Writing Space:
The Computer, Hypertext, and the History of Writing
Jay David Bolter
Ceci tuera cela
The Advent of Print Media
(The Gutenberg Galaxy)
 McLuhan’s Tetrad model for analyzing the effects of new media
 Print media “helped to displace the medieval organization and
expression of knowledge”
 Elizabeth Eisenstein: print important to modern science (linear
organization of data, the spread of scientific knowledge: accelerates
the progress of science)
 In what ways did print re-shape civilization and cultures? (for
example: Nationalism, standardization, “cultural unity through shared
literary inheritance”, increased literacy)
Remaking the Book
 What is the future of the book in the age of the computer? “Electric
technology offers a new kind of book and new ways to write and
read.” The printed book evolves in the age of the computer.
 “The computer provides a new writing surface that needs conventions
different from those of the printed page. In fact, the page itself is not a
meaningful unit of electronic writing.”
 Other ways the computer remakes the book: more fluid and dynamic
than print, changes our reading style, and gives the text a new
structure: electronic texts are “a fluid network of verbal elements”
 “Word processors demonstrate the flexibility of electronic writing in
allowing writers to copy, compare, and discard text with the touch of a
few buttons.”... “But a conventional word processor does not treat the
text as a network of verbal ideas... A true electronic text does all this,
for a true electronic text is not a fixed sequence of letters, but is
instead from the writer’s point of view a network of verbal elements
and from the reader’s point of view a texture of possible readings.”
 Dynamic reading and dynamic writing: “An electronic text permits
the reader to share in the dynamic processes of writing. The text is
realized by the reader in the act of reading.” “An electronic book can
tailor itself to each reader’s needs... The reader exercises choice at
every moment in the act of reading.”
The New Voice of the Book
 The old paradigm: univocality, conceptual unity, book-as-object or
monument.
 The new paradigm: “An electronic book may speak with different
voices to different readers.” “Because an electronic text is not a
physical artifact, there is no reason to give it the same conceptual
unity as the printed book, no reason not to include disparate
materials in one electronic network.” “The electronic book... does
not contain the same sense of physical unity” that is, it is not an
‘object’ like a printed book.
 “An electronic book is a fragmentary and potential text, a series of
self-contained units rather than an organic, developing whole.”
Hypertext
 Bolter begins with the print version of hypertext: the footnote. This is
a hierarchical structure, with the main text being primary and the
footnote subordinate.
 The electronic hypertext, on the other hand, is networked and layered:
a footnote can link to other footnotes ad infinitum (dynamic). The
footnotes within footnotes are non-hierarchical: no paragraph is
subordinate to another, hence it is a flattened-out network of verbal
units.
 History of hypertext: Ted Nelson (coined the term): “A literature is a
system of interconnected writings”, Vannevar Bush: proposed in 1945
the memex machine, which was an early vision of a hypertextual
interface. Bush’s vision was of an interactive encyclopedia in which
“the reader... would be able to display two texts on a screen and then
create links between passages in the texts. These links would be stored
by the memex and would be available for later display and revision;
collectively they would define a network of interconnections.”
 Hypertext creates the possibility of multiple readings and dissolves
the linear sequential order of printed books: “A hypertext has no
canonical order. Every path defines an equally convincing and
appropriate reading, and in that simple fact the reader’s relationship to
the text changes radically. A text has no univocal sense; it is a
multiplicity without the imposition of a principle of domination.”
 Hypertext in scholarship: Ulysses and Finnegans Wake
Topics
 “The computer changes the nature of writing simply by giving visual
expression to our acts of conceiving and manipulating topics.” The
ability to manipulate electronic texts (cut, copy, paste, etc.) and
rearrange verbal units within the text allows the writer to organize,
more easily, his/her text according to topical/global structures.
 The word processor does little to help us organize texts according to
topical outlines. “Outline processors”, on the other hand, “make
structure a permanent feature of the text.” Outline processors are
basically programs that let you structure your text according to topics,
facilitating this by renumbering the outline with new additions,
deletions, and so on.
Writing as Technology
 “Writing is a technology for collective memory, for preserving and
passing on human experience.” This applies to all writing. Each new
technology associated with writing adds to the function of writing.
 The printing press mechanizes writing: “the invention of typography...
provid[ed] the first uniformly repeatable commodity, the first
assembly-line, and the first mass-production.” “Printing changed the
visual character of the written page, making the writing space
technically cleaner and clearer.”
 The computer also changes the technology of writing in several ways:
adds flexibilty to printing, allows the writer/reader to change texts
according to user’s needs and desires.
Writing as a State of Mind
 Techne: “a set of rules, system or method of making or doing, whether
of the useful arts, or of the fine arts.” Techne is associated with the
skill of the artisan or craftsman. The writer then, whether ancient or
modern, uses techne or formulae “to arrange ideas systematically in
space for later examination by a reader.”
 As techne, then, writing is internalized. As Bolter points out, “our
technical relationship to the writing space is always with us.” Even
whilst speaking, writers tend to think in terms of sentence and
paragraph structures, etc.
Skills and Structures Associated with Print and Electronic Writing
 Two kinds of structures: hard and soft. “Hard structures are the
tangible qualities of the materials of writing.” “Soft structures are
those visually determined units and relationships that are written on or
in the hard structures.”
 Hard structures in print media: page, paged book, binding. Skills
associated: ordering the pages, making openings attractive and legible,
organizing texts in a linear sequence, etc.
 Soft structures in print media: alphabets, punctuation, marginalia,
paragraphing, chapter divisions, and so on. Skills involved: the
mastery of said units (grammatical skill, organization skill, etc.)
 Hard structures in electronic technology: machine hardware (CPU,
keyboard, monitor, transistor memory, etc.). “Taken together, these
hard structures constitute perhaps the greatest single technological
change in the history of writing.”
 The hard structures of electronic technologies allow for: faster writing
(typing), data storage and retrieval, copying texts with speed and ease,
etc.