[READING] Hypertext

So, lets get onto the hypertext reading, the smaller one. I’ve been busy this week.

• The printing press has been around since the 15th century. I’m sure people back then thought that was the death of handwriting, but 5 centuries later it is still around and probably not going anywhere in the near future.
• Its interesting to consider that a reed pen was considered a technology, but that’s only because we associate technology with computers, hard drives and things made from industrial metals.
• The handwritten text is much more capable of carrying human emotion with it. If you send a letter to Barrack Obama, you may get a text response with a signature, or even without one. Yes, you got a response, but not a human one. You got a piece of paper with pre-determined text on it. No emotion.
• techne: technology; art or craft
• The technology of writing comes from the person. Just as a car becomes and extention of our body, so does a pen and paper. So how isn’t a pen and paper a technology?
• There is a huge amount of technology behind a pen, seen in production and distribution of the product.
• Comparing pen and ink markings to hieroglyphics, the older technology is able to last the longest. In the day and age of the computer, it could be said that computer text will last longer, but it all depends on how it is stored. Maybe if it’s stored on an impenetrable cloud storage system compared to a PC hard drive. The portability of hieroglyphs was also an issue.

Interesting stuff.