Reading in the modern world

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Chapter Three: The recent history of

writing: computers, hypertext and the

future

As early as 1945 there were voices warning that the information 'explosion' would become

unmanageable¹. In this chapter I shall discuss one of the ways in which computers can assist

in dealing with the management of the written word. In other chapters I deal with some

practical ways of coping with the plethora of material now available.

Computer writing is important and influential in our lives. I am not so foolhardy as to try to

assess the full spectrum of influence of these machines, but merely their influence on writing. I

wish to consider the computer as writing device firstly in the perspective of the orality-literacy

debate with which I began, and then within the history of writing considered above.

Writing, empires and tax

Computer writing has major implications for, inter alia:-

1) policing and administration (especially taxation),

2) business organization, and

3) marketing.

Computers can easily maintain records of a large number of people, and can also be made to

collate disparate items of information. This is grist for conspiracy theorists. While the KGB

were fairly successful in operating an oppressive organization using just card indexes, think

how much easier it would be to impose a police state in the USA, with its computer-centric

society, than in the USSR (as was). There are great advantages in computers for the smooth

running of a police state, and also in other bureaucratic structures.

Business organizations are typical of the type of bureaucratic structure which can best benefit

from the use of computers. The increasing affordability of word-processors has changed the

nature of a secretary's work, and their efficiency as writing tools has resulted in redundancies

in typing pools. Computer software has also revolutionized the management of business

accounting and of stock control. However, there are other technologies as important and as

¹See especially Bush (1945).

encompassing as computers: consider the telephone, the radio and television, and the

consequence of these technologies.

If a telephone is crossed with a photocopier, the result is a facsimile machine, which allows

people to share documents across long distances. Fax machines are essentially simple in

technological terms. Their development was not computer-related. This may serve as a useful

reminder of the limits of the argument. It should also be remembered that the East India

Company was a successful multinational business long before the invention of the telephone,

let alone the computer. Double entry book-keeping celebrated its half-millennium a short while

ago.

The ability of computers to search and to correlate items of information from vast databanks

also facilitates such operations as the analysis of credit card purchases. This, in turn, enables

mailshots to be targeted to individuals with particular characteristics. This is a refinement of

another significant contribution in this field, the personalized pro-forma letter. Some of these

are printed in a font intended to resemble handwriting, in order to persuade the recipient that the

letter was written to them on an individual basis. This is intended to promote contributions, for

example to political parties or churches.

The end of books

The proponents of hypertext among others claim that the electronic medium renders books

redundant. Their argument is not just aimed at a particular form of binding but at lengthy

argument and storylines¹. Computers, we are told, will change the way we think. The end of

writing has been predicted many times over the last century.

I can find little evidence that changes in writing will change the way we think, and certainly not

to the extent that thinking was changed by earlier technological revolutions, such as the

development of the syllabic alphabet. In June 1992, Robert Coover announced 'the End of

Books' in the New York Times. He portrays the poverty of poststructuralist academics

despondently picking nits while the practitioners of modern technology are enthusiastically

doing new and creative things with computers and computer writing. However, he

¹They often overlook the fact that the technology of printing, whose demise they announce, lies at the heart of

computers. Printing is used to lay the circuits on the processor chips which run the machines.

overestimates the importance of fiction and the novel, which he takes to be self-evidently

moribund. Below are some examples of what I think are the more important types of text.

These are very different from novels, and cast doubt on the radical suggestions of Coover

which, incidentally had been anticipated by slightly less than a century. In 1894 Octave Uzanne

wrote an extraordinarily perceptive piece entitled 'The end of books'. Shortly after the

invention of a mechanical method of recording the voice and other sounds, Uzanne anticipated

and described very accurately the Sony Walkman. He was less successful in the prediction

proposed in the title of his article. Although much which was once written is now transmitted

by telephone or broadcast by radio and television, the hegemony of the paper continues

(especially in the much-trumpeted 'paperless office').

Some of the reasons that Uzanne was wrong are summarized below:

Sound (cassette tape) versus Paper (paperback)

These have the following properties in common:

Both are reasonably permanent, they are portable, durable (in the sense of withstanding

repeated access) as well as being cheap and easy to duplicate.

Unlike sound recording, writing has the following characteristics:

It is easy to index and easy for the reader to move about the text; the leaves of a book can be

turned and skipped in a manner impossible in a continuous tape (or scroll of paper). Also,

cross-referencing allows readers to compare two passages. Both writing and sound can be

shared by two or more people at the same time. Writing, however, is shareable in more, and

more flexible, ways than sound recordings. Two people may read different books in the same

room without disturbing each other, and without needing headphones. Or, two people may

read the same page at different rates (although the faster reader may need to exercise some

patience). Finally, writing enters a different dimension when diagrams are included. Diagrams,

especially when attached to text which serve as a key or explanation, have no aural equivalent.

