Collaborative Spaces and Education
Constructive Hypertexts
What compells me to the writings of Michael Joyce, in addition to the pleasure of
the reading, is the way that Joyce captures the recurrant movements that flow
between the acts of reading and writing and the texts that we read or write. This
recurrance surfaces in discussions of potentially mapping both the time of
experience and the space of memory. This mapping, I think, is part of what Joyce
has in mind when recommending hypertexts involve us in a constructive process. In
Siren Shapes, Joyce tells us "More than exploratory hypertexts,
constructive hypertexts require a capability to act: to create, change, and
recover particular encounters within the developing body of knowledge."
If we looked at the Web holistically as a collaborative text, we might be able
to say that it does change and that authors do map a creative space each time
they add a link or file. At the same time, Joyce suggests that "[c]onstructive
hypertexts require visual representations of the knowledge they develop." Can we
say that the web maps it's own development? Is a map all we need to make the Web
more constructive? Again, the question is meant for discussion.
Daniel Anderson
Joi Lynne Chevalier
2/26/97