Field Trip City

I read a fascinating article by George P. Landow today on the implications of hypertext on electronic publishing - a refreshing change after slogging through Kristeva and Greene. It seems to me that the difference between the reader of a physical text and the reader of a virtual one is activity - to use Landow's language, the hypertext reader is active. He/she is able to engage with the text on levels that far surpass in interactivity their engagement with a physical text, via numerous practices of linking. However, it's up to the reader to take advantage of these practices.

Vannevar Bush came up with the idea for the Memex system and predicted the existence of Wikipedia over sixty years ago: "wholly new forms of encyclopedias will appear, ready-made with a mesh of associative trails running through them, ready to be dropped into the memex and there amplified." I find the idea of the dynamic online text very interesting. When I ask people about reading books on their computers, the answer is always similar: they'd rather hold a book in their hands. I think what they're really talking about is more associative. People spend hours at their computers every day: reading, making trails, absorbing information. But when it comes to the idea of reading a novel, they dissociate it from the computer, itself a signifier of open-ended information, a wellspring far too large and seemingly infinite to comprehend actually finishing a text. When we read online, we do so to learn, which is a continual process. We don't regard a novel in such a way. A novel is physically finite and armed with a beginning that proceeds to an end, regardless of our poststructural interpretations.

I have a feeling that this society will evolve to become increasingly active in their engagement with texts of all sorts. Landow makes the argument that books presented the same kind of technological impact when the printing press made documents available on a mass scale, and hypertext is no different. Eventually we're going to see texts existing in a completely dynamic state. There will be no such thing as a novel without visual and theoretical aid, without the option to access parallel studies, contexts and critical opinions including those of our own. We'll be able to build bridges between all texts and immerse literature so far into the intertextual that the notion of authority will completely break apart. The implications are astounding. It's just a matter of how it will be marketed.

I bought a copy of Beetlejuice at the grocery store today and watched it along with some X-Files over dinner. I'm almost finished with Season 2 and it's featured half of the members of Hard Core Logo in roles (half the fun of watching a US series filmed up north are the familiar faces that pop up). I also finished putting together Andrea's present, but given that she reads this page I won't divulge its contents (patience cookie).

Bywords sent me a check for a poem of mine they published in their Quarterly Journal. It's the first time I've ever made money off of my writing. $5. I'm thinking I might frame it.