This is the Title/Header
The World Wide Web is the latest invention which has been made to preserve and enhance the way we create and experience literature. LIT web ERATURE will recount how we have gone from an oral tradition to an electronic linking reproduction of 'The Story' From pre-history oral folk tales to the first techniques of textual representation upon papyrus scrolls and clay tablets to the invention of alphabetic writing, we have seen changes bring about the human desire to share information. With the age of printing and Gutenberg's Bible on to the current hypertextual networking of links, the textual path of human social evolution has been scripted in a constantly changing variety of techniques. In this thesis I will concentrate on the effect of the World Wide Web upon this story telling touching briefly upon earlier communication devices.

In 'Literary Machines', Ted Nelson, the inventor of hypertext, writes:

'literature is an ongoing system of interconnecting documents...in any ongoing literature there is perpetual interpretation and reinterpretation and links between documents help us follow the connections.' 1.


Within that perspective literature, as it appears on the World Wide Web, is the ultimate evolution of 'The Story'. 'The Story' has never changed, only the presentation of 'The Story' has changed. The World Wide Web is the latest step in this of literature, and should be the most creative, interesting and liberating step in human discourse so far.

The way people exchange information or develop personal insights is based on linking. Linking is a natural part of learning and experience. From the first learning experiences of realising fire is hot and not a profitable place to put one's hand to learning more sophisticated learning experiences dealing with love, business, schooling and raising children linking nodes of knowledge is vital.

"I link, therefore I am"

has its origins in the make-up of the brain. All living things link; whether it is with others of their own species or with nature there is a natural linking order that permeates all activity in the universe. From Black Holes and Neutron Stars to single cell amoebas, adolescent love, astrological aspects, and good grades at school we depend on links to get from one place to the next; whether in consciousness, experience, or survival.

What has changed upon our planet is the manner in which this link is being modified. Hypertext is the latest of many inventions that has played a crucial role in the evolution of humans. Even consciousness is considered by some schools of thought, such as Neo-Tech to be an invention. Hypertext was invented for the same way as consciousness was invented, as a means of survival. According to Frank Wallace, the inventor of the Neo-Tech rhetoric, three-thousand years ago the human race had become too complicated to continue in the manner in which it was operating. As people moved from being solely hunters and gathers to city dwellers they needed to find a new and useful system of survival. With the 'invention' of consciousness they were able to form more complexed interactions. 2. The same could be said of hypertext. The world has become so complex, maybe even too complex, to continue in a linear single-directional manner. As literature is one of the primary means of social representations and exchange, its current position of presentable availabilty is important.

Reading writings as non-linear fiction has been with us in many forms since the beginning of human discourse. The texts from the writings of Lao Tze, the Christian Bible, Talmud, Qu'ran or other teaching webs are often read in random selections. These passages or verses are often linked to other texts as in a sermon or speech. These reading are unlike short stories or novels, which are often read in their entirety in a linear manner. An example of this random textual sampling is shown in spectator sports in the United States where placards with nothing more on them than John 3:16. These signs mean nothing to people who read them who are not familiar with the symbolic representation of human experience that these texts purport to deal with.

Instead of bringing an end to printed works as we know them now the World Wide Web will enhance and supplement text in hard copy. The World Wide Web is the latest instalment in the advancement of the 'Never Ending Story' with the spreading and sharing of communication in an almost instant way. It will change how we read texts over the next few decades. Through the use of hypertext, which is the foundation of the World Wide Web, linear reading of text will give way to the freedom of movement between nodes of text.

With the rise in use of the world wide web the reader will have as much say in the continuation of the witnessed text as will the writer. With some textual presentations now available on the World Wide Web the reader is able to change or add to the already constructed text. Much like the stories students narrate in primary school where one person sets a scene and another adds to it, stories are added to or layered upon by people unknown to one another in various places of the world.

With each wave of technology we see this enhancement principal in evidence. Television did not replace radio, the two work so well together that at times they combine as they do when there is a concert and the video is from the television and the acoustic is from the radio. Videos and cable television have not replaced movies, movie theatres are still full. A local shopping centre, Marion Shopping Centre, South of Adelaide , will soon have 30 movie theatres opening in the midst of its 200 store complex. New large screen cinemas are opening in Australian cities. These IMAX cinema complexes will be five storeys high and the audience will have an immersive experience. These large screens are the opposite end to viewing a computer screen and though cinemas have nothing to do with hypertext I mention it as an indication that no style of presentation is finished. Cars never replaced horses, horses are still very popular though their use has changed from a necessity to one of sport or entertainment. Air planes have not replaced ships, and cruise liners are still being built. Throughout the history of inventions and discoveries humans have rarely totally replaced one mode with another, usually the new enhances and enlivens the old. At any craft market on a weekend there will be people making craft items just as they were made hundreds of years ago. There are still people in Capitalistic Western Societies who have made it their choice to live without any modern possessions, living without electricity, telephone and television. Literature will change because of the World Wide Web but old ways of experiencing text will still be available.

Just as many printed books are illustrated, more and more we see text illustrated on the World Wide Web. This multimedia interactive feature changes what is expected from a reading of text. From an image saturated site such as Odin's Castle to the just text story of Maslin's Beach or the moving poetry of komninos or his post structuralist text the World Wide Web is changing how we experience text. Multimedia will change how we view literature as literature and images merge and become part of the same operation. Multimedia brings literature to life and the World Wide Web at this time is the primary source for enlivened text. Texts written and produced in CD rom is presently the only other form in which to experience multimedia literature. Virtual reality programmes will provide another means in which to experience text soon.

Hard copy, or what we have referred to as books for the past five hundred years are stable and non-volatile. Or they are for as long as they remain in their book form. In a fire, flood or in any one of a countles hard copy eliminational process methods, once the book has been destroyed it is gone forever. Many books and articles have been written about the death of the book the death of the author the end of history. We can easily look over history and see how everything becomes recycled, re-invented. Hypertext is the latest of the recycles and re-inventions. Long before there were electronic choose your own path and multiple layered stories there were multiple story telling both in oral and written narrative. As long ago as 900 BCE there were framed stories within stories in the 1001 Arabian Nights.

Jorn Barger s Hyperterrorist s Timeline of Hypertext History on the World Wide Web (http://www.mcs.net/~jorn/html/net/timeline.html) divides textual presentation into ten periods of time: The Age of Writing (every book is handwritten, with an individual voice , 3000BCE to 1300AD ; The Age of Printing (the illusion of an objective voice), 1455 to 1768; The Age of Electricity (exploring an innfinitely impressionable medium), 1837 to 1941 ; The Era of Big Iron (allowing coarse projections of human resources), 1945 to 1968 ; The Network Era (a radically new dimension in human communication), 1969 to1976; The Micro Era (personlaized computing brings a burst of innovation), 1977 to 1983 The WYSIWYG Era (conflicting standards for esthetic computation), 1984 to 1986; The Hypertext Era (personal hypertext generates excitement), 1987 to 1991; The WWWeb Era (global hypertext with minimal imposed structure), 1992 to 1994; The Netscape Era (NHTML evolution driven largely by user-gee-whiz factor) 1995 to present. Timelines are rapidly shrinking constantly bringing new ways of presenting text.

Email: firstpoems@hotmail.com
Site hosted by Angelfire.com: Build your free website today!