way that Choose Your Own Adventure
stories are fundamentally boring. I know that I'm meant to feel
liberated by my increased agency as reader, but instead I feel
burdened. What are offered as choices — possible pathways though the
maze — soon start to weigh like chores. It feels like a gimmick, a
cheap trick, like it doesn't really matter which way you go (that the
prose tends to be poor doesn't help). There's a reason hypertext never
found an audience."
This is why any modern day theory that wishes to discuss hypertext must respond to our current practices of hypertext use. Hypertext is everywhere, now — our systems must be based on theories of how it
is being used, not on theories of how post-structuralists
might have used it.
