The End of Books by
Robert Coover was a very entertaining article that took complete focus to
comprehend. There were times where I was confused with what the author was trying to say, but I was able to understand most of it. This article, like many
others we have read seemed ahead of its time for being written in 1992. One thing that I really liked about the
article was how Coover defined the three great events in the history of
literacy. He stated that they were, "the
invention of writing, the invention of movable type and the invention of
hypertext". This was very
interesting to me.
Another quote that stood out to me was when Coover quoted George
P. Landow. Landow stated, "Electronic
text processing marks the next major shift in information technology after the
development of the printed book. It promises (or threatens) to produce effects
on our culture, particularly on our literature, education, criticism and
scholarship, just as radical as those produced by Gutenberg's movable type." This quote was definitely one of the more
important ones in the entire article.
This prediction made me think about how I use hypertext. Generally, when I'm reading an article with
hypertext, I usually tend to keep
following the main ideas of the article, but there are times when my attention
is swayed and hyperlinks are clicked. I
believe it does produce effects on our culture, just as the quote states. Overall, a very interesting read by Robert
Coover.
Nice post SCbaseball. I definitely agree that hypertext is in the top 3 literary innovations. I love reading hypertext articles but it often leads me on a couple hour tangent, as I keep clicking on different hyperlinks in order to learn more and more about different subtopics. One of my favorite websites is wikipedia because I start reading about one subject and then after a few hours I am reading about an entirely new subject thanks to hypertext. It is also interesting to see how Coover's predictions were almost completely spot on about 20 years ago. We take hypertext for granted in modern society, and it was interesting to learn about hypertext when it was first developed.
ReplyDeleteHello SCBaseball! Excellent response to Coover's article. I definitely agree with you that it was an article you had to fully focus in on to completely understand. The way he organized his information was clever and helpful. Like you said, "the invention of writing, the invention of movable type and the invention of the hypertext," created a sort of timeline through history that showed us the progression of writing and communication. When I read your second idea you highlighted, it got me thinking about the Burkitt reading we have and how people's attention spans are shortening. Hyperlinks in hypertexts cause people to click to other things without fully readings articles, documents, etc. This in turn effects the way people digest information which is interesting to think about since we have moved to hypertext.
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