|
But the desire of humans to access more information in a better
way is not limited to Internet usage. TV channel-switching and
the five-minute maximum attention span are taught to our kids
from a very early age through TV programmes and computer games[9]
(often designed like hypertext documents with secret passages
and hidden links to other parts of the game) (see Figure
3 ).
| |
|
| |
Figure 3
: Information networks as a
result of hypertext implementation. Hypertext is an enabler
for a different kind of access to knowledge. |
A marketing researcher recently told me too that he was in the
process of reconsidering the way that he was writing his books:
‘People no longer want to read books from page 1 to page 250.
What today’s readers want is books to which they can refer when
they want to, and which they can start reading from any page’.
It is because of this change in behaviour, because people want
to access information in that way that those in charge of delivering
and packaging contents have resorted to these new tools.Conversely,
it is also because people are getting increasingly familiar with
that sort of information lay-out, namely through search-engines,
that they are looking more and more for other information sources
than Internet-based ones to be structured in that way too. The
classic hierarchical structure for information presentation is
less natural but certainly more consistent with traditional school
teaching. But it is also appearing less and less attractive to
users and readers who managed to get used to the new way of presenting
and collecting information over time. As a result, the apparent
chaos generated by hypertext is something that most users and
readers have gotten used to, and even have grown to like a lot.
II
b- The house of leaves or the advent of hypertext literature
|
|
|
| |
Figure 4: The House of Leaves
is a postmodern ‘hypertext’ novel with a zest. |
Amongst the world’s most recent experiments on the extension
of the hypertext concept to literature, Mark Z. Danielewski’s
best selling novel The House of Leaves ranks very high
indeed[10]. In this novel,
Danielewski does not tell a proper story or at least not in a
linear, traditional way. Originally he did not even sign the book
with his narration behind two pseudo and somewhat unlikely writers:
Zampano and Johnny Truant. Instead, the Canadian author designed
a very complex labyrinthine novel, which seems to aim at losing
the reader, at least in appearance.
This book is a living example of what we exposed earlier on but
at the same time, it is also a good example of the limitations
of the hypertext concept which after all is not very well suited
to paper-based novels.
|
