hyper-textual cocktails

            When birthed into the electronic world, hypertext became both a vitamin and flu like symptom for the online reading breed.  After a revelation, I had put a finger on exactly what hypertext reminded me of. In my mothers clothing store I would go into the dressing rooms and look in the triple sided mirror. I would not just see three Henrys, but an endless repetition of my adolescent self. I would grow frustrated that I could never see the end of this endless reflection. While online hypertext does not inflict frustration, the intangible vastness of the hyper textual world is something that people are seldom able to fathom. This vast endlessness of the Internet is where people can decide if it is to them, flu or a vitamin. When viewing The Museum, both the flu in and the vitamin came to me at the same time. While frustrated that I could never possibly explore every crevice of hypertext on the page without going mad, I was also visually frustrated. After a few clicks, I had no idea where I was in the museum. Trying to imagine how I got there I looked longingly at the ironic map of the Metropolitan museum on my desk. Why was there no map of hypertext? Perhaps its because we are meant to get lost in hypertext. If no one got lost who would feed the beast? This beast though; does he leave us helpless at his feet looking for some sort of escape or helped, in a conversation with his infinite knowledge.

            The idea of an online novel with hypertext sparks interesting questions that can only be answered subjectively, however I have a few theories on the matter. Consider the idea of hypertext in a novel a substance of alcoholic sorts. This “cocktail” will be served by an the virtual bartender we call the eBook. Some will choose to refrain, pledge sobriety, perhaps reminiscent of the hardcover book. Some will drink responsibly and use the drink to simply further enjoy their evening. Some will indulge perhaps a little too much and wake up with a hangover that leaves them with a blurred line between hypertext and the novel itself. The alcoholics will become addicted; forgetting why or what they were actually reading and simply clicking and glancing at the hundreds of pages before them. Drinking in volume rather than quality will leave them eventually passed out with nothing to recall despite viewing so much. Age is a factor as well; the young and inexperienced will be more likely to view irresponsibly and find themselves with an improper mix of novel and hypertext. The elder and wiser will simply click one or two for reference. The internet bottle that hypertext is encompassed by can be opened by everyone, it is however how they choose to use this literary aphrodisiac that will send them to prison for a DUI or a wine tasting gala in Napa Valley. 

Murray

In Murray’s introduction to Hamlet on the Holodeck she titles her initial thoughts “A Book Lover Longs For Cyberdrama”. She gifts us with an honest look at the marriage of technology and literature. Her teaching credentials at MIT place her in an appropriate position to preach that this marriage is a healthy one. While she once lived by the way of the bound book, the arrival of the digital age peaked her interest in the medium. At first the technology left her discouraged, but that response had been true for past technologies as well. However, she and technology matured hand in hand leading her to become enchanted.  Working specifically to digitize education she received a lot of criticism. People think that human thought and idea can only be written, but obviously this argument is non sequitur because it is out dated. Murray states however that there is a connotation and experience that only books can give you, which to she adds that computers can also account for resources that wouldn’t be available to the strictly traditional reader.  Books are face value, what you get is what you get, which is not necessarily a bad thing, but a specific experience none the less. Holistically Murray has a very nuanced and credible opinion on the subject. She is a book lover who still enjoys the experience of reading a solid book; and at the same time she is excited to explore the possibilities of the new medium and where it will take us in the future.

            Murray exhumes the positive side in both mediums, which gives us an exciting and refreshing viewpoint on the subject. After reading the dogmatic arguments of Birkerts and his cohorts, we finally have a well-grounded opinion on the situation. Murray explains what individual powers books have and what individual powers computers have and what the two powers can accomplish together. And to use these powers for good; the educational outreach would be of biblical proportion. Murray then goes on to say that the computer is capable of visual learning that is not found in books. With books like Hugo however, this argument may become invalid. I support her belief in the visual advantage of digitalization, but if books like Hugo continue to emerge, they will have the same experience.

            Technology may be the biggest advantage we have in mass education though. With Mobil technology becoming more and more advanced, it will be easy to reach kids in desolate parts of the world. Tablets are becoming more and more affordable and if they made one specifically for education in poverty stricken regions, I’m sure they could come up with a very cost efficient product. Unlike sending physical books, getting an eBook to a tablet across the world is essentially cost free.

            With the potential of a tablet, I believe that one-day people will primarily read off of a screen. However, no matter how advanced tablets become there will be no invention that would prevent me from having a physical library and my house; the feeling on gets from looking at an old book is irreplaceable. 

Media is my message

            The Medium Is The Massage is subjectively one of the best books that exists on the face of the Planet. It is brave, honest and its brevity only forces the readers mind to explore outside of our humble comfort zone of the written word. When I say brevity I mean it would be brief in the eyes of someone who is accustomed to reading endless waves of words that create a novel. If you are someone that appreciates different mediums, this book is not a quick read; not in its length, but simply in its provocative ideas.  "All media are extensions of some human faculty- psychic or physical" The idea of how media is not just something that appeals to our senses, but seeps through the pours of our skin, into our bloodstream and visits our oldest memories and the deepest crevices of our soul.

            As someone who would rename this book My Thought Process Volume. I, McLuhan has taken my short attention span, my enjoyment of art, culture and documentary, and the satisfaction I get from reading articles and created a book that should in my eyes should be bound with hair from a unicorns tail.

            Among the complexity of this book and its various interacting themes lies a root of communication. In this communicative root, we can better how exactly interpersonal communication as well as media communication works. Without communication between the people that populate planate earth, we would still be ape like. Communication is the driving force behind the past and future progression of this race and with McLuhan’s book dissecting this idea; it should be on the same shelf as the library. Past communication was perhaps more shallow because of its limited information and technology, but know that we know a lot about each other (perhaps too much) this idea of communication that started as a simple seed in a garden has grown into the beanstalk that Jack climbed on to reach the land of giants. “All media work us over completely. They are so pervasive in their personal, political, economic, aesthetic, psychological, moral, ethical, and social consequences that they leave no part of us untouched, unaffected, unaltered. The medium is the massage. Any understanding of social and cultural change is impossible without a knowledge of the way media work as environments.” Unless you make the most heroic effort of biblical proportion to escape the medias arms, you will fail. This makes media perhaps the most powerful institution in the universe. This godlike presence will make its CEO’s the most powerful people in the world and its creative backbone perhaps an ivy league of resourceful minds. Media is no longer will be announced as something that reaches people; it will be a vehicle for collective voice, good or bad we don’t know, but infinitely powerful non the less. Think about some of the greatest charity movements of our time. Yes Dr. King had 250,000 people behind him in Washington. In the very same city, The Live Earth concert connected the 400,000 in attendance to 2 billion others worldwide.