Date: Wed, 29 Jan 1997 10:27
From: Randy
John's musings on two different ways of approaching narrative/schema in StorySpace is a good start. I think that the observation that the fairy tale suggests something of structure is true too. I've always thought that a hypertext of a complex event (say, the LA Riots) would have a different set of archictectural options than say a hypertext on the cultural milieu and biography of Mark Twain.
So different topics and themes, as well as audiences and contexts, will call for different architectures and rhetorics.
We don't have to figure them all out, just begin a conversation about them. In this particular assignment, I'm asking you to work strictly with an argument or thesis. Laura's suggestion that "argument" is not compatible with hypertext does speak to the point. My intention is beginning this way is to ask you to feel, and I do mean feel, the strain and possibiliites of a new form with a familiar idea.
This is what I've come to call the "felt edge of knowledge and media" (I am sure I mentioned this the first night.) I think you have to begin to feel the intersection of writing in a new form to be able to contextualize claims about the new form.
So as we press forward the next few weeks on this, remember: we're not trying to create something perfect; we're not trying to codify and control something elusive and new. We're merely trying to define SOME of the issues at stake with doing serious writing in a new medium.
One final thought: I think one of the best things about Stuart Moulthrop's essay is his claim that hypertext and all new technology has the potential for both a conservative and a revolutionary narrative: that control and freedom, resistance and synthesis, are both present. That I think is very true even in the phenomenology of the form. The reader can feel liberated or tricked, guided or manipulated.