http://eduspaces.net/antmcneill/weblog/243247.html

I tend to use 'text' in a loosely literary/cultural theory way to designate pretty much any sort of signifying practice: adverts, songs, newpaper articles, television programmes, txt msgs etc. 

Whenever I use it, i'm reminded of my first reading of lit theory and the blurring of the opposition between the particularity of literary texts and the general textuality of the culture.

So here we are, the final leg of a 12 week journey that is "Digital Environments". This is the first time that I have done an online course taught at a distance. I already had some experience with a correspondance course; which I did, in part, to test the waters to see if I had the stamina to take on a higher degree that was being taught from a distance. Oh boy! it couldn't have been more different.

"Block A - Orientations" gets the ball rolling very quickly by using discussions boards to introduce yourself to the group and to discuss a number of presented scenarios - immediately I can see that the communication element is far superior here than the correspondance course which relied mostly on sending material via Her Majesty's Royal Mail, possibly e-mail which was read on certain days or a telephone call which may be picked up during a two hour window on Sunday's only. Oh and no fellow students to talk to about the course or the assignments.

The communication dimension of the course aside, the really big thing that impressed me the most was how fantastic the course Blackboard/WebCT was laid out (see "First Week Impressions"). For example, all the reading lists were located under the relevant week's topic folder (not in a completely separate reading list folder that my academics tend to do - but then we don't do course design as part of the basic Blackboard training that we offer academics if they want to be Blackboard Instructors).

Despite not having met (yet!) Sian Bayne and Rory Ewins, their digital presence has been strongly "felt" (sorry Dreyfus! Wasn't he Inspector Clouseau's boss?). This has also been true of the more prolific students (Tony McNeill, Henry Keil, Nicki Brain, Andy Miller and Bill Babouris). The feedback from blog and discussion board posts from Sian and Rory have been pretty much immediate - so much better than a correspondance course (or even a classroom-based course come to that!). On the subject of discussion board posts (I've made 44 posts in total), I did find myself not participating on some of the more popular topics. This, in part, has a lot to do with me coming to the discussion boards after 7.00pm when everyone has gone on a discourse feeding frenzy like a plague of locusts - much discussion and research has been done about this.

"Block B - Environments" allowed us to explore "structured spaces" like e-portfolios and virtual learning environments (VLE); "volatile spaces" like Web 2.0 and Hypertext; and "new spaces" such as Second Life. One of the reasons for doing the MSc in e-Learning at Edinburgh was the richness and diversity that the course offered (see "And so it begins...") and it is here that it is at it's most apparent.

For me, the discourse and the theoretical underpinnings of the e-portfolio was a lot more exciting and interesting than trying to "knock up" an e-portfolio on Blackboard/WebCT (see "Betwixted, bothered and bewildered"). The Web 2.0 section of the course made use of a number of activities such as adding a bookmark to Delicious (whilst I appreciated what was going on here, the activity could have benefitted from adding a bit of extra meat to it) and placing an entry onto the Group Wiki (interesting that no-one wanted to mess around with other people's entries). We also discovered that the volatile nature of the Web 2.0 application / service is fraught with opportunities and dangers (see "Web 2.0: A Game of Snakes and Ladders").

One of the big delights for me on this course was the opportunity to use Second Life in an educational context and to interact and engage with my tutors and peers in a very relaxed and friendly environment. The nature of digital identity, personalities, group dynamics and digital discrimination and prejudice was explored and discussed; along with that of "presence" - by now this had become the course arc word (see "Return to the Rabbit Hole").

"Block C - Contexts" introduced us to the more philosophical (and highly explosive) discussions of "learning bodies" (or the importance of human embodiment to teaching and learning) and "digital natives" (the controversial metaphor, the generational rift that it appears to have opened up and the implications to 21st Century teaching and learning practices). Indeed, the course material should have been rubber-stamped with an "highly inflammable" symbol. On the subject of course material, I should say that the quality of the reading materials and the scanning have been first rate and easy to read.

