Untitled - witz cultural

359THE POLITICS OFHYPERTEXTmission, so that portions of it remain forbidden, out of sight, and perhapsentirely unknown. An analogy from print technology would be having accessto a published book but not to the full reports by referees, the author'scontract, the manuscript before it has undergone copyediting, and so on. Conventionally,we do not consider such materials to be part of the book. Electroniclinking has the potential, however, radically to redefine the nature ofthe text, and since this redefinition includes connection of the so-called maintext to a host ofancillary ones (that then lose the status ofancillary-ness),issues of power immediately arise. Who controls access to such materials, theauthor, the publisher, or the readerlLinking involves the essence ofhypertext technology. Already we haveseen the invention of web software that provides the capacity to create linksto texts over which others have editorial control. This ability to make linksto lexias for which one does not possess the right to make verbal or otherchanges has no analogy in the world of print technology. One effect of thiskind of linking is to create an intermediate realm between the writer and thereader, thus further blurring the distinction between these roles.When discussing the educational uses of hypertext, one immediatelyencounters the various ways that reshaping the roles of reader and authorquickly reshape those of student and teacher, for this information mediumenforces several kinds of collaborative learning. Granting students far moreconffol over their reading paths than does book technology obviously empowersstudents in a range of ways, one of which is to encourage active explorationsby readers and another ofwhich is to enable students to contextualizewhat they read. Pointing to such empowennent, however, leads directlyto questions about the politics of hlpertext.Hypertext demands the presence of many blocks of text that can linkto one another. Decisions about relevance obviously bear heavy ideologicalfreight, and hypertext's very emphasis on connectivity means that excludingany particular bit of text from the metatext places it comparatively much fartherfrom sight than would be the case in print technology. When every connectionrequires a particular level ofeffort, particularly when physical effort isrequired to procure a copy of an individual work, availability and accessibilitybecome essentially equal, as they are for the skilled reader in a modern library.When, however, some connections require no more effort than does continuingto read the same text, unconnected texts are experienced as lying muchfarther away, and availability and accessibility become very different matters'Complete hlpertextuality requires gigantic information networks of thekind now taking form on the Web. This vision of hypertext as a means of