In the Zones
Hypertext
and the Politics of Interpretation
Stuart Moulthrop
February, 1989
This essay appeared in Cynthia
Selfe and Gail Hawisher's collection, Evolving Perspectives on Computers
and Composition Studies in 1990.
Tomorrow's hypertext systems have immense political ramifications, and there are many struggles to come. -- Ted Nelson
Separations are
proceeding. Each alternative Zone speeds
away from all the others, in
fated acceleration, red-shifting,
fleeing the Center.
--
Thomas Pynchon
For the last twenty years the
technology of writing has been overdue for a paradigm shift (if not a red
shift). When humanists first realized the power of electronic computers in the
sixties, they began to discover that the dominant mode of textual organization,
the bound volume, is not necessarily the best way to organize expression. The
book is not the ultimate random access device. Neither were decks of punched
cards or spools of magnetic tape, but these methods did permit a major advance
over the printed page -- segments of discourse no longer had to be bound into a
fixed sequence. Storing text as a matrix of information or "random-access
database" enabled readers to retrieve and assemble the text as they
pleased. Final production of the text thus became "interactive," the
succession of its parts determined by reader response.
In electronic writing systems, the
allusive and elliptical forces inherent in prose were no longer constrained by
pagination and binding. Drawing on the speculations of Vannevar Bush, Douglas
Engelbart, and others, Theodor H. Nelson proposed a system of
"non-sequential writing" for which he coined the term hypertext
(Nelson, Dream Machines 12). A hypertext is in some ways like an
encyclopedia, a collection of writings through which the reader is free to move
in almost any sequence. But unlike a printed encyclopedia, the hypertext does
not come to the reader with a predefined structure. The 'articles' in a
hypertext are not arranged by title or subject; instead each passage contains links
or reference markers that point toward other passages. These markers may be
words in the text, keywords implied by the text, or special symbols. Invoking
the link, by typing a phrase on a keyboard or sending some indication through a
pointing device (or "mouse"), brings the indicated passage to the
screen.
At minimum, hypertext automates and
simplifies the reader's task in moving through a complex, non-linear document.
It eliminates the distractions of page turning and volume hunting, permitting
access to information in fractions of a second rather than fractions of an hour
or day. This economy of effort could substantially alter the pace and scope of
intellectual exchange (and not necessarily for the better); but the time saving
aspect of hypertext is not the real source of its importance. Hypertext offers
not simply to streamline our access to writing, but to transform the way we
produce and organize bodies of text.
Since all elements in a hypertext
system are subject to connection, it becomes harder to separate one discourse
from another. In printed works notes and bibiliography give writings outside
the current text a presence on the page, but that presence is metaphoric.
Hypertext abolishes this metaphor: the other writings actually become present when
the reader activates a link. Hypertext thus offers to revise our notions of
definitive discourse. It seems to move us in the direction of Roland Barthes'
"writerly" text, defined as "that social space that leaves no
language safe or untouched, that allows no enunciative subject to hold the
position of judge, teacher, analyst, confessor, or decoder" ("From
Work to Text" 81).
But such radical transformations of
writing do not happen overnight. The idea of hypertext was received with
enthusiasm in computer science circles and by the early eighties a number of
experimental systems had been created. Nonetheless, few humanists either
understood or took much interest in the new technology. Hypertext remained the
province of computer scientists and commercial software developers until the
mid-eighties, when personal computers became sufficiently powerful to support
small-scale hypertext systems. For the first time people not initiated in the
mysteries of mainframe computing and programming languages could work with
multiply linked electronic text.
As it proceeds this latest hypertext
boom is likely to affect every field of writing, but it seems likely to produce
the greatest controversy in academia. Hypertext systems are already in place in
a number of professional schools, where they serve essentially as highly
efficient information retrieval systems, and plans have been announced for
ambitious linked-text projects involving humanities departments. In the
humanities, however, where discourse is never separable from polemic and the
status of 'established fact' is always dubious, the advent of hypertext will
probably provoke a certain amount of conflict.
Hypertext assumes a system where
diverse and even antithetical statements coexist within a single structure, each
capable of emerging in the act of reading. The system thus presents the ideal
figure for its own future -- for the notion of hypertext is itself a site of
convergence for opposing ideas about text, authority, and the social function
of writing. Humanistic hypertext projects may very well come under the sway of
competing ideologies with sharply different approaches to the organization of
knowledge. At present it is too soon to tell which of these ideologies will
dominate and what "reading" of hypertext will ultimately emerge. It
seems time, however, to begin thinking about the political implications of
hypertext in the academic world.
