Untitled - witz cultural

325THE POLITICS OFHYPERTEXTthe industry" (I43). Lovink, who took part in Amsterdam's early experimentsin using the Internet to empower citizens-see his "The Digital City-Metaphor and Community"-providesan example of what happens whenseveralarge corporations try to control the technology. He was one of manyobservers who noted that in the 1990s Microsoft and other large corporateinterests tried to undermine the fundamental user-centered nature of theWorld Wide Web by turning it into another broadcast medium: "Due to thecommercialization of the net, big publishing houses, cable giants, telecomsand software companies have moved in and are now pushing the web in thedirection of old-style broadcasting technologies. Wired caTls this the revengeof 'TV"' ('A Push Media Critique," 130). Lovinck wrote this in 1997, whenMicrosoft tried to direct users of its Internet Explorer in discrete channelsthrough which information could be "pushedl'The attempt was a completefailure, for users preferred to search the Web, however inefficiently, andchoose their own links and paths. The notorious failure of push media, Iwould argue, demonstrates that users believe that user-centered hypermediabest serves their needs-and that networked computer environments do infact empower users to act as more than mere consumers. In his "InsiderkGuide to Tactical Media," Lovink argues that information technologies do infact have an ideological bias: "Being a 'difference engine' on the level ofrepresentationmay put out a lot of useful public content, but it does not touchon the 'media question.' What is of interest are the ideological strucfures writteninto the software and network architecture. It is not just enough to subvertor abuse this powerful structure" (263). The reactions by users to commercialattempts to turn the World Wide Web into another form of broadcastmedia-thatis, the choices they made-demonstrate that users experiencedthe Web as having a bias toward reader empowerment.The most extreme doubters include those like Espen Aarseth, who deniesthe possibility that hypertext in any way empowers or liberates its users. Letus look first at Aarseth, whom we may accurately describe as the leadingantihypertext theorist. In his otherwise valuable Cybertext (1997), whichadvances pioneering ideas about computer games, he mounts a fierce attackon most earlier writings on hypertext, particularly on those that invoke poststructuralisttheory to explain digital media or that claim that the new mediain any way empowers users. Although he himself freely draws on Eco,Genette, and Barthes at points in his book, he charges that people who usecritical theory to explain hypertext, or to point out parallels between them, areusing an "imperialist pretext" to "colonize" another field (83). Similarly, tocall paper-based texts that partially anticipate electronic hypertext proto-