Thursday, February 11, 2010

Hypertext

I was particularly drawn to the mindset and drawback I got after reading The Patchwork Girl. What I noticed most as I read through the text was the availability to create my own reality. The lack of linearity, especially during the texts in the lab, constantly left me looking for a means to an end, or rather a track for understanding. Specifically, the section titled "Gaps, Leaps" summed up the entirety of my original thought for hypertext. Without linearity it seems there is no thrust, as she calls it. If there's no thrust behind the text I originally thought there would be a loss of interest and appeal to the text. However, as I mentioned before, it instead forced me to fill in the gaps with my own need for direction, or linearity, to create my own reality with the "patches" of text.

The concept of hypertext immediately reminded me of The Matrix even before I attended the screening. The actual matrix in reality is simply a constant stream of code. Like hypertext, the matrix is continuous without a definitive end. However, the randomness of the code doesn't necessarily illuminate a means for understanding. But, through a constant stream of give and takes in the code, just like digesting hypertext, it allows the reader to create their own reality and fill in the gaps even if it still doesn't complete the idea, code, or text.



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