Re: Creative Hypertext discussion
Thomas Peter Lukas (tpl4q@fermi.clas.Virginia.EDU)
Wed, 21 Feb 1996 23:21:01 -0500 (EST)
I just finished reading from Page to Pixel and began thinking
about the experience of reading from the computer screen. I am
currently taking three cuorses which have all their readings on
the reb, like this one. At the be3ginning of the semester, I
was one of those people who printed everything out, except in
this course, because all the links and nodes prohibited that
kind of thing. So I was forced to start reading from the
screen for four or five hours a week. Since then, I have begun
to read everything from the screen.
One of my favirite things about reading hypertextual
works is the "lostness' I find. I can compare this to
experiences of going to the library stacks for a book and
spending a few hours sitting on the floor. time passing,
raeding. This happens to me with hypertext--I can sit in from
of the screen, whi without holding anything in my hands, and
simply get lost in the text. Links seem to help me achieve
this--at each link, I make a choice to get more lost, and to go
deeper into the text. Of course, I can do the same thing while
reading a novel and thinking about a passage, turning back to a
related passage, and pondering the significance of whatever
connection I have made between the two. It seems that this
kind of "close reading" is less likely when reading from the
computer screen. Its more of a go-fast feeling when reading
from the computer, where making miles, rather than plumbing
depths, is the objective.
Tom Luaks