Despite its recent adoption by
corporate vendors of high technology, the hypertext concept owes much to the
critique and dissent that came out of the sixties and seventies. Consider the
case of Ted Nelson, pioneer of hypertext and developer of "Xanadu,"
one of the most ambitious electronic text projects yet conceived. Nelson
describes himself as "a rogue intellectual," and a "social
critic" (Literary Machines 2/10). He sees his new writing system as
part of a broad social movement whose tendency is to decentralize authority and
empower individuals. In Nelson's view, the development of personal computers
was a crucial blow to the power structure of the computer world. He claims to
have foreseen ten years ago that "the new desktop computers would deeply
threaten... mainframe computing in general; that there would be a new spirit of
freedom and initiative among the users thus liberated...; that this would bring
an explosion of all kinds of computing uses the computer centers had
suppressed... uses they could now no longer co-opt and control...." (Computer
Lib 163). Nelson is a complicated figure who cannot be tagged with a single
ideological label, but he regularly adopts a rhetoric reminiscent of the New
Left, here pitting explosion and liberation against suppression and co-opting.
Nelson seems to mean the term "computer revolution" more literally
than many of his younger followers.
While Nelson was planning out his
new technology for writing, literary theorists were busy deconstructing
traditional methods of interpretation. Informed by an intellectual politics in
many ways similar to Nelson's, post-structuralist critics envisioned a
user-centered literature. "The goal of literary work (of literature as
work)," Roland Barthes wrote at the end of the sixties, "is to make
the reader no longer a consumer but a producer of the text" (S/Z
4). In his critique of the "readerly" text, Barthes produced a
distinction which has great value for anyone trying to understand the
difference between hypertext and the textuality of the printed page. This is
the opposition of "the work," the object of traditional literary
study, to "the Text," the new field of discourse which Barthes sought
to open. "The work" is a defined body of writing, a bound volume
marked with an author's name, sanctioned and validated by tradition. Against
this idea of "classic" literature Barthes set "the Text," a
web of language that links the "work" to other discourses, including
works of other writers and critics, reader responses, and even non-literary
documents. "The Text," Barthes wrote, "is read without the
father's signature. The metaphor that describes the Text is also distinct from
that describing the work.... The Text's metaphor is that of the network...."
("From Work to Text" 78).
Ted Nelson's Xanadu system, in which
the whole of recorded discourse would be woven into one enormous matrix, in
many respects literalizes Barthes' new understanding of "the Text."
On a basic level at least, every hypertext is an instance of Barthes'
text-as-network, and this convergence of French theory with American technology
suggests an implementation of hypertext without absolute hierarchies, where the
"patriarchal" functions of author, editor, and critic are abolished.
Until now such discursive anarchy has existed only in theory, but that has not
diminished its speculative appeal. No doubt J.F. Lyotard had such an
arrangement in mind when he proposed in the late seventies that the public be
given "free access to the memory and data banks." In Lyotard's view,
a universal information franchise might neutralize the influence of political
coercion, reconfiguring the world as an open system capable of infinite
innovation (67). If one were to model an academic hypertext on Lyotard's
projection, one might very well envision that system as a kind of
"Democracy Wall," a huge library-cum-bulletin board whose
users would be free to forge connections and publish theses, where ten thousand
flowers could happily bloom.
Yet such a system has distinctly
troubling implications -- not so much because it would lead to an unchecked
spawning of discourse, but because the realpolitik sense of "let
ten thousand flowers bloom" is quite sinister. In Mao's
Perhaps nothing so Machiavellian
would occur on western campuses, but there could nonetheless be serious dangers
in ostensibly "open" hypertext systems. Hypertext could become a
technological updating of Barthes' "Operation Margarine," the scam in
which the power structure subjects itself to trivial critique in order to
pre-empt any real questioning of authority. Even in the most liberal of
academic settings, the development of hypertext systems is not likely to evolve
toward the people's republic of information proposed by Lyotard. It will almost
certainly stay much closer to traditional channels of discourse, the university
library and the university press. But if these models are followed too closely,
academic hypertext could betray the antihierarchical ideals implicit in its
formulation. It could merely routinize the intellectual charisma of the late
sixties.
