From Page to Screen - WRAP: Warwick Research Archive Portal ...

different authors stored on networked computers. Unlike HyperCard and Storyspace
applications, that are relatively small and discrete and created by one or a small number
of collaborating authors, the WWW consist of millions of documents created
independently and then linked.
Accessing as well as creating WWW-pages is relatively easy, which is one of the
explanations for its popularity. There are, however, due to its size and the technical setup,
disadvantages to the W"WW. It suffers from a lack of organisation as well as from a
certain inflexibility; while readers can access a web page and link to it, they cannot
change it or link from it.
Apart from Storyspace, which was at least partly designed with a use for Hypertext
Fiction in mind, most developers of hypertext systems do not see fiction writing as one
of the main areas of hypertext use, but rather as a convenient and intuitive way to
organise factual data.
1.5: From 'ModeofProduction' to 'Mode oflnfonnation'
In The Mode of Information Mark Poster proposes that we live In what he calls an
"information society"; we are experiencing a shift from a 'mode ofproduction' to a 'mode
ofinformation', where no longer access to and ownership ofproduction technologies but
the access to and possession of information is one of the main commodities».
Throughout the twentieth century this body of information has been growing and
changing constantly at a speed that has left individuals with a feeling of alienation and
the perception that the world that surrounds them is too complex and multifaceted for
anyone to comprehend fully. The immense technological developments are a
contributing factor to this, while at the same time they raise the hope that they can be
used somehow to organise the information overflow ofwhich they are part.
35 Poster, Mode ofInformation, p.I6.
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