Untitled - witz cultural

'r 53RECONFIGURINGWRITINGdepartureinformation and the fourth aftivolor entranceinformation. In eachcase, creators of hypermedia materials must decide what readers need toknow at either end of a hypermedia link in order to make use of what theyfind there. The general issue here is one of interpretation. More specifically,to enable visitors to this new kind of text to read it pleasurably, comfortably,and efficiently how much interpretation must the designer-author attach tothe system as a whole, to link pathways, and to documents at the end of linkslUnfortunately, no analogy maps reality with complete accuracy. Navigation,the art ofcontrolling the course ofa plane or ship, presupposes a spatialworld, but one does not entirely experience hypertext as such. In navigation,we remember, one must determine one's spatial position in relation to landmarksor astral locations and then decide on a means of moving toward one'sgoal, which lies out of sight at some spatial distance. Because it takes time tomove across the separating distance, one also experiences that distance astime: one's ship lies so many nautical miles and therefore so many days andhours from oneb goal. The reader, however, does not experience hypertext inthis way. The reader of Paradise Lost,for example, experiences as equallyclosethe linked parts of Homer and Vergil to which the poem's opening sectionallude and linked lines on the next page or in the next book (see Figwe 72).Because hypertert linking takes relatively the same amount of time to traverse,all linked terts are experienced as lying at the same "distance" from thepoint of deparhrre. Thus, whereas navigation presupposes that one findsoneself at the center of a spatial world in which desired items lie at varyingdistances from one's own location, hypertext (and other forms of addressable,digital textuality) presupposes an experiential world in which the goal isalways potentially but one jump or link away.General Observations. Hlpermedia as a medium conveys the strong impressionthat its links signify coherent, purposefirl, and above all useful relationships.From which follows that the very existence of links conditions thereader to expect purposeful, important relationships between linked materials.One of the presuppositions in hypertext, particularly when applied to educationaluses, is that linking materials encourages habits of relational thinkingin the reader. Such intrinsichypermedia emphasis on interconnectedness(or connectivity) provides a powerful means of teaching sophisticated criticalthinking, particularly that which builds on multicausal analyses and relatingdifferent kinds of data. But since hypermedia systems predispose users toexpect significant relationships among lexias, those that disappoint theseexpectations tend to appear particularly incoherent and without significance.