They form an essential part of some technical writing, including mathematical proofs ¹. There

is no aural equivalent to the combination of text and diagram on a single page, let alone

documets such as maps.

¹Eric Livingston has explored the use of diagrams in mathematical proofs (Livingston qqq).

It is possible (if unlikely) that novels could be composed (written) without the use of paper,

although a novel may be enjoyed either by silent reading or by hearing it read aloud. Many

scientific or illustrated books, by contrast, simply cannot be transferred to a spoken medium.

Lecturers try to get around this problem by using boards and overhead projectors.

Let us now continue to make a similar comparison with computers:

Computer readable texts share many of the properties of paper texts as outlined above.

However, like cassette tapes, and unlike books, a machine is needed to access the text.

Possessing the text itself is not always enough: the reader is dependent on access to machines

(with all their vagaries), and on maintenance and electricity. You can read a book on the beach;

it is far harder to use a computer there. For all the progress in the last few years making the

machines more portable, current (1996) screens are still unreadable in bright sunlight.

Further differences between paper and computer texts are illustrated by hypertext.

Hypertext

What is it? Here are three definitions:

1) Hypertext is non-linear text (Nelson).

2) Hypertext is a way of displaying information on line and suggesting 'links' with other

information. The reader is pointed towards related information, and if the reader selects one of

the suggested links, that other information is displayed on the same screen. Hypertext provides

non-linear access to data whereby the reader determines the path to be taken¹.

3) Hypertext is a system of 'associative indexing,...whereby any item may be caused at will to

select immediately and automatically another.' It contains a mesh of associative trails².

Non-linearity-

Consider Nelson's definition of hypertext as non-linear text. This is problematic since text even

in paragraph-sized chunks is not really non-linear:

Here is a linear text and two non-linear versions of it:

¹Brown (1991: 373).

²Bush (1945:106).

Non-linear reading of texts on paper can be forced or encouraged by technological quirks. In

the days before printing, by copyists' mistakes, for example turning over two pages by

mistake. Likewise, the achievement of the 'natural' page order of a copied document may be

prevented by a malfunctioning doubled-sided photocopying machine, and/or mistakes in

collation and binding. Moreover, it is not necessarily the case that readers read texts in a linear

fashion. Indeed, this is the main problem for the evangelizing advocates of hypertext: the non-

linear style of reading which they are advocating is not as new and different as they claim.

Six Strategies for reading a book - the book as a hypertext document.

1) Cover to cover 'linear' reading;

2) reading through the footnotes or endnotes;

3) reading the contents page, then one chapter or a specific section only;

4) reading the bibliography;

5) consulting the index, then reading only the passages referred to in a specific index

entry;
6) opening the book and reading at random1_.

The idea of hypertext is exciting and tantalizing. Imagine a system that allows you to read a

passage, look up the meaning of unfamiliar words, check a cross reference, not by noting the

bibliographic reference for future consultation but by jumping straight to the relevant passage

and then returning to the original passage. Add the ability to include your own annotations and

comments and you have the fully functioning hypertext reading and authoring system described

by Bush in 1945 and realized in the late 1970s by some of the pioneers such as Nelson and

Landow. There really are systems available today that can do some (most?) of this, within

limits.

But this is ignore the power of paper. To return to my first example, it is possible to view the

book as a hypertext system. Consider the list just given: if you include the physical actions of

the reader moving from book to book then reading and annotating a book when in a good

library, and consulting some of the cross-refernces as you go is a perfect exemplification of a

¹This is not as silly as it may sound. It is a long established oracular use of the Bible.

full hypertext system as just described. S,o just as we saw above, hypertext dates to about

1150 here is a photo of a workign hypertext authoring system:

PHOTOGRAPH OF BODLEIAN LIBRARY catalogue room

Hypertext consists of a complex and multi-dimensional web of interconnected texts,

photographs, sound recordings and even films. The links between the different items suggest

and invite the making of connections. It has been suggested that the web of hypertextual links

resembles (or even is identical to) our own semantic webs (or not, depending which

psychological school you susbscribe to). Thus, the computer may be represented as, in one

example:

A semantic cognitive web

The problem with this suggestion is that it hinges on a metaphor. Now, anthropologists are

fascinated by metaphors and spend a lot of time pursuing them. However, the fascination with

metaphor has led us to be wary of their appeal. Firstly, is it correct that concepts are best

represented by web-like drawings? Secondly, do the webs of interconnections found in

hypertext systems resemble in any interesting way the manner in which humans have concepts?

These questions cannot be answered by assertion.

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