Untitled - witz cultural

378NOTES TO PAGES2-3his computer-generated texts signed with a clearly suspicious-sounding name donot make sense, he has found that readers take them seriously enough to quotethem in both blogs and scholarly work, such as graduate theses. The presence ofwhat da Silva calls a signature-a name similar to that of an established authorconvincesreaders that they are reading a genuine text, even if it does not make grammaticaland other sense. (I would add that the appearance of these jumbled texts onsites that supposedly represent serious-sounding, if fictional, institutions also convincespeople that authorship and text are genuine.)3. Although the following pages examine some aspects of the history of hypertexttheory, they do not provide a history ofearlier pioneering systems, such as NLS,Augment, HES, FRESS, Guide, and Hyperties, and later developments, since valuablebasic surveys can be found in Nielsen, Multimedia and Hypertext and Hall,Davis, and Hutchings, Rethinking Hypennedia, 11-32.4. A second important caveat: by hypertext I mean only one of at least five possibleforms of the digital word. In addition to hypertext, there are four other importantkinds of electronic textuality, each of which can exist within hypertext environments,though not itself hlpertextual:1. Graphic representations oftext. Using computer graphics to represent text producesimages of it that cannot be searched, parsed, or otherwise manipulatedlinguistically. The resulting images can be animated, made to change in size,accompanied by sound, and so on. This kind of e-text, which is familiar fromtelevision advertising, is often created using Macromedia Director and Flash.2. Simple alphanumeric digital text. This form of electronic text, which functionslinguistically, appears in electronic mail, bulletin boards, and word-processingenvitonments.3. Nonlinear text. In contrast to hypertext, which enables multisequential reading,this form is best thought ofas nonlinear. According to Espen Aarseth (whose"Nonlinearity and Literary Th eory," rn Hyper/Text/Theory, ed. Landow providesthe essential discussion of its subject) the various forms of nonlinear textualityinclude (a) computer games, (b) text-based collaborative environments, such asMultiUser Domains (MUDs) and MultiUser Domains that employ Obfect-Oriented programming methods (MOOs), and (c) cybertext, or text generated onthe fly. See essays by Carrefro, Donguy, Lenoble, Vuillemin, and Balpe in A:\Littdrature: Colloque Nord Podsi et Ordinateur. See Meyer, Blair, and Hader for aMOO for the World Wide Web.4. Simulation. Text in simulation environments can range from computationallyproduced alphanumeric text (and hence have much in common with thenonlinear form) to instances of fully immersive virhral (or artificial) reality. Fordiscussions of the educational use of such simulation environments withinelectronic books, see my "Twenty Minutes into the Future, or How Are We Movingbeyond the Book?" For general discussions of virtual realiry see Benedikt,ed., Cyberspace,'Heim, The Metaphysics ofVirtual Reality; Earnshaw, Gigante, andfones, eds., Virtual Reality Systerns; andWexelblat, Virtual Reality.