In "The Phaedrus", Plato has Socrates saying that writing is an inhuman behaviour that professes to institute out of the mind what can realistically only be in the mind. Additionally, Socrates was said to have argued that the written word cannot defend itself as the spoken word can. Writing is a passive event and a written text is unresponsive. However, it is paradoxical that Plato's arguments were written in order to better objectify his stance and there is a strong argument that writing, more than any other solitary development has transformed the human consciousness.
Ong (1988) wrote; "Without writing, the literate mind would not and could not think as it does, not only when engaged in writing but normally even when it is composing its thoughts in oral form."[1] Writing is a solipsistic process and the words sit alone in a text whereas the spoken word is an address of one person to another, an address that exists in real time. However, the written word transmits a declaration from an acknowledged source, and even after a complete and overwhelming refutation, a text says exactly the same thing as it did before (Ong 1988).
It is perhaps not surprising that the ancient Greeks discovered 'the self' during the same centuries in which writing was absorbed into their society. It is the reflexive nature of writing technology that allows writers to see themselves in what they have written. Each particular technology, (paper, codex, video screen), has defined a slightly different relationship between the identity of the writer and the words that are written. Writers begin to know themselves in new ways through the texts they have written, because of the reflexive nature of each technology. Bolter (2001) wrote;
"It seems almost inevitable that literate people would come to regard their writing technologies as both a metaphor for and the principle embodiment of thought. The mind comes to be understood as a writing surface, and thinking as the activity of inscribing on that surface. This metaphorical use of writing is perhaps not a side effect, but rather a basic characteristic of the technology."[2]
Perhaps cultures create and improve writing technologies partly to facilitate a transformation of their definition of mind and self (Bolter 2001).
Humans are not defined by electronic writing, but, writing technologies are a part of our continuing cultural redefinition of self, knowledge and experience. Hypertext, along with all other forms of electronic writing is playing a part in the transformation of our philosophy of the self in this, the late age of print. Since the operation of media is so representational, it is an important metaphor that we use to express these changes. In recent times we have turned to audio-visual media as well as print for this undertaking of self-determination and now it is audio-visual digital media, (the Web and computer games etc.), as well as electronic writing. According to Bolter (2001);
"These new media depend on earlier definitions of self embodied in print and earlier visual media; the electronic self is a remediated version of the printed, filmic or televisual self. For many, electronic writing is coming to be regarded as a more authentic or appropriate space for the inscription of the self than print."[3]
Hypertext reconfigures the author in numerous ways; the functions of author and reader become more greatly intertwined and the activities of the reader can actually remove some of the writer's power, transferring it to itself. The ability of the reader to choose a path through the metatext is an example of such a removal of authorial power. Normally, hypertext does not allow the reader to change the text produced by another person, but it does reduce the autonomy of the text and in so doing reduces the autonomy of the author. Michael Heim (1987) wrote, "as the authoritativeness of text diminishes, so to does the recognition of the private self of the creative author."[4] The self of the author and the reader begin to take the mantle of a hypertext and the author takes on the form of the decentered self in a network of codes that are nothing more than a node for yet another decentered network. Michael Heim believes that loss of authorial power is implicit in all electronic texts;
"Fragments, reused material, the trails and intricate pathways of 'hypertext', as Ted Nelson terms it, all these advance the centering voice of contemplative thought. The arbitrariness and availability of database searching decreases the felt sense of an authorial control over what is written."[5]
Heim's point is that, through the use of database technology, it is possible
for the reader to enter the author's text at any point, not the point of the
author's choosing (Landow 1997). However, it is obvious that the ability to
do the same thing with a printed text is as simple as the flicking through
of pages or referring to the index and thumbing directly to a reference.
The concept of hypertext aligns itself with a significant group of theorists who have argued for notions of the self that are disjointed, multiple and material. Gergen (1991) observed that radio and television;
"saturate us with the voices of humankind - both harmonious and alien." And further; "Social saturation furnishes us with a multiplicity of incoherent and unrelated languages of the self. For everything we "know to be true" about ourselves, other voices within respond with doubt and even derision. This fragmentation of self-conceptions corresponds to a multiplicity of incoherent and disconnected relationships. These relationships pull us in a myriad of directions, initiating us to play such a variety of roles that the very concept of an "authentic self" with knowable characteristics recedes from view."[6]
If the above statement is credible and television and radio lead to saturation and remediation of the self, then it follows that electronic writing forms such as hypertext, (along with E-mail, newsgroups, chatrooms etc.), can take this progression even further. New technologies seem to more effortlessly conceptualise the self as a social agent rather than as a thinking, reasoning machine (Bolter 2001).
Will hypertext and other forms of electronic communication continue to play
a large role in the redefining of the self? This is a question that has yet
to be answered.
<<cybertext & ergodic literature hypertextual links >>
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[1] In Ong, W. 1988, Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word, Routledge, London., p 78. back
[2] In Bolter, J. 2001, Writing Space: Computers, Hypertext and the Remediation of Print, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Publishers, New Jersey., p 189. back
[3] Ibid., p 190. back
[4] In Heim, M. 1987, Electric Language: A Philosophical Study of Word Processing, Yale University Press, New Haven., p 221, as cited in Landow, G. 1997, Hypertext 2.0: The Convergence of Contemporary Critical Theory and Technology, The John Hopkins University Press, London., pp 90-91. back
[5] Ibid., p 220 as cited in Ibid., p 94. back
[6] In Gergen, K. 1991, The Saturated Self: Dilemmas of Identity in Contemporary Life, Basic Books, New York., pp 6-7. back
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References:
Bolter, J. 2001, Writing Space: Computers, Hypertext and the Remediation of Print, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Publishers, New Jersey.
Gergen, K. 1991, The Saturated Self: Dilemmas of Identity in Contemporary Life, Basic Books, New York.
Landow, G. 1997, Hypertext 2.0: The Convergence of Contemporary Critical Theory and Technology, The John Hopkins University Press, London.
Ong, W. 1988, Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word, Routledge, London.