Bolter’s review on freedom through the world of hypertext and virtual reality is really enriching since it perfectly finds a balance between the modern modes of representation and the most traditional conception of the self. As a starting point, the writer presents the different ways of prose, and how it has switched from oral to printed text, and finally how it has been affected with the introduction of photography, films and computer graphics.
The traditional definition of self can enter into crisis when we think of the cyberspace culture, and the self cannot be constructed as an authorial and autonomous voice any longer, becoming instead a wondering eye, that shifts from one perspective to another. In hypertext, the elements are not linear, and they only happen when the reader wants them to happen. Therefore, we could state, that in opposition to the traditional book, each reader will give the hypertext a new point of view, depending on the path he/she follows through the maze of links. In other words, the writer of the hypertext loses control on the reader in comparison to the writer of the printed book, since he can organize the structure of links, but he cannot decide how the reader will navigate through them.
The other concern is what would become of literature, in society, were visual is preferred over linguistic representations. In the World Wide Web, we can still find lots of text, in spite of the huge amount of graphics, pictures, sounds and colors. We switch from one page to another with just one click, so each page has just a few seconds to attract and make us feel to want to keep reading the page. In other words, the first impression will be determined by the images as a threshold to the text (hypertext). Although on a second level, the text will still have its place.
However, as Bolter emphasizes it, virtual reality, is an attempt to recreate a new world, similar to the reality we live in, and therefore, where we accept this graphic world as our reality. In this definition, the text has almost no place, and it is almost inexistent. All we might get, apart from images, are sounds, some voices, and maybe some words as a definition to some of the icons on the screen, like the ones on walkman or car. As the author will later conclude, this could be the real enemy to the book, and not the hypertext, which is after all, another mode of representation, a continuation of the prose or written text. In fact, there is a common point between books and hypertext: the design of the typography as a graphic symbol is not important, for the “typographer’s goal is to make the typeface as transparent as possible. The reader is not supposed to notice the shapes of the letters.” This is why it is still early to decide the fate of the book, because, even though we might narrow the role of the book in the future to the literature area (the scientific text might be more linked to computerized technology), books will keep existing as long as they are easier to read than the computer screen.
The real problem is whether people will keep wanting to read literature or not. The book calls up images on the reader’s mind, and a whole world can be depicted and look as real as the real world (as long as the writer’s’ narrative skills and the reader imagination allow it). Nevertheless, it is difficult to beat the world that a movie or the virtual reality provides us, where this world is already manufactured, and therefore requires a smaller effort for the viewer’s mind. The opposition between virtual reality and hypertext could be compared to the one between painting and poetry. Or to put in other words: it is the difference between looking at an object (book or painting) and looking through it, as it can easily happen with virtual reality, where we are created an illusion, where the graphic environment is so real that we do not feel we are looking at an object anymore in order to enjoy a new reality. We do not need the word to capture the real world (ekphrasis), since with the graphic image the reality is already offering us an alternative word.
Then, after accepting that the text is absent in virtual reality (virtual silence), and that the viewer controls the point of view, since it is not looking at the object through a painting but he/she finds him/herself in the same visual space as the objects, Bolter makes an interesting approach at virtual reality from the Cartesian point of view. One interpretation of Descartes’ thoughts would be that the only acceptable reality is our own mind and not what our senses tell us. Therefore, experiencing the world as others do would be unthinkable. But, on the other hand, forgetting about the body and see ourselves as thinking agents, as Descartes would suggest, could be the first step into the fusion with virtual reality or the cyberspace.
Finally, as another approach to the hypertext, we could think of it as a new definition of the writer, who works in collaboration of the readers, and implies that the ego is always in a process of definition. Going back to the virtual world, the writer argues that there is a virtual knowing, and that the best way to know is through empathy, that is, we learn by experiencing how does it feel to be like someone or something. But to practice this empathy, we need to have free access to as many points of view as possible, to have access to information. This also raises a controversial issue, since there are also marginalized groups who lack this freedom of access, who cannot enter into this community or network.