I view hypertext as a subset of what is fundamental to web-specific work. I have an almost spiritual respect for the spatial-temporal aspect of the web interface. I think this quality can profoundly influence cognition.

True, nonlinear fiction can be easily realized with hypertext links, but nonlinearity has been well demonstrated in print by Woolf, Cortezar, Calvino, Duras and others. In more recent times, Acker, Maso and I have an extensive history of creating non-linear texts on paper. At least since the 20's, a primary area of exploration for fiction has been space-time. The challenge has been to find a form that addresses changing perceptions of time and consciousness. The goal has been to produce a form as satisfying as the conflict-crisis-resolution model.

George Landow in Hyper/Text/Theory (1994) defined Hypertext as "an information technology consisting of individual blocks of text, or lexias, and the electronic links that join them (p.1)." Computers spawning endless blue arterial veins, connecting places perhaps no one has ever been. Is this sex-on-the-beach or merely a spreading abdominal cyst that must be excised to locate the viscera?

I have a map, I'll throw on my backpack and bike to Jerry's condo. No, instead I must take the sewers of Austria or the subway. The underground passageways create anomie. Unsettling—repeatedly consulting the plan, never remembering my last stop or my next.

Hypertext can employ collage or the "cut up", accepted post modern techniques for creating nonlinearity, but this is insufficient for creating the depth and complexity I sense is possible in the medium.

The underlying hypertext markup language is significant and affects, infects thinking of those who handcode and probably those who access, as many of us include bits of code in the actual sunny side up. HTML constantly demands choices, that is spatial and highly concerned with commands and their cessation. Control of the page and assigning portions to tables or frames has undergone a fascinating series of progressions. To not close one font command on this page, caused all text blocks to form one mass of narrow columns!

Many hypertext creators are concerned with CD-ROM ventures. My interest has always been in the Web, where immediacy and new conventions are a constant.

 

 

Designer, Generalist, Contrarian, Theodor Holm Nelson, 1937-

Best known for: coining terms "hypertext" and "hypermedia," 1963.

Imitating paper on a computer screen—as almost all consumer applications presently do—is like tearing the wings off a 747 and using it as a bus on the highway.

What we really need is software designs that go into realms that cannot be visualized on paper, to break ideas and presentations out of their four-walled prison.

 

 

The Roots of Bliss: Toward Nirvana: Web-Specific Art-Writing

Excited, I begin to pedal.

 

The first woman Jerry murdered was his mother. Dying of multiple myeloma and in exquisite pain, she begged him to smother her. After her arms had heaved their last reflexive sigh, he felt guilty. Not because he loved her but because he didn't.