7. Making and Opening Structures: Some Questions
Hypertext can remind us of the need to rearrange and forge new meanings, but in the end it's only one other closed structure. It's up to us to open those structures
This all sounds very simple, but those of us with some experience know that saying text is open and making a text actually open are two different things. So here are some implications (and questions) to discuss.
1. How do we manage the notion that the text we create will be modified by someone else, necessarily, when they read it and use it. How do we keep this from feeling like a violation?
2a. At the same time, if we acknowledge that linking to someone's texts requires an ethic of reference, how do we construct that ethic?
2b. What is the dividing line (or lines) between freedom of speech and an ethic of reference? How do we construct it (or them)?
3. If the reference to another subject's work is an act of power, is that necessarily negative?
4. How do we teach students (and ourselves) to filter information, rearrange it, etc. Do we provide them models? Just throw them in? What strategies have you used (for yourself or in the classroom) to learn to deal with information overload in produtive ways?
5. What happens to evaluation (of students, of academics, of anyone) if every text bleeds into every other text?
6. If I reference another text, does that somehow make me responsible for its contents?
johndan johnson-eilola | http://www.clarkson.edu/~johndan/ | johndan@clarkson.edu