The Old Future of Media
Posted by Zach PowersI’ve been studying Literary Hypermedia, and seeing as how this blog is one form thereof I thought it an appropriate vehicle to continue the discussion started elsewhere by others. In the early-to-mid Nineties, when the world looked to the infinite future, the Internet seemed to be the apparatus with which this future would be realized. We all remember a thousand ugly webpages, in garish websafe colors, with text rendered in serif fonts, and it’s hard not to wonder how we were all alright with the future looking so bad.
Of more interest to me, however, is the demise of some of those dreams for the potential of the medium. I’m speaking in particular of Hypertext Fiction. This is more than the process of translating printed word into digitized word. As informed by critical theory (don’t worry, I promise not to quote any), Hypertext is [was?] a new form of literature - a multidiscursive, decentered narrative in which the term “narrative” is misleading. Put simply, the text doesn’t flow forward in a linear matter, allowing the reader to jump around in an order established by the reader. There are obvious problems with this concept, outside of the ideal theoretical realm in which it was imagined. A story without a story can hardly be called a story.
Around 1995, and even before, there were a number of writers experimenting with the form, struggling through their ignorance of web and graphic design to locate the end product of the medium’s potential. But when I conducted a recent Google search for variations of “Hypertext Fiction” and “Literary Hypermedia” I discovered that almost all web-based hypertextual works of fiction were those leftover from this initial period of experimentation, and that half of those links returned by Google were dead.
I’ve rambled on here for quite a while without being interesting and/or funny, but let me sum this up by saying that I think hypertext deserves a period of re-exploration. While early attempts probably failed to discover the broader ramifications of the combination of fiction and the internet, there is still great potential, and somebody out there is going to discover the power of hypertext and be friggin’ famous because they do. Why shouldn’t that be one of us?
February 7th, 2008 at 6:27 am
I might be inclined to argue here that what was once classified as “hypertext,” the way I was taught in 6th grade computer class, has done exactly the opposite of fade into obscurity. It’s so prevalent and accepted in our Internet wanderings that we long ago ceased to categorize it with a formal title. Anyone who reads blogs or Wikipedia or anything online would attest to the multilayered necessity of the online world.
But is there much in the way of fiction as a genre? I guess not. James Walling’s (fantastic!) serial fiction on this here blog is not in hypertext. Interesting. Maybe our next contest will be a hypertext fiction contest.
One more thing: for interested readers in the universe of wild and crazy hypertext, please go read Mark Danielewski’s “House of Leaves.”