Hypertext and Literature
Hypertext is changing the way we read, write and conceptualize literature. Traditionally, the distance between reader and writer with written works is maintained by multiple levels of people, paper and time. Once a piece of work is published, the writer's responsibility basically ends; meanwhile, the reader is still responsible for knowing and understanding all of the references the writer includes in the work. Hypertext creates a hyper-extension of the work, basically giving it a life of its own. A printed book is unable to recreate this same detailed precision and accessibility because of its physicality. A published book cannot be recalled instantly in order to make any changes or update information, unless it is reprinted and there is always a defined amount of time involved. Hypertext has the ability to link a multitude of related subject matters and authors, while incorporating a variety of techniques, such as sound and movement, to involve and extend the relationship between readers and writers.
Marshall McLuhan writes, "The alphabet and print technology fostered and encouraged a fragmenting process, a process of specialism and of detachment. Electric technology fosters and encourages unification and involvement" (8). With the added dimensions hypertext provides, a piece of literature is capable of evolving into the multi-dimensional realm of sight, sound, movement and tactility. Researching information related to a topic, such as Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, for example, offers an interesting sample of the evolution of literary resources on the WWW. One such site, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, not only offers scholarly information with images, but also inc...
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...ypertexted documents offer an interaction for the reader that was not possible before. The interconnection creates a unifying effect between the reader and writer where the reader of literature plays a role once reserved only for the writer.
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There is a thin line that exists between the depiction of a villain and a gangster that Hollywood has mastered walking on. While villains and gangsters may do many of the same things in movies, like stealing and killing, they each do them for different reasons. Villains enjoy crime because that is what gets them off; some may feel they are doing society a favor, like Uncle Charlie in Hitchcock’s Shadow of a Doubt, and others are more simply portrayed as naturally evil or mentally ill. But Gangsters are doing what they do for something American society can relate to—to make a living and, ultimately, get to the top.
The web created an explosion in production, self-published content, and new forms of machine art. Through contrasting physical and digital print media, it will be shown that the Internet enhances aspects of the printing press in defining itself. Functional Factors At its beginnings, the internet crafted a new but familiar form of manufacturing: the mass production of digital texts. In fact, in 1440 Gutenberg first originated the idea of mass production of texts with his invention of the Printing Press. For the first time, an automated process was able to replicate the script.
Bradbury attacks loss of literature in the society of Fahrenheit 451 to warn our current society about how literature is disappearing and the effects on the people are negative. While Montag is at Faber’s house, Faber explains why books are so important by saying, “Do you know why books such as this are so important? Because they have quality. And what does the word quality mean? To me it means texture. This book has pores” (79). Faber is trying to display the importance of books and how without them people lack quality information. In Electronics and the Decline of Books by Eli Noam it is predicted that “books will become secondary tools in academia, usurped by electronic media” and the only reason books will be purchased will be for leisure, but even that will diminish due to electronic readers. Books are significant because they are able to be passed down through generation. While online things are not concrete, you can not physically hold the words. Reading boost creativity and imagination and that could be lost by shifting to qui...
Our minds have changed from being able to focus and read a lengthy paper, to distracted and skimming for the little highlights to give us information. Media used to be lengthy pages full of information. Now it has turned into short snippets of the bold points in the articles, “Television programs add text crawls and pop-up ads, and magazines and newspapers shorten their articles, introduce capsule summaries, and crowd their pages with easy-to-browse info-snippets” (Carr 5). Media has played on our short attention span and constantly wondering mind by adding bright colors and bold prints to the many stories all around us. The days of one-page articles are over. Now one page turns into five to ten links, three sub-links, and twenty other sidebars.
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When we hear the words gangster or mobster, the first picture that comes to mind is bloodshed and violence. But Warshow shows us in his writings that this is not necessarily the case by giving us examples from the movie The Godfather of how the family is very similar to a normal everyday household yet very different at the same time. The family has this unique kind of courage that allows them to do what they want without having to care about what they can lawfully do. The family does not openly talk abou...
The Gangster Genre as a Creation of the Necessity to Promote Civic Responsibility and Social Contentment With Ones Society
Baron, Dennis. “From Pencils to Pixels: The Stages of Literary Technologies.” Writing Material. Ed. Evelyn Tribble. New York. 2003. 35- 52.
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