Customer Reviews

Hypertext: The Convergence of Contemporary Critical Theory and Technology (Parallax: Re-visions of Culture and Society)

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Landow's _Hypertext_ is one of a handful of books that has defined academic and popular discussion of hypertext. The book argues that hypertext represents a radically new way to both read and write, that promises to redefine our experience of and ideas about literature. It will bring an end to linearity and traditional narrative, replacing both with webs of "lexica" without predefined beginnings or ends. The concept of the "author" as a distinct individual will vanish, as texts are knitted together by hyperlinks into a vast "docuverse." Readers, meanwhile, will become partners with authors in creating meaning out of texts. Finally, all of this represents a "convergence of contemporary critical theory and technology" in which the works of Derrida and Lacan are instantiated in software-- or as Landow puts it, "contemporary theory proposes and hypertext disposes."

Despite its popularity, however, the book has serious problems that limit its real utility as a guide to thinking about new writing technologies. First, the book underestimates the variety of printed texts, and the ways in which people read. In _Hypertext_, "texts" means literature, and a manner of reading specific to that genre; it never means reference works, which are read in very different ways-- browsed and searched rather than read from start to finish-- or more ephemeral texts like menus, street signs, and the like. The world of text in which most of us live is not simply contained in books: it is all around us, like a cloud, and we interact with it in ways much more complex than _Hypertext_ admits. Second, the book bases its argument on the capacities of a hypertext system that doesn't really exist, except perhaps in a few academic laboratories: certainly the World Wide Web does not allow readers to create links from other other pages to their own, an important feature in Landow's technology. A guide to the impact of technology on "print culture" should be more faithful in its representation of both artifacts. Third, the now quite large literature on the relationship between technology, culture, and politics goes unmentioned and unused, save for a few ancient books. Had _Hypertext's_ literary criticism been as old as its history of technology, it would have talked about F. R. Leavis, not Jacques Derrida. Finally, evidence from the real world of hypertext writing suggests that rather than being liberating, the new technology can be constraining and deskilling: the recent _Harper's_ article on "the sorrows of a multimedia hack" indicates that if the author does disappear, it's going to be because of multimedia project management methods and a lack of respect for the written word, not because of the exhilirating and liberating qualities of hypertext. The freedom Landow sees in hypertext, rather, are the freedoms of the tenured professor, who owns the means of his product and is free to do what he wants with his time and energy.

_Hypertext_ is a highly influential book, and is required reading for anyone interested in the Web or multimedia. Just don't believe it.

(A fuller version of this review can be found at http://www.eb.com/editors/apang/hyper/landow.htm)

this book is an excellent pre-Web look at what hypertext could have been. web designers want to look at your roots? this is one way.