At the heart of this problem lie the
essential design issues of "filtering" and "navigation." In
its raw state, any system that "links continents of knowledge" would
overload its user with choices. An undergraduate encountering Heart of
Darkness might want to know something about the geography of the
Proponents of "expert
systems" seek an answer to these problems in semi-intelligent software
that can anticipate its user's needs. But this approach is not without its
perils, some of which were inadvertently demonstrated in a promotional
videotape released by Apple Computer in 1986. Part of Apple's presentation
shows a 21st-century "knowledge navigator," a computer-generated
talking head, catering to the wishes of its user, a white male college
professor. This "intelligent software agent" is remarkably good at
what it does, but therein lies the difficulty: some of the transactions in
which the navigator collaborates are distinctly unsettling. With the help of
his software agent, the human user makes an intrusive call to a female colleague
and breezily enlists her to lecture his class on a subject he has not bothered
to read up. When the agent calls up a display predicting massive drought in
sub-Saharan
We are probably better served in the
short run by human navigators, who can better challenge our biases, and we
theirs. Vannevar Bush, who in 1945 sketched out the first automated hypertext
system, proposed to call these workers "trail blazers," specialists
"who find delight in the task of establishing useful trails through the
enormous mass of the common record" (Bush 104). Trail blazers would
combine the skills of intellectual historians, biographers, cognitive
psychologists, and archivists. They would follow the documentary track by which
discoverers came to their findings, trails which would be recorded in great
detail by Bush's "Memex" system. Such efforts would no doubt greatly
contribute to the advancement of knowledge, particularly scientific knowledge,
but the system does raise certain problems. Bush's informational community is
overwhelmingly hierarchical: Memex as Bush envisioned it was clearly intended
for the upper echelons, not for "the rest of us." Accordingly trail
blazers are at best acolytes in the priesthood of invention and ordinary
readers are excluded from the mysteries altogether.
Ted Nelson imagines a different role
and character for the navigators of Xanadu. He proposes not a priesthood of
pathfinders but a "subculture of intellect" whose members would
frequent the local "Silverstands," Nelson's answer to the Golden
Arches. Like virtually everything else in Nelson's futurology, the name for
these navigators, the "Xanadu Hypercorps," is a trademark. Indeed,
members of the Hypercorps would be de facto workers in a service industry:
"They will not be people who can program or repair a computer; rather,
like the stewards and stewardesses of the airlines, they will know how to make
users comfortable" (Literary Machines3/17).
But the Hypercorps is itself a bit
disturbing. Nelson says that it would be a "cult" of information
hackers, "a subculture of generalists who act more like trivia freaks or
D[ungeons] & D[ragons] players." Nelson unfortunately leaves this
comparison incomplete in its local context -- more like game players than what,
one wants to ask. While it is fairly clear that Nelson wants to contrast his
freewheeling generalists to academic specialists, a more problematic axis of
comparison also presents itself. The Xanadu navigators would be more like
players than like employees. Members of the Hypercorps would not draw
wages or commissions, and though they could earn royalties by publishing their
research within the system, they would still have to pay for any information
they accessed. Since their work would be primarily synthetic, forging
connections between existing ideas and discourses, they would be likely to
access far more data than they produced, suggesting negative cash flow. More to
the point, members of the Hypercorps would not be compensated for the time they
spent making other users "comfortable" with the system. Nelson's
navigators could end up donating not merely capital but valuable expertise to a
profitmaking enterprise. That enterprise would be benevolent in its intent and
laudable in its social function, but it would create at least an appearance of
exploitation.
The Hypercorps is supposed to offer
a "populist" alternative to the "stuffiness" of traditional
institutions. Presumably the military echo in the name is a playful irony on
the model of "Peace Corps." Yet Nelson specifies that "the
Xanadu Hypercorps is expected to be an unusual and elite group,"
suggesting an esprit de corps that is not exactly egalitarian. Nelson
foresees that the Hypercorps will offer "a social system with its own
status ladder (highest are the travelling generalists), a promise of
'education' to reassure parents with -- it's better than pinball, right? And
cheaper by the hour." Whether he calls elect navigators generalist
or generalissimo, and whether he calls their activities education or
play, the system Nelson describes is clearly not "populist." If
Nelson's navigators are ranked on a status scale, then Xanadu is at heart a
hierarchical organization, with those near the bottom knowing less about the
system, and thus having less power to influence it, than those on top the
pyramid. In spite of Nelson's manifest good intentions, some of the old
computer center mentality seems to have escaped repression.
Xanadu was conceived not as an
experiment in political economy but as an innovative writing system, so these
objections are in some sense unfair. The importance of Nelson's work on the
design and technical specifications of Xanadu far outweighs his questionable
performance as an ideologue. But the re-emergence of exploitation and hierarchy
in Nelson's view of the future carries a powerful lesson: unless the problems
of navigation and filtering are handled carefully, even the most liberal and
benign hypertext systems can begin to resemble bureaucratic and even oppressive
structures.
