why the web

Or, in other words, why is the primary territory hypertextual? And why do I consider the textual version to be a secondary artifact of the first? The answer to these questions can be found, implicitly, through the experience of this hypertextual document. It is in between all the pages. It is the hypertextual, rhizomatic linkings that weave these pages together in a diversity of layers and simultaneously open it up to the almost infinite world wide web, where there is no there there. It is in the dynamic reading/writing experience, where readers have more overt control to "read" as they choose. And the writer can continually, and performatively, update the document. It is a living document in which the process allows the content to grow and change as long as it is attended to. It never has to be completed as long as I (and very possibly others) continue to add to it.

So, I could have attempted to write this as a standard narrative, in textual format and due process as it were. But it would most certainly not be the same story, and it may even be lesser for the difference. A scholarly study is a process of academic logics; it is the studious creation of new knowledge, adding to an extant area of study. As such, the content of the work needs to be new. Normally, this would be a unique look at a subject with possibly some new theories put into play. All this efficiently documented in a discursive, academic text.

This is a fine standard and I am not arguing for its end, but for the expansion of academic discourse into new processes. We already see this in academe, with Performance Studies opening up new modes of academic exploration and knowledge. Performance Studies has amply shown limits to textual discourse: it's static nature and distance between the world observed and the pages preserved. And Performance Studies exists within its own ephemeral limits, always already gone, and then we may have a video, but we always have a written document of the performance.

Hypertext combines some of the characteristics of text and peformance into a new and unique experience. Like text, hypertext is a document that can be referenced and reviewed time and again. Like performance, it is dynamic and ephemeral, allowing the user to literally experience something anew each and every time. And it also exists within its own limits. You are currently confined to experience a hypertextual web page while sitting in front of your computer. Granted, there are wireless applications and other exceptions, but for the time being, if you are reading this in it's primary form, you are sitting at your computer.

That said, I have chosen to create my primary work hypertextually. I also attempted to map the hypertext to a secondary, textual version (old standards cast long shadows). It is my belief that the text is merely a static artifact of the dynamic hypertext. The secondary version lacks the active dynamics; therefore, ideas and web pages that are hypertextually linked and just a click away from each other become distanced from each other in the linear form of a chaptered text. Like text and performance, I believe that hypertext is enabling new and unique modes of exploration and knowledge for academe to struggle within and benefit from. So, while the content of my study is important, I truly believe that the form of it is important as well. I am interested in my objects of study and my exploration of narratives and mediums and the computer's emerging role in our storytelling. And in the end, hypertext is here, and we are just beginning to explore its capabilities and constraints.This work is a descriptive analysis of my topic, and just as importantly, it is an illustration of what hypertext may be able to add to our knowledge.