Hypertext is not a very easy word to define. Kirshenbaum’s essay “hypertext” defines it as a “non sequential system of links and destinations.” from the four readings we had I have come to the conclusion that hypertext cannot be understood with such a simple definition. In 1965 Vannevar Bush proposed the idea for hypertext. He based his plan for the “Memex” on the human brain and associative thinking. Although the “Memex” was never created Bush’s plan was to have an interactive desk that would be able to link the user to any information he/she may have needed.
Bush’s “Memex” may not have come to be but we now have something very similar. The World Wide Web can connect users to an almost infinite amount of information. Through hyperlinks we can surf the Internet, which works very much like the human brain using associative thinking.
The definition to hypertext, “ non sequential system of links and destinations,” can also be used to describe the fictional works of Jorge Luis Borges. Especially “The Garden of Forking Paths,” witch tells about Ts’ui pen’s labyrinth. The labyrinth is a non sequential story written by Ts’ui Pen. This brings up the fact that hypertext is not only available through advanced technologies such as the Internet but can also be brought to life on the pages of a book. This style of writing became know as the “choose your own adventure” book. People can read a story non-linearly by choosing what the characters in the book will do next thus creating different story lines with each reading.
Katherine Hayles’ essay “Electronic Literature: What is it?” Talks about Shelly Jackson’s piece Patchwork Girl which takes elements of hyperlink, video, sound, and a kind of choose your own adventure style to create an interactive story. This is interesting to me because Jackson uses what, had once been a style only available to printed books and combines this with the actual physical linking of the separate parts of the “story” of the girl. The use of video and sound make this work even more interesting by offering us different and new ways to interact with a narrative.
All these stories and essays talk about hypertext as a way to interact with the stories or information both physically and mentally. Hypertext allows you to manipulate the Internet and to traverse the plot of a book in interesting and new ways. In “The Garden of Forking Paths” Ts’ui Pen believes that time is infinite with infinite possibilities and with each decision that we make in some other dimension the opposite decision is being made. I think that this philosophy sums up what hypertext does for us very nicely. We are given the option through hypertext to infinite decisions and each link we click in another place someone has chosen a different link to create a different story; access different information