Whilst I can see that the "digital native" / "digital immigrant" dichotomy would have offered a useful conversational starter on the perceived changes in student behaviour and learning that Higher Education (and in education as a whole) would have to address - it has now been insidiously absorbed into something far greater and more menacing than anyone would have imagined (see "Digital Imperialism: The Tyranny of Technology").

So for now, I bid Rory, Sian and the inspirational "Digital Environments" course a fond and affectionate adieu.

Thanks for the digital memories.

Came across a rather interesting blog article from EduSpaces user AWyatt called "Academic Facebook: Lessons learned so far". AWyatt has been using Facebook to talk to students outside of the class and offers some interesting insights upon it's use:

"Things I have done that I thought were positive:

• Have messaged conversations about issues that matter, but that were too personal for a class discussion
• Send messages of encouragement
• Send application presents (jack o lanterns, gingerbread men, christmas tree presents) just for fun 
• Check status changes.  Sometimes I can follow up on a student's well being the next time I see them, on the sidewalk, in my office, or before class starts.
• Use the messaging feature for my class groups to announce things like changed due dates (which are also announced through the usual channels)
• Participate in student run groups as a contributing member
• Find out things about who my students are and what they are concerned with that make me see them so much differently.  I have always been bemused by students who, even at the end of the semester, did not know my name (and I generally teach small classes with a lot of interaction!).  I can see how professors would really not know much more about a student than what they look like, how they write, and where they sit!  I was never satisfied with that, because it meant that I had never made a real connection with the person AS a person.  Facebook gives me many more cognitive "hooks" to use in making our relationship better and to help me tailor my teaching methods."

and misuse:

"I decided that,  if my students were gracious enough to be friends with me, I probably should not:

• leave a message on their wall asking why they were not in class or where an assignment was
• send them any apps without checking them first (sometimes the adverts at the end turn out to be something I would not like to endorse personally)
• be judgmental about any activities, even if I initially find some of the posts/photos to be surprising"

I came across Lynetter's Flickr account whilst looking for a picture on "digital natives" / "digital immigrants". She has an area called "Interesting Snippets" which used to be called "Online Developments".

"This is my personal dumping ground for various cool quotes, the odd stat, as slides to talk around when describing how things are changing online and in media & communications generally."

These are really fantastic pictures and images coupled with quotes and sound bites that have been taken from various media, communications and technology sources.

The photo set comes with an RSS feed if you want to keep tabs on any new photo-quotes.

The notion of "Millennials" (Howe & Strauss, 2000), "digital natives" (Prensky, 2001), "net gen" (Oblinger, 2005), "technological generation" (Monereo, 2004) and Frand's (2000) ten attributes of the "information-age mindset" is of great interest to me. Why? Well, my institution was awarded, this year, with some HEA Pathfinder funding to equip some of our lecturers with the necessary skills sets and tools that would enable them to speak the "new" digital language of our students.

Indeed, the aforementioned authors have identified a set of modus operandi that is common with a particular group of people that were born after 1982 (give or take a year or two). This M.O., as it were, includes such activities as: multitasking; visual literacy; highly social; constantly connected; a preference to using keyboards than pens / pencils; and a preference to reading on the screen rather than printed text.

A number of reports (Ipsos MORI 2007, Livingstone & Bober 2005) and commentators (Bayne & Ross 2007, Owen 2004) have put out warnings that this might not be the case - the presupposed M.O. just doesn't fit. Delegates at this year's ALT-C conference were cautioned that the so-called "digital native" student may not be overly familiar with Web 2.0 technologies like blogs, wikis and podcasting.

The flip-side to the "digital native" is the "digital immigrant" (more on that later). Both terms have been popularised and mythologised from Prensky's (2001) original work and the basis of which have little or no substantive evidence or research to back-up his claims. McKenzie (2007) accuses Prensky of being "guilty of 'arcade scholarship'". Unfortunately, in the process of lambasting and unpicking Prensky's ideas, theories and claims; McKenzie is also culpable of the same sense of "arcade scholarship" - which is a shame really as he does take Prensky to task.

