What to Resist

How can hypertext confront the leveling and totalizing forces? Not directly, but by dealing in and with those very features of the new media that threaten us. Such features include:

• a serial flow of intensities that is so seductive in its onward movement, without pause or wider connection

• simple links and the shock of juxtaposition, that can numb thought

• texts or images with a short temporal horizon, demanding no attention beyond the immediate context

• random associations

• either a single or a series of simple identities for the text and the consuming subject

• hypermedia as throw-away consumables

• eternal repetition of the same affects and insights

• if there is active response, then the immediate gratification of the insult or the flame war

These are not themselves the totalitarian forces Kwinter worries about, but they are among the characteristics of the medium that give purchase to such forces.

But these characteristics might be themselves turned to our advantage and written in other ways.

"It's not a bug, it's a feature!"