I don’t even know that “good” and “bad” are the terms properly put into the pole positions around “neutral.” So as I work on this project, I will come to this log and continue to refine and define my mission and my keyterm--“hypertext”--and the cluster of terms around it: “link,” “browser,” “non-sequential,” “linear,” “linearity,” “multisequential,” and whatever others appear.
Friday--April 10: I have been working without keeping this log very well up to this point. Concepts of Pierce's "sign" concept are wandering through my head, but I cannot connect them to the aspects of links as I would like to, and if I could, I am not sure that they would help me. And I have since glammed onto the catchy term "hypersuasion" in an effort to limit what I want to discuss to a persuasive hypertext. I want to keep the term in perspective though--knowing that each section of the word has a distinct sense of meaning to contribute. It may not be right to keep a term and then fit a theory to it.
Saturday--Ap11: "Hypersuasion" is becoming my dominant term and is to be coutnerposed to the "New Ethos." I am seeing Hypersuasion as my bad guy and the NE as the redemption...well, the good guy. Hypersuasion feeds the readers sense that he is in control. The new ethos lets the reader know that the author has unfolded her text with goodwill in mind.
"Goodwill" is Aristotle's term. Good reason, Good morals, and Goodwill are his ethos' driving cluster. I think that good reason is acceptable. The good morals would be a tough sale, and I don't feel obliged to treat that terminology here. I think that somehow we are apart from "morals" and for us "goodwill" assumes some sort of moral stance. I don't think, however, that it did for Aristotle.
I need to find a way to move from Peirce's classes of signs toward an "ethos" that is appropriate. Peirce's schema for classifying signs is too close to what I see links doing to be unused. I don't know what they show me though yet. I think that using the appropriate "type" of sign/link...avoiding misrepresenting links, mysterious (unless that is purposive), and "noise" (jprince's term) oriented links is "ethical."
I need to be careful b/c I keep seeing myself moving past "description" into some scheme that suggests I am making a list of "proper" uses of links. I do not want to write some diatribe.
I am going to work on the practice side for a while, trying to get through the "this is what I did" phase with each of the three sample pages. Maybe in there I will stumble into the idea that unites it all. Don't forget Heidegger: we do not serve our best interests by calling technology "neutral"--maybe, to an extent, I need to play up the good-guy/bad-guy notions and lean a bit more toward a judgement call...uggg.
I am feeling full of bologna. I am writing some of this as if readers in hypertextual media want to be coddled. That is not always the case. I need to narrow my focus in some way or another. Do I have 3 issues here? Links, Course Websites, and Persuasive hypertexts? Can they all be handled in one text? Of course they can in a hypertext--I need no center, and I need not center myself. I am striving to center myself. To have Athesis--not some theses. Writing in this media makes me feel as if I am just jotting here and there. I have about four different fronts going right now in the writing process, and I am not sure I like that. It feels sloppy. It could/should feel liberating in some way or another since I am not required to sustain a serious linear argument. But I have trying to sustain a multifaceted one. Maybe linearity is a crutch of some sort. The ultimate invention strategy. Before h-text, writers could always assume a linearity--and if necessary instruct their readers within that structure to change this way or that. Now, we have two modes and really non-linearity is not a single "mode." So when we assumed "narration," "compare contrast," "classification," or "definition" modes would drive things, we assumed the linearity of them all. It was an easy thing to handle switching between them. Now, when any node is theoretically the "first" or center or last node of a text...especially last...HMMMM, the last. Maybe it is here too, this "ethos" I am looking for/at. In persuasion, you don't want the reader to move out of the web until he or she is persuaded (and/or informed?).
same day: This thing is now driving me nuts. To make a web that says all I want to say and to do so with some amount of appearance is difficult--I am using my graphics stuff in order to avoid making any points. I need to get in and just write some ideas down--worry about connecting them later. Links as "icons" "indices" and "symbols"--Aristotle's "Ethos" defined--What I did and why in making my sites...I may need to abandon the hypertext model and write linearly and then break it up...but that seems to be counter to what I think this medium should be--I don't like the websites I see which could have just as easily been papers. I want to use the medium to talk about the medium, to play with the reader, and to show by example when I can.
Sunday 12: Well, I am nearing completion of what I intended to write for the "practice" side of the web, but I am still stuck with the theory part. Today is the deadline I had given myself. I am no where near finished. My thoughts on hypertext have not changed much--although I am now wondering about the nature of persuasion. I have been assuming that if we write in this media, we would write the same "modes" that we had before. That we would make a "conversion to" hypertextual media rather than a "switch to." The fact may be that my intended point is obsolete...maybe there is no "persuasion" in hypertext--that is, no persuasion as a specified mode. People still aim to influence other people of course, but maybe now or here in the guise of information. That too, of course happens in text and tv. I don't know. I don't want to write the theory section as an "essay divided" which is the danger I keep flirting with. I don't know where to start...which should be okay since anywhere is the starting place in a hypertext, according to most of my sources.
