The Space Between

Kinetics and Spatial Language

Nelson was not alone in thinking that aesthetics, “fonts and glitz,” drive the Web. Michael Joyce, the author of the nigh-canonical hypertext fiction afternoon—which has been reviewed by been reviewed by almost every hypertext theorist since 1991—says hypertext raises both reader and author awareness of the structure of the reading environment, the screen in this case instead of the page. For Joyce, hypertext is “the confirmation of the visual kinetic of reading,” proof that the ways readers look at a page matter to understanding (580). He says hypertext “engages working writing with aesthetic and readerly questions about linking” (580). Instead of the fixity and media transparency that are symbolic of print (Landow H-T 2.0 79), hypertext encourages movement and an awareness of the reading environment, the space around the reader and the virtual space in which the hypertext exists. The virtual space’s importance is reflected in the spatial jargon that surrounds hypertext: Web site, uniform resource locator, and Web address, for example. Users surf the Web and browse online documents. The use of words connoting space and travel is common.

Popular culture has adapted this spatial language. William Gibson’s novel Neuromancer is just one example. Published in 1984, the novel imagines a system resembling the World Wide Web as a kind of parallel reality, a “consensual hallucination” into which a user projects her “disembodied consciousness” (5). Users, hackers, and “cowboys” visit cyberspace, easily “flipping” back and forth between reality and the Web, experiencing both in real-time.

The spaces and geographies of cyberspace and the novel’s work are entwined. In the world of Neuromancer, the east coast of the United States has grown into one giant urban complex called the Sprawl. When the main character meets a woman whose “accent puts her south along the Sprawl, toward Atlanta” (9), it becomes clear that relative thinking has become more important that specific location. A person’s home is located within the whole Sprawl or urban web, rather than in one specific city. The city is no longer a place; the world is instead one linked community with blended cultures and societies (think of the vision of Los Angeles in the film Blade Runner, streets filled with both taxis and rickshaws, the amalgam of distinct cultures). As in the real world, geographic place in cyberspace is not important. Just like the Sprawl connects all cities, cyberspace links all computers. Space doesn’t matter.

The virtual world in the Matrix series of films is also similar to Gibson’s cyberspace. One interesting note about both the novel and the films is that in both, the virtual world is liberatory. When the characters are disconnected from the network, they are vulnerable. As Gibson’s main character Case says, being disconnected meant living in the “prison of his own flesh” (6). In the Matrix films, the characters’ ultimate goal was freedom from the prison-like virtual world; but to earn that freedom, they had to venture into the heart of the machine. Salvation lies within, so to speak.

Is the network meant to replace reality or to augment it? Arguments could be made for both, depending on how one thinks of the purpose of hypertext. Is the purpose of hypertext and its derivative technologies, as Nelson claimed, human freedom? Freedom from what? Likely, Nelson meant freedom from the prison-house of language and freedom from the piles of paper needed to sustain a modern academic life. Nelson would argue that hypertext augmented reality by providing a steady and dependable resource for the work that would be done offline. On the other hand, modern Web applications (all based on hypertext, remember) ask users to document and/or live their lives online. Massive multiplayer online games, like World of Warcraft and Everquest (and to a lesser extent social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook), recreate societies on multiple levels—from the economic to the social. A person who may feel inadequate in reality, trapped in their bodies as Gibson’s Case or Forster’s Vashti felt when unhooked from the network, may seek a virtual existence where they can exceed the boundaries of the body and often life. It is escapism in yet another, modern iteration.

Both approaches—hypertext as an augment to reality and as an augmented reality—seek some kind of liberation. Whether it is liberating a person from mind-numbing labor or freeing a person from an intolerable existence, hypertext provides a medium through which to manifest those real world, corporeal desires in a functional language.