Moulthrop Hypertext 1993

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You Say You Want a Revolution? Hypertext andthe Laws of Media

Stuart Moulthrop

©

1991

PMC

1.3

1.

The original Xanadu (Coleridge's) came billed as "aVision in a Dream," designated doubly unreal and thuseasily aligned with our era of "operational simulation"where, strawberry fields, nothing is "real" in the firstplace since no place is really "first" (Baudrillard,

Simulations

10). But all great dreams invite revisions,and these days we find ourselves perpetually on there-make. So here is the new Xanadu(TM), the universalhypertext system proposed by Theodor Holm Nelson--avision which, unlike its legendary precursor, cannot beintegrated into the dream park of the hyperreal.Hyperreality, we are told, is a site of collapse orimplosion where referential or "grounded" utterancebecomes indistinguishable from the self-referential andthe imaginary. We construct our representational systemsnot in serial relation to indisputably "real" phenomena,but rather in recursive and multiple parallel, "mapping onto different co-ordinate systems" (Pynchon 159). Mapsderive not from territories but from other map-makingenterprises: all the world's a simulation.

2.

This reality implosion brings serious ideologicalconsequences, for some would say it invalidates theinforming "master narratives" of modernity, leaving uswith a proliferation of incompatible discourses andmethods (Lyotard 26). Such unchecked variation, it hasbeen objected, deprives social critique of a clear agenda(Eagleton 63). Hyperreality privileges no discourse asabsolute or definitive; critique becomes just another formof paralogy, a countermove in the language game that istechno-social construction of reality. The game is all-encompassing, and therein lies a problem. As LindaHutcheon observes, "the ideology of postmodernism isparadoxical, for it depends upon and draws its powerfrom that which it contests. It is not truly radical; nor is ittruly oppositional" (120).

3.

This problem of complicity grows especially acutewhere media and technologies are concerned.Hyperreality is as much a matter of writing practice as it

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is of textual theory: as Michael Heim points out, "[i]nmagnetic code there are no originals" (162). Electronicinformation may be rapidly duplicated, transmitted, andassembled into new knowledge structures. From wordprocessing to interactive multimedia, postmoderncommunication systems accentuate what Ihab Hassancalls "immanence" or "the intertextuality of all life. Apatina of thought, of signifiers, of 'connections,' now lieson everything the mind touches in its gnostic(noo)sphere. . . ." (172). Faced with this infinitelyconvoluted system of discourse, we risk falling intotechnological abjection, a sense of being hopelesslyabandoned to simulation, lost in "the technico-luminouscinematic space of total spatio-dynamic theatre"(Baudrillard,

Simulations

139). If all the world's asimulation, then we are but simulacral subjects cyclingthrough our various iterations, incapable of any "radical"or "oppositional" action that would transform the techno-social matrix.

4.

Of course, this pessimistic or defeatist attitude ishardly universal. We are far more likely to heartechnology described as an instrumentality of change ora tool for liberation. Bolter (1991), Drexler (1987),McCorduck (1985), and Zuboff (1988) all contend thatpostmodern modes of communication (electronicwriting, computer networks, text-linking systems) candestabilize social hierarchies and promote broaderdefinitions of authority in the informational workplace.Heim points out that under the influence of thesetechnologies "psychic life will be redefined" (164). Butif Hutcheon is correct in her observation thatpostmodernism is non-oppositional, then how will sucha reconstruction of order and authority take place? Howand by whom is psychic life--and more important,political life--going to be redefined?

5.

These questions must ultimately be addressed not intheory but in practice--which is where the significance of Nelson's second Xanadu lies. With Xanadu, Nelsoninvalidates technological abjection, advancing anunabashedly millenarian vision of technologicalrenaissance in which the system shall set us free. In itsextensive ambitions Xanadu transcends the hyperreal. Itis not an opium vision but something stranger still, abusiness plan for the development of what Barthes called"the

social

space of writing" (81), a practical attempt toreconfigure literate culture. Xanadu is the most ambitiousproject ever proposed for hypertext or "non-sequentialwriting" (

Dream Machines

29;

Literary Machines

5/2).Hypertext systems exploit the interactive potential of

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computers to reconstruct text not as a fixed series of symbols, but as a variable-access database in which anydiscursive unit may possess multiple vectors of association (see Conklin; Joyce; Slatin). A hypertext is acomplex network of textual elements. It consists of unitsor "nodes," which may be analogous to pages,paragraphs, sections, or volumes. Nodes are connectedby "links," which act like dynamic footnotes thatautomatically retrieve the material to which they refer.Because it is no longer book-bounded, hypertextualdiscourse may be modified at will as reader/writers forgenew links within and among documents. Potentially thiscollectivity of linked text, which Nelson calls the"docuverse," can expand without limit.

6.

As Nelson foresees it, Xanadu would embody thistextual universe. The system would provide a centralrepository and distribution network for all writing: itwould be the publishing house, communicationsmedium, and great hypertextual Library of Babel. Yet forall its radical ambitions, Nelson's design preservesfamiliar proprieties. Local Xanadu outlets would be"Silverstands"(TM), retail access and consulting centersmodeled after fast-food franchises and thus integratedwith the present economy of information exchange.Xanadu would protect intellectual property throughcopyright. Users would pay per byte accessed andwould receive royalties when others obtained proprietarymaterial they had published in the system. The problemsand complexities of this scheme are vast, and at themoment, the fulfilled Xanadu remains a "2020 Vision," aprobe into the relatively near future. But it is a futurewith compelling and important implications for thepostmodern present.

7.

The future, as Disney and Spielberg have taught us,is a place we must come "back" to. The Americantomorrow will be a heyday of nostalgia, an intensivepursuit of "lost" or "forgotten" values. Xanadu is noexception: Ted Nelson sees the history of writing in the21st century as an epic of recovery. His "grand hope"lies in "a return to literacy, a cure for television stupor, anew Renaissance of ideas and generalist understanding,a grand posterity that does not lose the details which arethe final substance of everything" ("How Hypertext(Un)does the Canon" 4). To a skeptical observer, thisvision of Xanadu might suggest another domain of thepostmodern theme park. Gentle readers, welcome toLiteracyland!

8.

But this vision could constitute more than just a