trees are people too

so, we have started doing our final project (and I use ‘doing’ in the most casual form of the word :P).

I have chosen to do my assignment on hypertext, as this is something we have discussed at length and something I have found very interesting in Network Media. The nature of hypertext has created new methods of reading and writing, new relationships between authors and their audiences, and has overall forever changed the way we will ‘read’ information. That’s it. Changed. Forever. Can’t go back. Uh-uh.

It’s almost difficult to go back to reading conventional print text having experienced the ways we read hypertext. We take for granted these news means of navigating information, having access to image, audio and video, and being able to direct the narrative of the information as is most suitable for us, the reader.

Of course, theorists have gone into it much more eloquently – the differences between normal print text and hypertext, the changing roles of the reader and the creators of these texts, and the inevitable growth and increased use of hypertext in our world – but it is their job to make it sound elaborate (and confusing :P), not mine.

For me the most interesting part about hypertext is that is completely changes the way we are navigating and accessing information. For someone who is a complete control and neat freak such as myself, someone who likes page 2 to come after page 3, this is defying all the rules I have been taught and the limitations I place on my own accessing and interpretations of texts and information.

And yet I can still read, and navigate my way quite well through hyperspace and hypertexts. It’s like a natural progression. The mind is a wonderful thing.

I’m using my assignment to develop a kind of (incredibly basic) choose your own adventure. In it, I hope to explore the way hypertext changes the way we read by removing the need for a beginning, an end – you can move in any direction. Anything is possible.

I guess we’ll see just how successful I will be.