The Space Between

Organization of Thesis

In the spirit of hypertext, this thesis is split into numerous shorter sections, or lexias. Each will be titled. Though the entire thesis may be read in order, from beginning to end, I encourage the reader to choose his or her own path through the text. By keeping the lexias fairly short, I hope that the reader will be enticed to read more of them. To that end, I have cross-referenced them so that readers may follow the references as they might follow links in a hypertext or trails on a mythical memex.

For those who crave order: the first part of the thesis will deal with how hypertext has emerged over the last fifty years. From its initial conception as a democratizing agent to the commercial dyna-lith it has become since the Dot-Com Boom and the emergence of Web 2.0. The quarrel over the definition of hypertext will be addressed in this section as well. Both editions of Jay David Bolter’s book Writing Space will be invaluable to this section.

The second section will discuss the emergence of new languages to deal with hypertext, specifically HTML—a form- and aesthetically-based code-language that has minimized the importance of static text online. These form-based languages enable electronic texts to emulate print in looks, if not in function; so the “bookishness” of hypertext will be discussed here. Essays by Roger Chartier, Susan Hockey, and Michael Joyce will inform this section.

The third section will look at hyperlinks, the defining characteristics of hypertext. These powerful textual devices allow readers to choose their own paths through a reading and give authors new techniques to explore. They also bridge the intertextual space and dynamically create new, never-before-conceived texts. George Landow’s work on the rhetorics of departure and arrival will provide the background for this section, as will Stuart Moulthrop’s essays on hypertext.

The fourth section will approach the controversy over the digital author and her struggle with the reader. This section will rely heavily on Barthes’ S/Z and “The Death of the Author,” as well as Foucault’s “What is an Author?” This section will discuss questions of “writerly” and “readerly” texts and the “author function.” Issues of copyright and intellectual property, with minimal references to economics, will also be discussed in this section.

The thesis will conclude on ideas of copyright, intellectual property, plagiarism, and how they are being reconceived thanks to the Web and hypertext. These are issues I feel will drive hypertext (and hypermedia) in the years to come and have the biggest impact on how we read and write online.

I hope that by the end of her reading session, a reader in the humanities will take away a greater knowledge of the history of hypertext theory and better understand how hypertext and network technologies can fit with the goals of the humanities, which I see as to understand the human condition through the various artifacts humans leave behind. As Leroy Searle writes, hypertexts “allow us to see ourselves in thought, and to actively practice it, not in some splendid isolation but in and through others’ words” (5). What better way to understand humanity than a method that allows us to see how we think, how we come to the decisions that drive life and ultimately the course of destiny? The Romantic notion of the isolated, struggling, pining author is dead. The humanities need to reflect the growing intertextuality and cooperative nature of writing that has evolved thanks to computers and their accompanying technologies and become comfortable writing and reading among the blurred remains of traditional binaries.