Using Hypertext For Articles
Traditional Explorative Texts
There is a conventional writing code of conduct established to filter useful information from the garbled, authentic papers from the imposters, and valuable leads from the bogus. That is not limited to only scientific notions, but also literary ones, from cinema scripts to factual accounts of cultural histories.
The authors of most of these writings attempt to convey their stance on certain angularities on their arguments that have ground through drawing up references and logical flows of interconnected texts. And most times they make standing conclusions convincing their readers of a universal point of view. This “author-function” attempt at conveying curated information is not necessarily always taken as the author’s intentions behind passing it. The more variables that play a factor in bringing a piece to justice, the more meaning is re-purposed and hence not guaranteed in reception.
Meaning does not exclusively rest in or come from the author’s intentions.
Say yes to Computer Hypertext for explorative arguments in this Digital Age
Hypertext is classified as a more advanced sort of conventional text. In place of footnotes and endnotes on paper to break between theories and meanings, hypertext makes available pathways in a more immediate conclusive fashion, making the pieces more compact in nature as compared to paper printed writing.
Hypertext should be of interest particularly in the fields of narration and textuality rooted in the relational functions of the reader and writer. Dissolving authorship, it provides new modes of perception for its lifetime. With multiple entry points into the article, the intertextuality takes its own form as each network is traced, leaving interpretation of contents open to the reader, absorbing more of their analytical attention in shorter durations of time, thus improving the workflow of information flow. More interactive in nature, hypertext allows better registration of theories and pattern justifications.
This paradigm shift entails a mixed relationship between hypertext and critical theory. Critical theory theorizes hypertext. Hypertext attempts to embody and test aspects of validity of theories. To use each skillfully while curating work would result in more concise, more interactive, and more vulnerable articles.
Why explore arguments?
In our current saturated cyberworld, it would seem that we need less theory, less talk, and less abstraction. We might instead argue that we’re in need of more action, more solutions, rather than reproduced meanings, words, and thoughts.
Why read something at all? Why explore arguments?
How theory is a crucial social action is explained beautifully by Nealon and Giroux in their paper The Theory Toolbox with the song “Why Theory” by Gang of Four.
To sum it up, it’s pointed out how everyone has opinions they are entitled to. But these opinions shape up the collective knowledge, where this knowledge originates from, and ends up at, are heavily influenced by the theories we have. If theories and opinions were to be disregarded as a whole, seen to be of no use, we would essentially be stuck with everyday being a constant, a natural fact, and stuck as prisoners to conventional wisdom instead.
Many times conventional wisdom does hold solid ground, which is why theories are essentially an abstract way of questioning things, the point of theories is not to declare something as good or bad on ground but to be suspicious of it in a decent capacity to allow room for change if and where needed.
Paired with audio, video, image, and other data, hypertext derives a new term as hypermedia, not changing in its inherent attributes of relation.
Useful in scientific writing utilizing diagrams, methods and approaches, and references, it is also reflected true in scholarly and literary writing attempts, ranging from providing sub-contextual references to a multitude of foreshadowing/callback windows.
Like a reader surfs through the internet looking for solutions to lack of information on say a certain topic, a hypertext article concisely and open-endedly provides the answers in one place, linking off into its own chain of relevant media, making the reader a more active participant in exploration of the contents of the article, essentially perpetuating a mini networked blog/article space, more impactful in digital information consumption.
