note 1 to hypertext [Part 1 of 5]

[anna balint]

Great to hear about digital materialist position (and i am very curious to see whether marxist literature
theory can resurrect in the net environment).
As far as i know both Vanevar Bush and George P. Landow conceived hypertext as  
a poetical machine which can replace the linearity of the books which grounded the success of capitalism and 
industralism in  the realm of  the Gutenberg Galaxy, and as a tool which would change the writer-reader relationship (cf. 
criticism of Roland Barthes), contensting the meaning of originality, and providing  each reader with his own version of 
the text.
I don't see yet why hypertext could be blamed for alienating from social context... [not thinking here abot the way aol or 
any commercial toool provider understands hypertext].
There is not only poetical aspect of the hypertext... Critical editions of texts (those one which can hardly bring any 
profit, though they are very expensive) include all variants of the text which can be found in manuscipts and different 
editions, reproduce all changes in the text which occured in a specific environment, and the stemma of the text, 
according to the best traditions of the positivist humanities school. It is exacly this textual tradition, all the refereneces 
and contexts which becomes transparent, and easy to access in a hypertextual environment. 
For instance there is a big difference between Goethe's faust and the libretto of Hector Berlioz' La damnation de Faust 
based on Gerard Nerval's version of the Faust legend. This latter one takes place in Hungary...

greetings,
anna balint


>[This is part 1 of 5, comments or corrections are very welcome]
>
>
>Why Hypertext became Uncool
>Notes on the Power Struggles of the Cultural Interface
>