Journal 12/6

When working with hypertexts it’s important to realize that the author composed the texts with an understanding that someone reading it would have access to the technology that the text is composed in. This may seem silly but with a “standard” text written on paper, the author can only be certain that a reader will have the book, magazine, newspaper, etc. that the text was printed in. With a hypertext, the author knows that their readers are using an integrated device like a tablet or home computer with access to other information through the internet. As such the author may rely on things not accessible by a printed media to further their point. For example, a blogger might include a link to a video that contains crucial prerequisite information for the argument they make in this week’s update. Within a printed media, the author would need to summarize the point of the video in a paragraph prior to the main argument yet here the source material can be linked immediately with no paraphrasing. This means that a hypertext can rely more heavily upon outside knowledge as the reader has access to any amount of information that exists about a topic that isn’t included in the specific text. As such it becomes the reader’s responsibility to make sure they are informed enough to understand the situation an argument takes place in. This is an important consideration when talking about remediation, remix, or assemblage of hypertexts as a change in medium would then almost necessarily require a larger amount of exposition if the new medium is not a device with internet access.

Another consideration when reading a hypertext is updating. A physically printed text cannot be updated without another edition of the text being printed. A hypertext can be updated on the same day it was published with a few easy button clicks. With this in mind, it is important to look for indications of updates made to a hypertext such as footnotes that mark new information. For example, online news articles will often not change the body of the article if information is shown to be different than originally reported but will instead attach updates to the end of the article that corrects mistakes and updates with new information. Because this isn’t apparent at the beginning of the article, it is important to looks for these updates before “digesting” the material in the article because somethings may have changed.