Hypertext and Spatial-Temporal Dimensions :: Internet Essays Writing

Hypertext and Spatial-Temporal Dimensions missing works cited Hypertext affords the user the ability to make decisions based on where he or she intends or needs to go, and to decide what information or images to process and what to disregard as opposed to what the author intends. The user is free to move around from link to link while constantly making decisions about what he wants to explore and what he deems unnecessary in his search; there is no correct path, rather all paths are relative to each individual user to what his preferences are. The electronic reader is encouraged to think of the text as a collection of interrelated units floating in a space of at least two dimensions. Her movement among units does not require flipping pages or consulting the table of contents; instead, she passes instantly and effortlessly from one place to another (Bolter 175.) With hypertext, as opposed to traditional methods of publishing such as books or magazines, information is presented in a space rather than in a physical object. Electronic readers move around a space with expandable dimensions, the reader is more or less in a small world in which he can explore things not confined by a physical book but opened in a room where everything is next to everything else, which is to say that there is nothing that really separates information apart from other information, each item is accessible through links from another item. I visited a hypertext website, an online journal called Kairos dealing primarily with rhetoric, technology, and issues in hypertext, without motive beyond curiosity browsing the list of immediately available articles when one caught my attention. An article by Janice R. Walker entitled, gThe Third Wave: Yes, But Can They Write?h seemed interesting, and having no idea what the Third Wave is or who gtheyh are, I opened the article and immediately went to the Third Wave link. I wanted to read her conclusions and ultimately whether gtheyh could write. Instant gratification. (As it turns out gtheyh are students, and Walker is unresolved as to whether they can write.) It was not until after I had found the information that I sought that I returned to the Letfs Begin Here link and explored the article to