Replacement of the Book with Computers Essay -- Reading Electronic Tex

The Book Is brain dead Long Live the BookThe book, so post-structuralists critics have long been secure us, just isnt what it used tobeor, to be more accurate, what we used to have in mind it was. Its no longer a discrete entity, alittle serviceman unto itself wedged between two covers, a piece of handle that speaks to us witha unified voice, the work of an individual author. Instead, as critical discourse by the likes ofBarthes (1979) and Derrida (1974) have informed us, the contents of one book or article areinextricably linked to dozens, even hundreds or thousands, of others, and its contents, in turn,are absorbed by other texts. Texts refer to other texts constantly our awareness of the laboursPage 2of our predecessors battling with the written word gives rise to authorship that is a dense andcomplex weave of references and allusions which lead Barthes in From serve to Text (1979)to characterise individual works as networks linked by paths, a web of texts which waseffecti vely authorless.The striking similarities between hypertext and the Text as described by post-structuralist critics accounts, in part, for the magnitude and scope of the hype that has attach to its debut as a viable medium of training. Mention hypertext to a colleague oracquaintance today, and the chances are he or she allow certainly have heard of iteven if veryfew passel have actually seen any examples of it. Put simply, hypertext is information (usuallytext, but to a fault graphics, video, and audio clips) that is mediated by a computer, generallydivided into chunks of information connected by computer links. Readers can work their way by texts in a variety of different orders, sometimes following sequences already mapped... ... When Freedom of Choice Fails Ideology and Action in a utility(prenominal) School Hypermedia Project. NAPA Bulletin 12 (1993) 66-72.Barthes, Roland. The Death of the Author. Image, Music, Text. Trans. StephenHeath. brand-new York Hill and Wang, 1977 1 42-149.__________. From Work to Text. Textual Strategies Perspectives in Post-StructuralCriticism. Ed. Josu Harari. Ithaca Cornell University Press, 1979 73-82.Crane, Gregory. Composing Culture The indorsement of an Electronic Text. CurrentAnthropology 32.3 (1991) 293-311.Derrida, Jacques. Of Grammatology. Trans. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak. Baltimore JohnsHopkins University Press, 1976.Edward, Deborah M. and Lynda Hardman. Lost in Hyperspace Cognitive Mapping and sailing in a Hypertext Environment. In Hypertext Theory into Practice. Ed.Ray McAleese. Oxford Intellect Books, 1990 105-125.