Saturday 18: A week later than planned, I am almost finished. Writing in hypertext has been discouraging at times. I have adopted pretty linear strategies in many places--especially in the theory sections. Maintaining the standard of linking that I discuss has been rough too. I am still going through and changing links throughout to fit a single form. I attempted to keep from making value judgements--or being prescriptive. I really don't want to say that certain linking strategies are "good" but rather, I will say that some establish an ethos we can appreciate as users. Quality ethos does not mean quality content, nor does a strategy different from the one I promote mean that the website is crappy or that the author is somehow an unethical person.
I want to finish this today. I need to write a critique of my own old pages, and I need to write the section that connects Peirce's terminology to some ethical use. That is, to say that there is an ethical dimension inherent in each of these functions--whether used or not. I also need to look back at the "practice" section and re-write the "pedagogy" node, write general "how to read this hypertext" page, maybe rework the "practice of linking" page as well as the theory of linking page....okay maybe done by tomorrow.
The problem for an easily distracted personality like mine in this medium is all the "detail" work that can make me feel like I am working on the site while I am really not contributing at all to the content. The presentation is important, and I want to maintain a consistency throughout, but it is easy to get a fragmented sense of purpose here. It is easy to procrastinate within the task itself. That is odd.
Sunday April 19: I still have 3 nodes to design/write. One is self criticism, one is a definition of hypertext (small window of quotes), and one is the chart of link functions in conjunctions. There are many nodes still not as I want them. The argument is not horribly clear in places, and I need to make sure that there are routes back and forth wherever there should be. It is hard to get from the practice side to the theory side. the self criticism page should make that an explicit connection, but there must be places elsewhere where I could make those connections. I have to finish. I have to study elsewhere. Make the chart--a table or a frame page?? I think frame page. Are all links either symbolic or iconic in nature and the indexical is a function secondary? I am not sure--I can use a "link" that doesn't go anywhere...but indicates mouseovers...so in that case, a "link" might be indexical only--when one uses the index function of a link but does not have the image or symbols addressing a second node. This might be as nutty as the thought that a string of words can be iconic...we'll see.
Monday April 20: But early. I am staying here until this is finished. I am happy with the huge table I just made trying to clarify the concepts I have and how they may work. I have to go back now and discuss how the examples begin to show the many options a composer in this medium has. I want too, to do a short critique of my own web sites. I think this is not going to take too long...I am not going to get graphics intensive there. I cannot afford the time. Talked to Rich tonight about the work I am doing and he says Landow says some of these things...w/o the terminology. Of course, as I go, I am not so sure how much the terminology helps...I think it is interesting, but I don't know.
Monday April 20: Now later, but still the same day. On the verge of "completion." Not entirely happy. Spent 15 hours in this one room, and it is warm. I am stale. But now, I think I have something here. I don't know what exactly. Hypertext is still as it was to me. I like making the page, but not writing the hypertext itself. I am trying to be sure that the links all function and that the reader can get through the thing without missing "key" elements. That is the tricky thing--seeming like it is all cool and readerly free--but it isn't--I am working hard to make it a net that has direction. I have only the "how this thing works" page to make. I ditched a few nodes as I went along. All i hope is that there are no nodes unfitted...un...noded--no links without a node at the other end.
Peirce fits here. It is the 'ethos' that I am having trouble with. I see this as possibly a three dimensional mapping--the structure of a single link: its symbolic axis, iconic axis, and indexic axis. My ethos idea is not as cool as I want--so much makes the ethos here that this little measuring out is not quite as effective as I'd hoped. I do think it works, but it isn't revolutionary or anything...did I think it would be? Probably, in March.
Monday April 20: Afternoon. I am finished with this project. I know that within the site there are glitches and possibly some incomlete nodes...at the same time, I have checked it extensively and corrected all mistakes I could find. Revision in this medium is something else I need to consider before I try to teach it to students...could it be taught to students? should it be? That is the real question. If so, if as Janangelo suggest, we teach collage style writing to students, how do we provide web access, storage space. Computers are still more expensive than paper...
I want something to do with this text--in some medium or another...I think that the ethos idea is sound...but maybe not extensive enough...Maybe it is extensive enough. Good night.