Re: Rationale of Hypertext

Robert Joseph Solfanelli (rjs7v@server1.mail.virginia.edu)
Fri, 25 Oct 1996 11:59:21 -0400 (EDT)

>The traditon of representation uniquely through a book (up
>until present) has been, inherently, a misrepresetnation.
>And since
>society now has the means (means which are becoming more
>and more
>accessbile) it is unjustfiable for the literary world not
>to shift to
>hyper-mediums. Not only does it fail to truly represent
>the author's
>work, but the book form becomes increasingly cumbersome as
>"the archieves
>(all the criticsm and supplemetary texts accompaning
>texts) sink into a
>sea of white paper."

I can't agree with this--if an author wrote on sheets of
paper, how can the same papers fail to represent said
author's work? I can certainly see the advantages to
having access to certain documents, songs, literarty works,
etc. that might have influenced the author, but I don't
think that the absence of such detracts from the author's
individual work. Clearly it is the author's job to convey
his/her message through the available medium. If a (and
this is debateable) "better" medium comes along later, who
is to say that the author might have expressed the message
any more clearly simply because of new technology?

-----
Bob Solfanelli
solf@virginia.edu
http://faraday.clas.virginia.edu/~rjs7v/