The Space Between

Mediation

In Writing Space, Bolter describes the windows displayed on typical computer screens, common in all modern operating systems today like Windows Vista, Mac’s OS X, and Linux. The window is a kind of framing device, he says, that is important to readers’ involvements with a hypertext (Writing Space 69). As today’s computer users know, resizing a window that contains text causes that text to be rearranged to fit the new size of the window—whether that text is stored on your computer or fetched over the Web. Unlike a printed book, the change in typography is immediate and dynamic and is dependent on the preferences of the user or reader. As Bolter says, “the typography is not determined prior to the reading, but is instead a manifestation of the act of reading” (Writing Space 71). The lesson to take is that the hypertextual reading process, the preferences of the reader, play a big role in creating the text, and the space it will be read in, for that instance.

With so many Web users viewing so many pages in so many different ways, Web designers had to come up with a way to combat this perceived inconsistency in display. The answer was CSS, which stands for Cascading Style Sheets. CSS is a method for coding specific instructions for displaying text sent to a Web browser that ignores user preference. In other words, no matter how fine a monitor’s resolution or how big their window, the Web page’s elements will look the same. CSS pre-formats pages before users read them. Any control the user might have had over how they are displayed is taken away unless the page’s designer specifically includes that option. Through CSS, the author regains the “opportunity to control the procedure of reading, because he or she can program restrictions into the text itself” (Bolter Writing Space 30). Not only does CSS limit the reader’s control over a hypertext, but it also allows electronic text to imitate the appearance of print, a move that still lends credibility to a Web site because of the respect print commands.

In hypertext, the author and reader struggle for control of the reading process in a way that print does not allow. Hypertexts native features consistently overturn conventions that centuries of fixed-text print have established. Words and letters become fluid, flowing into the space defined by the reader. The reader can choose the typeface, display size, and colors. The reader, through the use of hyperlinks can nominate any text to be the primary lexia or leave that position vague. Either way, the process of evaluating and interpreting a text falls more and more into the readers’ hands. It becomes less a process of deciphering the meaning the author coded into that text and more a process of generating meaning through reader-defined contexts and experiences.

But in the face of this subversion, authors can use specially designed tools to bring the hypertext back under control. CSS can limit a reader’s options and make sure that how a page is parsed is far from the reader’s thoughts. In this metaphorical power struggle, the author has a vested interest in keeping the medium transparent. When the reader thinks about how the text is constructed, it opens the door to interpretations that the author did not intend, but if the reader is kept focused purely on the words, then the number of interpretations is limited. Think of the film version of The Wizard of Oz. As long as the Wizard stayed behind the curtain, the mechanisms by which he transmitted his words to Dorothy and her fellow travelers were transparent. As a result, he maintained his power and influence over them; yet as soon as the curtain is drawn back and the mechanism is revealed, he loses that power. His message was no longer mediated by the mechanism that people feared and respected. By circumventing the mechanism, jumping over the space between the “author” and “reader,” everyone is able to have a meaningful discourse.