Re: pole cat
Jonathan Chiu (jkc6a@uva.pcmail.virginia.edu)
Fri, 4 Oct 96 10:34:44 EDT
I agreed alot with what Jurgan had to say in the "poles in your face"
article. I think that cons of Hypertext have been vastly overlooked in the
face of the something new and exciting. My qualms is, with the "death of the
author", and the transition to multiple or no-authored texts, where does the
quality go? I for one read books becuase they are written by good authors.
When a book is written through hypertext, the author sacrifices some of the
control and gives the reader some of the control. I don't want any control
when I'm reading the latest Robert Jordan book. I wanna know about HIS
story, I don't want to have to make up my own story. Now i know this is a
little extreme, since all of the links are still written by the author. But
I still don't know how a hypertext can in any way compete with a book. It
seems to me that if you want to write a good, quality, hypertext book, you
have to write 10-20 really good books, and mesh them all together.
Otherwise, you are going to have a mess.
Jon