But suppose the designers of a
hypertext project were motivated not by Ted Nelson's commitment to individual
initiative, but by a concern for preordained architectures of knowledge. Let us
assume that the system's designers took their brief from E.D. Hirsch's
declaration that:
As the universal second culture,
literate culture has become the common currency for social and economic
exchange in our democracy, and the only available ticket to full citizenship.
Getting one's membership card is not tied to class or race. Membership is
automatic if one learns the background information and the linguistic
conventions that are needed to read, write, and speak effectively. (22)
It probably seems a long way from
Nelson's textual populism to Hirsch's notions of required cultural literacy,
but hypertext may offer a shortcut between these two frames of reference. A
link-driven reading system could be a very formidable tool for teaching
"background information" and "linguistic conventions,"
especially where this information is defined (as Hirsch defines it) in terms of
literary and social history. Early on in his essay, Hirsch refers to cultural
literacy as "the network of information that all competent readers
possess" (2). We cannot have long to wait before someone converts Hirsch's
list of "What Literate Americans Know" into an electronic database.
The idea of hypertext will probably recommend itself strongly to defenders of
core curricula and "mainstream culture."
There would perhaps be no harm and
much benefit in a "cultural literacy" hypertext, as long as users
were free to browse beyond the confines of "mainstream culture." Even
if the Hypercorps were replaced by a Commissariat of Culture, there would still
be opportunities for dedicated individualists to bend the rules and broaden
discourse, since electronic publishing creates ideal conditions for the
circulation of 'unauthorized' writing. Hypertext might in fact help the
cultural literacy movement achieve its goal of enriching American education
while protecting it from overprescriptiveness.
But one also has to consider a
darker alternative. If it is possible to imagine academic hypertext as an open
system, one can also posit a hypertext project governed by arbitrary rules,
hostile to innovation, and largely opaque to its users. Such a system,
conceived perhaps on the model of the "learning machines" of previous
decades, might present itself as a hypertextbook containing all the information
a student 'really' needs to know. The student's paths through this information
would be limited to a narrow range governed by binary evaluations: 'if the
reader understands this concept then proceed to the next one; otherwise repeat.'
Such a system would be a monolith of integrated knowledge. Its navigators (if
there were any) would not be trail blazers or generalists but park police and
drill sergeants. The system would not be hyper-"Text" in Roland
Barthes' terms, but hyper-"work" -- a code of received knowledge
designed to engrave its idea of order upon the reader.
But these speculations deliberately
emphasize the negative. Hypertext will no doubt fail to produce a utopian
anarchy of discourse, but if we take care in designing our systems, it need not
rigidify into an empire of signs. We urgently need a social theory of
hypertext, a set of principles that account for the text not as an autonomous
object but as an evolving transaction between readers and writers. Essential
contributions to this theory have already been made by humanists interested in
the rhetoric of hypertext, such as George Landow and Jay David Bolter. However,
there has yet to be full discussion of the "immense political
ramifications" Nelson saw in his textual revolution. As a first step in
that discussion, here are three proposed principles that might be incorporated
in the design of future hypertexts.
Systems incorporating some version
of these ideas, particularly the notion of independent zones, should be able to
steer between the extremes of informational anarchy and despotism. After all,
this model imitates the social structures that already promote the free
exchange of ideas in academia. But while a pluralistic hypertext might resemble
the current system of seminars, forums, conferences, and journals, it would
still have significant advantages over the present community of discourse. The
"zones" of intellectual exchange today resemble Thomas Pynchon's
centrifugal vision of postwar
There is no denying, on the other
hand, that hypertext is also going to upset the stability of intellectual
institutions, perhaps more violently than any of the political upheavals of the
late sixties. As Ted Nelson points out, there are many struggles to come:
struggles over access to information, design of curricula, and definition of
canons and methods. These struggles antedate any technology, even the
technology of writing itself. The kind of allusive, associative communication
that hypertext fosters has always been at the heart of humanist scholarship,
but it does not follow that hypertext merely augments or amplifies the status
quo of discourse. Hypertext not only makes textual linkages more numerous and
effective, it changes the social uses to which those links are put. Since it
creates a world where discourse can no longer be limited to isolated
"works," where students' questions have the same textual presence as
professors' glosses, hypertext will probably force us to reformulate our
notions of intellectual authority. This may be a daunting prospect, but there
is really very little to fear. The medium of hypertext favors plurality over
singleness, movement over rigidity, and connection over isolation. These values
have sustained humanistic discourse in the past, and if we do not neglect them
now, they should guarantee its future.
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URL: http://iat.ubalt.edu/moulthrop/essays/zones.html