Whilst I recognised that for many young people the Internet, mobile phones and MP3 players are very much a part of their everyday life and culture in the same way that television, radio and cassette players were with me in 1970s - so much so that it stops being technology and becomes normalised - it doesn't necessarily follow that all students use technology or that they appreciate the use of "trendy" technology as part of their learning experience; despite what JISC (2007) may say.

According to Prensky (2001), "digital immigrants" represent the complete antithesis of the "digital natives". Whilst some of the more "smarter immigrants" might be able to embrace technology and begin to speak the same language as the "digital natives", albeit with an "accent", most are not quite as forward-looking or thinking. It is these gross assumptions and the patronising manner that makes the whole "digital divide" debate / discourse distasteful and wholly unhelpful.

The whole lexicon of "digital native", "digital immigrant" (Prensky, 2001), "digital savage", "technological migrant" (Monereo, 2004), "digital colonist" (Sandford, 2006), and "digital refugee" (Feeney, n.d.) is imperialistic in nature and racist by inclination (Bayne & Ross, 2007).

These metaphors alludes towards cyberspace as being some kind of untamed and untapped "Wild West Frontier" with the physical apparatus of pipes, cables, fibre-optics and microwave links being construed as a "digital railroad". This kind of linguistic flimflammery are neither useful nor helpful culturally, ideologically, technologically or educationally; and do very little to help us to try and understand the true digital diversity (cyberdiversity?) of our hetereogeneous student body.

References

Bayne, S. and Ross, J., (2007). The "Digital Native" and "Digital Immigrant": A Dangerous Opposition. Annual Conference of the Society for Research into Higher Education. December 2007.

Feeney, L., (n.d.). Digital Denizens. In: Previously In The Spotlight [online]. Available at http://loki.stockton.edu/~intech/spotlight-digital-denizens.htm [Accessed 29 November 2007]

Frand, J.L., (2000). The Information-Age Mindset: Changes in Students and Implications for Higher Education. Educause. September/October 2000.

Howe, N. and Strauss, B., (2000). Millennials Rising: The Next Great Generation. New York: Vintage Books.

Ipsos MORI, (2007). Student Expectations Study: Findings from Preliminary Research. JISC [online]. Available at: http://www.jisc.ac.uk/publications/publications/studentexpectationsbp.aspx [Accessed 29 November 2007]

JISC, (2007). In Their Own Words: Exploring the learner's perspective on e-learning. JISC [online]. Available at: http://www.jisc.ac.uk/publications/publications/intheirownwords.aspx [Accessed 29 November 2007]

Krause, K., (2007). Who is the e-Generation and How are they faring in Higher Education? In: Lockard, J. and Pegrum, M. (eds) Brave New Classrooms: Democratic Education and the Internet. New York: Peter Lang. pp. 125-139. 

Livingstone, S. and Bober, M., (2005). UK Children Go Online [online]. Available at: http://personal.lse.ac.uk/bober/UKCGOfinalReport.pdf [Accessed 29 November 2007] 

McKenzie, J., (2007). Digital Nativism, Digital Delusions and Digital Deprivation. From Now On, 17(2). [online]. Available at: http://fno.org/nov07/nativism.html [Accessed 29 November 2007] 

Monereo, C., (2004). The Virtual Construction of the Mind: The Role of Educational Psychology. Interactive Educational Media. 9, pp. 32-47. 

Oblinger, D., (2003). Boomers, Gen-Xers and Millenials: Understanding the New Students. Educause. July/August 2003.

Owen, M., (2004). The Myth of the Digital Native. Futurelab. June 2004. Available at: http://www.futurelab.org.uk/resources/publications_reports_articles/web_articles/Web_Article561 [Accessed 29 November 2007]

Prensky, M., (2001). Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants. On the Horizon, 9(5), NCB University Press.

Sandford, R., (2007). Digital Post-Colonialism. Flux. 14 December 2006. Available at: http://flux.futurelab.org.uk/2006/12/14/digital-post-colonialism/ [Accessed 29 November 2007]

Sources 

The photo comes from Lynetter's "Interesting Snippets" Photo Set on Flickr.

