Audience – a valued member of any form of production or media.  This seems like a common theme throughout all of my readings at the moment.  How an audience is seemingly more important than the creator.  How an audiences’ vision can outweigh what an author intended.  Hypertext was first  used with caution as creators imagined the audience would find it difficult to navigate and the possibility of becoming ‘lost’ was quite prominent.  It proved quite confusing due to the ‘sluggishness’ of early hypertext.  “In an era where following a link might lead to delays of many seconds or minutes” (Bernstein, 2016)  many students would bring books and research material to study while the next page loaded therefore “it was easy to forget what you were reading.” (Bernstein, 2016).

There was a fear that people would become confused in this tangle of hypertext links which prompted the term “the navigation problem.” (Bernstein, 2016).  People tried to simplify hypertext by using less links, shortening links etc.  It came to a point where hypertext creators realised that the audience wasn’t actually confused as originally presumed.  Hypertext was seemingly very successful.  But nowadays with blogs and websites readily available, we can see that hypertext is very useful and really, quite simple.  We have navigational tools all over the internet to assist us in finding what we need.  Even this blog that you’re reading right now is organised into categories and has tags to distinctly remove it from posts relating to my other subjects.  If you want to read about media 1, all you need to do is click the hyperlink on the right.

Structure and organisation promotes efficiency.  “Rigid structure if often promoted for its efficiency and cost effectiveness, particularly for large web sites.” (Bernstein, 2016).  Rigid design does not advocate irregularity – it is a mistake.  Constant, unchanging structure, simplicity and accessibility is what makes hypertext so easy to use.  Audiences’ do not want to be surprised, they want to be able to link there way to an answer – then leave the site.

So, all in all, I think that hypertext is something that we as an audience takes for granted.  We have forgotten that hypertext was never super fast and accessible like it is now.  We now have web design occupations so websites can be engaging and ergonomic.  The digital world relies on hypertext and I think it’s one of those things that you will never realise it’s positive impact unless it’s taken away.

Bernstein, Mark. “Delightful Vistas: Revisiting the Hypertext Garden.” Travels in Intermediality. Lebanon, US: Dartmouth, 2012. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 8 February 2016. 142-146