INTRODUCTION
The following analysis that you will find in this web site is based on
the hypertext The Rainbow Factory, a black parody of the society of nowadays.
Hypertext
The hypertext most often refers to text
on a computer that will lead the user to other, related information on demand.
Hypertext represents a relatively recent innovation to user interfaces, which
overcomes some of the limitations of written text. Rather than remaining static
like traditional text, hypertext makes possible a dynamic organization of
information through links and connections.
http://www.amazines.com/Hypertext_related.html http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypertext
When we focus our attention to The Rainbow Factory, we can
see that this hypertext uses more visual and graphic tools than text, and those
graphics work as links to connect the different sites or graphic texts. The
presentation of the hypertexts starts with an introduction showing the name of
it. After that a grating opens to welcome us to the rainbow’s factory. It is
then when the tour starts through the factory, where the visitors can choose
the different yellow windows they will find.
Those yellow windows are the links of
different pages of our hypertext. Visitors do not have to follow an order, the
choice of the links can be different for each visitor or reader. Those links or
windows are split into two different rows: the upper and the lower. Although the upper windows are the image of
what happens in the factory from the point of view of the management of the
factory, the reality is different. That reality of what goes on into the
factory is being shown in the lower windows. Each upper window has a lower
window which shows what is really happening in this rainbow’s factory, the part
which the management wants to hide to the public.
In this hypertext, we do not only find rainbows or topics that refer to them,
but also other topics which are implicit into the text and about which we
realize when we analyze it deeper. Some of them which we can find and
mechanisms that the author uses for mixing those different topics are: ideologies like theology and environmental
protesters; a parody of the Microsoft Windows help sites; political and media
propaganda; poetry; and specialized engineering items.
Those topics are actual and real so the fact of using them gives a view as a
critic of the actual society to the hypertext. Depending of the point of view,
we can see the critic the author wants to show us, using black humor, in many different situations around us in the
day by day. The critic does not only center in factories or companies, but the
author uses that mechanism trying to give a clear view to the reader.
Reasons of my choice
What are the reasons that involved me to choose an hypertext of Peter
Howard? And why The Rainbow Factory? These
are the questions I planted to myself to answer to all you. Well, the answer is
easy.
When our teacher told us what we should
work on for our second paper he showed us where we had to go to read the
different hypertexts and where we could chose the author and hypertext we
wanted to work on. I looked to several of them and I read a little bit, but
when I tried to chose the texts and the aspect I wanted to do I realized they
were already chosen, so I had to go on looking for a good hypertext. Soon a
title called my attention; it seemed to be funny and interesting because it was
not a usual name for a hypertext. I have always liked rainbows so I really
wanted to know what was going on into that hypertext. What could it talk about?
What does the name mean? What relation do rainbows and factories have? Those
were all the questions I made up in my mind, questions which were answered when
I clicked on “The Rainbow Factory”.
It was an amazing hypertext; I did not know it would be that great and well
done. I really loved it and then I was sure it would be my choice (always that
no one else would have already chosen it).
I read every comment of all my classmates, and someone had already chosen it to
analyze the aspect “tools”. That was the aspect I also wanted to choose because
it was easier and really interesting to talk about the tools Peter Howard had
chosen to write it. An other classmate had chosen the aspect of space so I did
not have the opportunity of choosing that one either. So my decision was to
work on the aspect of time, because I really wanted to work on this hypertext
and although I knew this aspect was not easy I thought I could analyze it
deeper getting some time references on it. After that the first classmate wrote
saying that she wanted to change to another hypertext so I had the opportunity
to change to the aspect of “tools” but I had already decided that time was not
that bad choice.
What about Peter Howard? Well, the truth is that I had not heard about him
before, it was my first time when I read his name as author of my chosen
hypertext. Now I know more about him and about his works because I have read
some sites about him. It helped me to see how good writers can evaluate with
the technologies and adapt their works in every epoch. Peter Howard has written
different genres: poems, children poetry, and nowadays even hypertexts. I have
looked some others hypertexts from him and I have to say that they are really
good, and some of them funny. If you are interested in him and others of his
hypertexts take a look at my page “about the author”.
Introduction about the author Time Conclusion
<<Back to the paper Academic year 2008/2009
© a.r.e.a./Dr.Vicente Forés López
© Patricia Lucha Serrano
paluse@alumni.uv.es
Universitat de València Press