In my first blog entry, I mentioned that I had read Dreyfus' "On the Internet", which I described as a:

"...fascinating, philosophical and accessible tome that looked at the Internet and, in particular, distance learning in a critical and provocative way."

Oddly enough I went to see Dr David Starkey ("the rudest man in Britain") who was guest of honour at my girlfriend's school. The school had just received humanities specialist status and Starkey was telling the audience, inbetween sips of red wine, that eduation had "saved him" and that learning should be a "pleasurable experience". I say "oddly enough" because I could almost hear Hubert Dreyfus speaking through Starkey - maybe I had too much wine that night as well?

Anyway, even after re-reading chapter two, "How far is distance learning from education?", I still stand by my initial statement (see above) in the respect that we do need more of these philosophical debates that look upon the 21st Century world and opens up those big issues of self, society, education, technology and identity. There is an awful lot of academic literature that tackles these issues within psychological, sociological, cultural, technological and educational dimensions and perspectives. What is lacking is work that covers the deeper essences surrounding these themes.

What is maddening about Dreyfus' work is that it lacks the academic rigour that is usually expected from essays submitted by first year undergraduate students. This is plain for all to see. What's not so obvious, to me at least, is Dreyfus' "selective borrowing of past philosophers to support [his] arguments" and is quite rightly brought to task by the likes of Champion (2004) and Burbules (2002).

One of Dreyfus' main issues with distant / online learning is that of "embodiment". How can a student learn from a teacher without being physically in a classroom? How are they able to pick up on the most subtlest and intangible of stimuli if they are learning "at a distance"?

Champion (2004) notes an interesting Amazon review of Dreyfus' "On the Internet", which is allegedly written by one of Dreyfus' former students (Geoffrey Cain) who says:

"I took one of Dreyfus' classes at Berkeley as an undergraduate and I never got to talk to him, there was no face to face learning. If you feel that the lecture method is the only way to learn, then the internet is not for you. If you want to feel like a "disembodied presence" go take a class at Berkeley as an undergrad."

Over the past 10 weeks on this course, I have had adventures in Skype, Second Life, pbWiki, Web 2.0 and WebCT; not to mention my past adventures in e-Mail, MSN Messenger, Blackboard, Discussion Forums and host of social networking and dating sites - yes, I am a former user of online dating sites. In all of these environments, and contrary to Dreyfus' beliefs, I have never felt disembodied. I have never felt alone, despite my own personal belief that we are creating new forms of isolationism using this technology (which we can trace back to the early days of radio and television).

As my fellow students have articulated this week; embodiment, risk and involvement has been brought about by the power of the written word on the screen; an emotional attachment towards the course and the people that populate it; a yearning to learn more; and a keen imagination - it is not held together by a teaspoon and pieces of string, nor smoke and mirrors.

Like OU psychology undergraduate, Kieran Lee Marshall, in Katbamna's (2007) article: I am not a student ID number - I am a fully embodied human being. 

References

Blake, N., (2002). Hubert Dreyfus on Distance Education: relays of educational embodiment. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 34(4), pp. 379-385.

Burbules, N.C., (2002). Like a Version: playing with online identities. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 34(4), pp. 387-393.

Champion, E.M., (2004). The Internet and Its Enemies: A Critique of 'On the Internet'. Computers and Society, 32(8). [online]. Available at: https://www.vle.ed.ac.uk/webct/RelativeResourceManager/Template/readings/DigitalSocietyanditsEnemies.htm [Accessed 22 November 2007]

Dreyfus, H.L., (2001). On the Internet. London: Routledge.

