SALLY LEWIS

SALLY LEWIS

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Networked Media // Week Five Reading

The week five reading is a continuation from Landow (2006), in which I think truly helped to consolidate my understanding of hypertext/hypermedia. Alright, so time for some more talk on hypertext.

What I found most interesting in the reading was the mentioning of how ‘electronic linking’ has had an affect of linearisation, or more so, its shifting away from linearisation. This being the result of hypertexts’ encouragement for participants to choose different paths and navigate themselves throughout the online docuverse that is the internet, rather that following a singular linear line. For example, you could be scrolling through Facebook, find an interesting article, click on its link that directs you to the article on its original website. You continue to read through this article, oh look it ends with a YouTube video related to what you have just read. You click on this video (because let’s be real, you want to watch that thing on full-screen, 1080p HD) that then takes you to it on YouTube. Once you’e finished the video, you see the ‘related videos’. One catches your curiosity, so you henceforth click on THAT video. Watch it. Finish it. More related videos. Watch one. Finish watching that one. Hey what movie is that guy in? You google that mofo. IMDB. That’s what it was! Oh look he’s going to be in THAT upcoming movie. Clicks link to THAT movie….. OKAY. I think you get the picture. Hypertext is insane. Hypertext can see you starting off on Facebook, and ending up on only god knows what website.

‘Hypertext redefines not only the beginnings and endings of the text but also its borders – its sides as it were’.. This statement here given by Landow in his writings I think perfectly sums up the power of hypertext and its potential to blur the boundaries of texts’ beginnings and ends. Especially on in the internet. The ultimate hypertext system whose mass amounts of ‘intratextual and intertextual connections between points of text (including images) – become equivalent, thus bringing texts closer together and blurring the boundaries among them’.

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