Confession #1 I didn’t know what hypertext was.
According to the Reading 1 for this week (an extract from: Nelson, Theodor Holm. Literary Machines 91.1) Hypertext is “non-sequential writing text that branches and allows choices to the reader, best read at an interactive screen”. This immediately made me question whether the invention of hypertext and its ability to jump from one idea to the next has impacted our attention span in any way. I constantly see articles online about how teenagers and young adults have incredibly short attention spans because of their constant use of the internet. Maybe this is the case. I often find myself googling something like ‘Max Brenner locations’ and end up (through various clicked links and advertisements) watching Australian Idol season 1 highlights #truestory. Is this through the use of hypertext?
What I also found interesting was how the author envisioned the year 2020 saying “the future is not what it used to be”. It is a little scary how far we have come since that was written. The author predicted that by 2020…
- Offices would be paperless
- Publishing would be electronic
- Education will be focused on initiative understanding
- Libraries may not exist
Many of these things have already taken place, which is crazy. My mum was telling me the other day that in high school she took a class for typewriting and at uni she was taught how to use a computer. Whereas my 3 year old cousin Elsie can unlock my phone, take a selfie and then scroll through my entire camera roll selecting photos to zoom in on.
I’m just glad that as predicted, computers have advanced enough to simplify our lives and that the human species did survive the new millennium, unlike Nelson’s questioning.
– Caitlin