Katbamna, M., (2007). Open (almost) All Hours. The Guardian [online]. Available at: http://education.guardian.co.uk/egweekly/story/0,,2201273,00.html [Accessed 22 November 2007]

Turkle, S., (1997). Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet. London: Phoenix 

"The rabbit-hole went straight on like a tunnel for some way and then dipped suddenly down, so suddenly that Alice had not a moment to think about stopping herself before she found herself falling down what seemed to be a very deep well."
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, L. Carroll (1865)

I am still feeling quite invigourated from last Tuesday's classroom session in Second Life. Yes, a real time classroom session inside a "real" virtual world. Wowsers! (as Inspector Gadget would say). I did have some questions in mind that I posted in last week's blog entry; despite touching upon a couple of them, I don't think myself nor the group had any firm ideas about them. I personally feel that myself and Wray would need to immerse ourselves more into Second Life to get a sense of it; and would need to have experienced a few more teaching and learning sessions before we can get a handle on it. Mine and Wray's experiences so far have been a little superficial (see Inside the Rabbit Hole) and sketchy.

"Do we take our tutors more seriously if they are depicted as a human avatars? or can they 'command' the same kind of respect if they adopt a non human one?"

One of my questions (see above) piqued Rory's interest. I guess myself and the others on the MSc programme latched onto the comments made in the Taylor (2001) article that referenced users choice to become animal avatars; and that it's role was one of superficiality and playfulness. Infact, one of the group actually turned up to the session sporting an animal's head upon a human body (very Egyptian methinks). The work and research by John Suler, a cyberpsychologist, conducted within the The Palace virtual world identifies a number of psychological and visual profile types.

According to Suler (2007b), people who choose to become animal avatars do so because "animals symbolize certain traits or attributes in myth as well as popular culture" which may represent "some real aspect of his or her identity, or some characteristic admired by the person". Suler goes as far as to liken the use of animal avatars to that of the Native American "totem", which are seen as a "symbol of one's essential nature or potential". In January 2007, Suler visited Second Life and felt that his initial research in The Palace stood up reasonably well with respect to SL with a few notable exceptions - namely making money (Suler, 2007a).

"What kinds of unacceptable and inappropriate behaviours will emerge in the virtual world which would not normally manifest themselves in the real world (being bound by social mores, etc.)?"

Henry Keil, who had chosen to portray his avatar as a balding Afro-Caribbean man, found a fascinating article on ageism and prejudice that occured inside Second Life (Koreen, 2007). This suggested to me that Second Life is not as liberated, non-judgemental and all-inclusive as it would like to think itself to be. The three personality types (real / virtual / projected) put forward by Gee (2003) and Taylor (2001) would seem to imply that the "real" personality type is probably the more dominant one; or else people are projecting personalities that they wouldn't normally exhibit in Real Life.

Reynolds (2007) suggests that far from liberating us, virtual worlds like Second Life seems to "reinforce and indeed spread the dominant ideologies of the time", but acknowledges that they have the "potential to liberate".

It would be interesting to hear from Henry how his avatar got on under his current guise. Though it is a little hard to tell, Wray is actually an albino goth - and that comes loaded with all sorts of literary, cultural and mythological symbolism. Indeed, Wray is the metaphorical white rabbit.

References

DiGiuseppe, N. & Nardi, B., (2007). Real Genders Choose Fantasy Characters: Class Choice in World of Warcraft. First Monday. 12(5), 7 May 2007. [online]. Available at: http://www.uic.edu/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/1831/1715 [Accessed 08 November 2007]  

Gee, J.P., (2003). What Video Games have to Teach Us about Learning and Literacy. Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan. 

Koreen, (2007). Agism in Second Life. EdGames Blog. [online]. Available at: http://edweb.sdsu.edu/courses/edtec670/edgames/2007/11/agism-is-second-life.htm [Accessed 15 November 2007]  

Reynolds, R., (2007). Do virtual worlds liberate us? Terra Nova Blog. [online]. Available at: http://terranova.blogs.com/terra_nova/2007/11/do-virtual-worl.html [Accessed 15 November 2007]  

Rymaszewski, M. et al, (2006). Second Life: The Official Guide. London: John Wiley & Sons. 

