4/29/2002 1:03:31 PM

Prince Emleth did it where? with a what? when?

This weekend I purchased two books. Started even to read them. Hamlet On The Holodeck – The Future of Narrative in Cyberspace by Janet H. Murray and How To Build a Time Machine by Paul Davies. I had a couple different things in mind when I purchased them, but simultaneous reading of the first few chapters has given me a topic for Blog Articles for this week and maybe more.

Hyper-literature. There I’ve just made up a word. I’ll make up a few more before all this is through and misuse them as well. The misuse is how I thrive.

A warning shot across your collective bows. I am notorious for thinking that is far less than rigorous. Rigor does quickly to Mortis turn in my so very daft hands. Here is li’l ole me about to take on a topic that by all rights should have some proper Rigor for proper Study. I will, however take the low road and stick to the sloppy intuitive stuff that so suffuses and pleases my soul.

What then is this hyper-literature? Well, now, me pretty, that is precisely the question. Is it merely a literature that is enabled with the use of hypertext? What? Hypertext? Those words in a colored font and underlined that you click on to move you at warp speeds to a more appropriate place in the document at hand. Changes colors sometimes to indicate cyberroads you have traveled, cyberpaths you have blazed. The markings used as a part Hypertext Transfer Protocol. Maybe!

Ubiquitous is the HTTP!

Also find hypertext in Help Files. You get perfectly opaque and vile answers by clicking on the menu item that proclaims Help in the common user interface of most programs. Sometimes you can type in a direct English question like. Where do I find a blivet binder? Most likely you are perplexed because in the tutorial section of the help files you have just read a sentence that stated “The only way to copy a graphic target file to the email text box is by using a blivet binder.” “Where,” you swear as you type hungrily, “the hell is the blivet whatsis?” And get a very indirect answer that looks like this:
Blivet,
function.
word type
Show
Polymorphic
indigenous

And pick and click for want of a better notion the infamous blivet comma indigenous. Only to discover that a blivet, polymorphic or no, doesn’t seem to have any reference to binder. Here is the story, my fine friends; help (unlike its name and possibly its intention) is very little HELP!
Help files are the dark nightmare side of hypertext. Self referential definitions that chase us and themselves all around the Rosey until ashes ashes we all fall dumbfounded to the new Black Bubonic Rag, ohhh its sooo elegant!

Course, hyper-literature, uses hypertext! It also spans the entire blivet binder of media. It sounds, views, scans, will with a little prodding via virtual brass noses(so like the one that old Tycho Brahe wore around Uraniborg while he explored the heavens) smell, with one handed gloves, help us either to moon walk or to feel., with Lotta Lenya like (I loved From Russia with Love the Movie) stiletto boots let us take a swipe at Bond James Bond, while we drink a virtual stirred shaken satisfied and sacred martini (so dry is it that someone has opened and quickly closed a bottle of vermouth somewhere in the room).

‘Cause in hyper-literature we will be assailed and supplied by all viewpoints. Be at once Odd Job, James Bond, Auric Goldfinger and Miss Lotte Lenya and Ole Lucy Brown. Scary, eh? Well if you had any sense it would be! This is new stuff to be used only by the adventurous or if you’re anything like me, merely the brainless. I am so hopeless that I rush in where fools fear to tread.

For who else but someone lower on the chain than a fool, would want to work in a medium that lets the reader/viewer/audience/experiencer interact and challenge the very presentation itself. Yes, you can turn off the TV (Go ahead try it) Yes, you can nod off in the middle of the latest John Grisham (and it is especially good to sleep at the endings) thriller, Yes, you can switch from radio frequency to frequency, but you can’t mess with the flow! Yes, you can smash a CD (or a pumpkin) into a million pieces, but some recording company will still covet the royalties. You may not be there, mon frere, but like a good catholic mass, the liturgy beats on forever and ever whether or not you are or even care to be present.

In cyberspace you will shape the flow as much as the author will. Maybe in good cyberspace you will influence it even more. Without you, comrade, there is no flow. I believe that what is emerging is truly collaborative. In the best and the worst senses. Be wery careful, paraphrases Elmer, there are wabbits here.

Look at Blogs! Simulations, which I find ever more satisfying than games. Study as experience. Experience as study. Text, layer and subtext on the new nightly news. Will people of either or the same sex have long term sexual liaisons with unknowable long distance partners? Will babies be born of sperm captured in virtual passion shipped via Federal Express and placed in Petri uterus? Is it a brave new world? This manifestation of hyper-literature

I’m tired and I rail at the thought of any collaboration but I will take it all up precisely there in Part II. The Growing Menace of Cyberspace. Or In Vitro Veritas. Chapter II. What did this have to do with a Time Machine? How do I get out of this help file?