My response to hypertexts

My response to hypertexts

Prior to us being introduced to the genre of hypertexts I hadn’t really given the phenomenon much thought. When we were then introduced to the hypertext http://openingsources.com/ I was truly amazed. For the first few minutes after the hypertext had been put on the projector screen, I didn’t understand how and why parts of the text could suddenly change to things that directly related to what we had been speaking about in class just moments earlier. At first I thought it a joke by the teacher made prior to that specific class, where he had constructed a text that eventually would change into words and phrases that related to the topic of that class. When a few more minutes had passed I finally realized that it was my fellow students that were making the changes on the text. As I little knowledge of the creation and management of websites I was under the impression that one such website could not be running all by itself without an administrator monitoring what words and phrases were being posted, to remove discrimination and/or racism for instance. Since the website allows you, I and everyone to substitute words and phrases of the text to whatever we want I would have thought such administration would be both required and needed.

Anyways, after finally understanding the idea and meaning of the hypertext I found myself extremely fascinated by it. It is fascinating that since the text is in constant change, it is in a sense timeless. This text will never be finished, but on the other hand it always is! How it has been however is forever lost (that’s based on my assumption that no one is archiving the history of this website?!). Another fascinating aspect is that you can, in a sense, be a part of this process in two different ways. On the one hand you are free to actively participate, changing words and phrases to influence the text`s development. On the other hand you can choose to just be an observer. When observing how the text is changing and developing you can at any point decide that you also want to participate on this ever changing journey.