6. Post-Hypertextual Practice
But what a post-hypertextual theory and practice can offer is this: the understanding that living in the world is an ongoing process of forging, examining, breaking, and rearranging connections among a nearly infinite number of objects. This seems like a rather mundane or old point, but let's consider what it means if we apply it to textual practices:
1. All texts are incomplete representations, by definition.
2. Divisions among texts are artificially constructed; all texts must constantly be connected up to each other, fragments at a time.
3. Living in the world is the ongoing process of connecting and disconnecting concepts in numerous social contexts.
4. The ability to deal with information overload (by definition, a condition of 1, 2, and 3) is a fundamental skill for a post-hypertextual age.
5. The ability to assemble fragments of texts into new forms within particular social contexts is extremely valuable, probably more valuable in the long run that the ability to generate strings of "original" text.
6. With this ability must come an understanding and a commitment to an "ethic of reference": a responsibility to not merely present to readers a unified solution, but to actively help them breaking down your text as soon as it's constructed, in order to make their own meanings within the ongoing social process.johndan johnson-eilola | http://www.clarkson.edu/~johndan/ | johndan@clarkson.edu