Untitled - witz cultural

343THE POLITICS OFHYPERTEXTthat the'World Wide Web includes so much information, finding the multiplepoints of view and learning how to evaluate them become crucial.Several key features of hypertext systems intrinsically promote a newkind of academic freedom and empowerment. Reader-controlled texts permitstudents to choose their own way. The political and educational necessityfor this feature provides one reason why hypertert systems must always containboth bidirectional links and efficient navigational devices; otherwisedevelopers can desffoy the educational value of hypertext with instructionalsystems that alienate and disorient readers by forcing them down a predeterminedpath as if they were rats in a maze. A second feature of hypertefi thathas crucial political implications appears in the sheer quantity of informationthe reader encounters, since that quantrty simultaneously protects readersagainst consffaint and requires them to read actively, to make choices. A thirdliberating and empowering quality of (read-write) hypertext appears in thefact that the reader also writes and links, for this power, which removes muchofthe gap in conventional status relations between reader and author, permitsreaders to read actively in a much more powerfirl way-by annotatingdocuments, arguing with them, leaving their own traces. As long as anyreader has the power to enter the system and leave his or her mark, neitherthe !'r'anny of the center nor that of the majority can impose itself. The veryopen-endedness of the text also promotes empowering the reader.The Political Vision of Hypertext;or, The Message in the MediumDoes hypertext as medium have a political message? Does ithave a particular biasl As the capacity of hypertext systems tob; rnfinitelr recenterable suggests' they have the corollarycharacteristic of being antihierarchical and democratic in severaldifferent ways. To start, as the pioneering authors of "Reading and Writingthe Elecffonic Book" point out, in such systems, "ideally, authors andreaders should have the same set of integrated tools that allow them tobrowse through other material during the document preparation process andto add annotations and original links as they progress through an informationweb. In effect, the boundary between author and reader should largelydisappear." One sign ofthe disappearance ofboundaries between author andreader consists in its being the reader, not the author, who largely determineshow the reader moves through the system, for the reader can determine theorder and principle of investigation. Hypertext has the potential, thus far onlypartially realized, to be a democratic or multicentered system in yet anotherway: as readers contribute their comments and individual documents, the