Suler, J., (2007a). Second Life, Second Chance. The Psychology of Cyberspace Blog. [online]. Available at: http://psycyber.blogspot.com/2007/01/second-life-second-chance.html [Accessed 15 November 2007] 

Suler, J., (2007b). The Psychology of Avatars and Graphical Space in Multimedia Chat Communities. The Psychology of Cyberspace. [online]. Available at: http://www-usr.rider.edu/~suler/psycyber/psyav.html [Accessed 15 November 2007]

Taylor, T.L., (2001). Living Digitally: Embodiment in Virtual Worlds. In: Schroeder, R. (ed) The Social Life of Avatars. London: Springer-Verlag Ltd. pp. 40-61. 

"Five years from now a social networking site without a 3D universe will look like a dinosaur."
Mark Kern, President of Red 5 Studios. March 2007

I went along to the Tuesday evening induction session for Second Life that was conducted by Fiona and Sian. This was followed up by a session on how to build objects. Despite having a Second Life account for just under a year, I have to confess that I haven't done a lot with it. In my role as a Learning Technologist, I need to keep an eye on what is piquing the interest of the H.E. sector and what tools and technologies may interest my academics - we also have the contentious issue of not allowing Second Life to run on University desktops; bandwidth being cited as the main problem.

The world of the metaverse is something of a hot potato at the moment. The BBC announced in January 2007 that they were planning to build a child-friendly environment called CBBC World. Metaplace are planning to offer free tools for non-techies to develop their own virtual worlds. In March 2007, Sony unveiled it's offering to Playstation 3 owners called Home, where the rich, games quality graphics would give Second Life a huge run for its' money as well as attracting a much younger, trendier market to the already overcrowded fora of World of Warcraft and Star Wars Galaxies. The Sony publicity machine went into overdrive and released this statement:

"'Home' is a real-time interactive online world much like Linden Lab’s 'Second Life' and other so-called 'metaverse', except it’s designed for PlayStation 3, Sony’s newest home console. Millions of people now enter 'Second Life' on personal computers, moving avatars, or computer graphics images of themselves, in a virtual universe. Major companies are also setting up shop in 'Second Life', and analysts see great potential for such virtual worlds as a communication tool and real-life business."

Have a look at the trailer that Sony released to see what all the fuss is about; incidently they are offering this as a free download. However, this enterprise has subsequently been delayed until 2008.

Despite the competition, Second Life goes on by putting on live music concerts; degree shows; demonstrating what mental illnesses look like; continuing to promote the application of education; and anything else that makes a thriving community tick. Virtual Worlds are going to be an important tool in the future for the likes of role-playing; language acquisition and running simulations (like modelling diseases) that can advance our understanding about different ideas, concepts and working in dangerous environments or situations. IBM are also doing their bit for the metaverse by developing assistive technologies to help blind people traverse these worlds. Whilst Moveable Life provides a web interface to access your Second Life personae - not that I have been able to get it to work!

Whilst the teenagers of the Ipsos MORI (2007) report would consider University's who would use technology for technologies sake as being "sad" and "tragic". The EduServ Foundation, on the other hand, has been funding a series of reports looking at the take-up of Second Life within the UK Higher and Further Education sectors.

This to my mind is still a fun, addictive and emergent technology. I am looking forward to next week to explore how Second Life, or indeed other virtual worlds, can be used to support teaching and learning and to discover the opportunities and pitfalls that it may bring. Such questions that spring to mind include:

• What makes a classroom? Is it walls, desks and books? or can we think and teach outside of these physical constraints?
• Do we take our tutors more seriously if they are depicted as a human avatars? or can they "command" the same kind of respect if they adopt a non human one?
• How will our choice of gender be perceived?
• How will Gee's (2003) three personalities: physical, virtual and projected come into play? How do they inform and shape our digital identity? (digidenity?)
• Will Taylor's (2001) notion of group, affiliation and social dynamics be easy to spot in Second Life as they do in real life?
• What kinds of unacceptable and inappropriate behaviours will emerge in the virtual world which would not normally manifest themselves in the real world (being bound by social mores, etc.)?

