a view informed by the problems of traditional literacy in a digital age

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Ronald Soetaert & Bart Bonamie
traditional card system which, however, failed to satisfy him in several
respects. He decided to take a course in programming to develop a system
that not only brought order to information but was also able to link that
information – and texts – on various levels and in various ways. In fact, the
World Wide Web has gone on fulfilling this hypertextual dream Ted Nelson
introduced so long ago. To be sure, the new genre has been criticised by
adherents of a more traditional literacy and is characterised as ‘another
domain of the postmodern theme park. Gentle readers, welcome to
Literacyland!’ (Moulthrop, 1991). Yet, it is interesting to stress the fact that
Ted Nelson sees the history of writing as an epic of recovery. His grand hope
was ‘a return to literacy, a cure for television stupor, a new Renaissance of
ideas and generalist understanding, a grand posterity that does not lose the
details which are the final substance of everything’ (Nelson, 1990b, p. 4).
But from the very beginning, hypertext also promised to be a different
genre for writing and reading. What did the genre promise?
Reading Print and Hypertext
Print culture constructed a kind of passive reading; it created ‘closed’ and
‘completed’ texts and introduced the idea of ‘proper reading’. These ideas
were taken up by the New Critics – from the structuralist movement – who
deconstruct the meaning of a text by ‘close reading’: a careful analysis of the
words, which is isolated from the actual world. In such a closed system,
meaning could indeed be interpreted by analysing the parts of the structure.
For a long time, this perspective deeply influenced how reading (and
literature) was taught, how ideal reading was described.
In more modern reading theories, texts are no longer seen as closed
systems because they offer readers open endings and insecure links. Apart
from these textual characteristics, meaning also intersects with individual
readers’ experiences. This is stressed in reader response theory and
reception theory. By stressing a more active and open way of reading, these
reading theories were preparing us for the emergence of hypertext reading.
Indeed, hypertext creates a different kind of reading that is less
submissive and passive, and also less ‘complete’ and less ‘closed’.
In such an open system, meaning becomes a perspective in a dynamic
structure. In hypertexts we are confronted with lots of links; a total and
absolute experience is not possible.
Of course, what is said about reading is true for writing as well. In
traditional teaching the essay was considered a major genre in the writing
curriculum, certainly in academia. From a communicative approach,
criticism against the essay was based on the fact that such writing had
nothing to do with the real world. The communicative approach was
obsessed by creating ‘real communicative settings’ which would stimulate
real writing. The problem was that writing was not popular at all outside
academia, art and other professional environments. Today we can welcome
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