Geoff asks "Is reading afternoon guaranteed to turn someone into some sort of hip neo-tribalist?" Implied answer: Ha!

But another implication of Geoff's words is that something about hypertext can change the world. (And it is not frames...)

I consider the pieces and bits about readers and writers that flutter up through the more general discussion about what this hypertext thing/process/space is/might be: mostly there are comments about readers: Lennie ended by mentioning how hypertext might change the "writer/reader relationship," Kathy spoke of allusions in terms of a reader's knowledge, Nick speaks of links perhaps 'forestalling' a 'reader going her own way,' Kathy wants to shoot the docent so she can move as she wants, and Geoff speaks of changing the world by our not being dull readers. In most of these comments, the reader is separate from the text, desiring something (pleasurable?) from it, taking pleasure (but perhaps not awarely?) in simply being able to know enough to do the reading or (more awarely?) from catching the allusions. But we had to learn how to read, first, yes?, before any of this: and that was what kindergarten (or Sesame Street...) through some higher year of schooling was all about... and that learning to read and write -- to become literate -- was also all about learning to sit still, behave, and fit your words (hence thoughts) back into the shape that words were supposed to have on the page.

In some of the comments I have quoted about reading, it is as though what some (me, too) are grabbing onto with writing on screen is that we can *see* on screen that there are other possible visual and temporal shapes that can be constructed (yes, yes, Johndan, I might seem still to be talking at artifact construction here...). On screen, it seems, there is a whole lot more room for play/shaping/making room(s)... which space has also given us perspective for seeing that quite a lot of the same shapes were/are possible with paper, it's just that we were told we were bad/not professional (or we were poets) if we worked with them, or the possibility didn't even occur because we didn't have access to anything but typewriters and short-range means of dissemination.

So I have in the above words shifted the perspective to looking at writing, and to the differing experiences of writing when you can choose from wider ranges of temporal/visual (and, well sure, audio, etc.) strategies/explorations than when you can only put black words in lines on white paper.

If we want -- as Geoff asks -- to be more comfortable with other colors, well.... If we want ourselves, the people in our classes, to be better at encountering the unfamiliar or different, than one possibility I see is in the kinds of texts we can make on screen (and on paper, too) if we move out beyond a notion of black on white -- and beyond 'it must have links' or 'it can't have frames' -- and to taking seriously the expressive possibilities of these various spaces. And that means more generous exploration with texts as writers (Joyce's notion of constructive hypertexts seems to me to be mostly about the texts you make yourself) which I think helps us learn as readers (paradoxically) both a wider generosity to texts that aren't familiar and a lessened generosity (as Kathy expresses) to texts that seem to play out the same presentations of black-and-white, fully-justified self.

It is warm in Houghton, good night.

Anne

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Anne Frances Wysocki
Humanities Department
Michigan Technological University
http://www.hu.mtu.edu/~awysocki