References

DiGiuseppe, N. & Nardi, B., (2007). Real Genders Choose Fantasy Characters: Class Choice in World of Warcraft. First Monday. 12(5), 7 May 2007. [online]. Available at: http://www.uic.edu/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/1831/1715 [Accessed 08 November 2007]  

Gee, J.P., (2003). What Video Games have to Teach Us about Learning and Literacy. Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan. 

Ipsos MORI, (2007). Student Expectations Study: Findings from Preliminary Research. JISC [online]. Available at: http://www.jisc.ac.uk/publications/publications/studentexpectationsbp.aspx [Accessed 08 November 2007]

Rymaszewski, M. et al, (2006). Second Life: The Official Guide. London: John Wiley & Sons. 

Taylor, T.L., (2001). Living Digitally: Embodiment in Virtual Worlds. In: Schroeder, R. (ed) The Social Life of Avatars. London: Springer-Verlag Ltd. pp. 40-61. 

Reading Landow's seminal work brought me crashing back to 1997, when I was tentatively experimenting with web pages and got all hot and flustered when I discovered a new literary form called HyperFiction. The world wide web was so new, shiny and unsullied - an undiscovered country waiting to be explored.

"...hypermedia is an enabling technology rather than a directive one, offering high levels of user control. Learners can construct their own knowledge by browsing hyperdocuments according to the association in their own cognitive structures. As with access, however, control requires responsibility and decision making."

Gary Machionini (cited in Landow, 1997) words could have been written with Wikis in mind. It is quite strange how much alike Landow's "hyperdocuments" can be compared to wiki documents. Indeed, the Hyperwords Project (see YouTube video below) has the potential to take hypertext and wiki documents to a whole new level of interactivity and exploration; but it will take a careful navigator to traverse Deleuze and Guattari's rhizome (courtesy of the Opte Project).

As Burnett (1993) suggests:

"If we accept the rhizome as a metaphor for electronically mediated exchange, then hypertext is its apparent fulfillment ... -- principles of connection, heterogeneity, multiplicity, assignifying rupture, and cartography and decalcomania -- may be seen as the principles of hypertextual design."

Burnett (1993) goes on to say: "its power derives from its flexibity and variability; from its ability to incorporate, transmute and transcend any traditional tool or structure." Given this "flexibility" and "variability" makes hypertext a frightening and amorphous labyrinth of nightmares and enlightenment, but at the sametime the journey is as unique and individual as it's traveller. Miller (1995) feels that accessing this labyrinth may well have a "fragile, fleeting, and insubstanial existence"; and that the "ethics of hypertext" is based on taking "responsibility for our choices" within this domain.

The authors of hypertext documents have the luxury of creating documents that are not constrained by "page length, of possible illustrations, of short and non-descriptive footnotes" (Smulyan, 1999). Indeed, Smulyan estimates that a "hypertext article would take fives times the work needed for publishing a conventional print article" (take a look at some of the examples she is referring to). The finished product could be presented in a rich tapestry of multiple mediums that cannot possibly be afforded by paper-based text. Not only does hypertext allow the author to potentially write more, but also opens up the possibility that it could benefit the author more than the reader, especially if the article contained a range of research materials (Smulyan, 1999).

If Miller believes that readers of hypertext should be responsible for the choices they make, then Tietz (2004), like Landow (1997) before him, espouses that authors need to take "care about the connection". It is simply not enough to link a word, a phrase, a sentence, or even an image to another - it needs purpose, meaning or even contextualising - this in turn could make our journey a richer and rewarding one.

References

Burnett, K., (1993). Toward a Theory of Hypertext Design. Postmodern Culture. 3(2).  

Landow, G.P., (1997). Hypertext 2.0: The Convergence of Contemporary Critical Theory and Technology. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.

Miller, J.H., (1995). The Ethics in Hypertext. Diacritics. 51(2), pp. 27-39. 

Smulyan, S., (1999). Everyone a Reviewer? Problems and Possibilities in Hypertext Scholarship. American Quarterly. 51(2), pp. 263-267.

Tietz, W., (2004). Linking and Care in Connection. New Literary History. 35, pp. 507-522.