How Hypertexts Stumble
I haven’t read the DailyCal for a while, but for some reason, I decided to pick up a copy this past Tuesday. On the second page in the opinion section, I found a light-hearted article exploring the “perils” of StumbleUpon. The writer (Annie Gerlach) essentially analyzes her obsession with StumbleUpon by looking at how it organizes her relationship with the digital world. The article can be found here:
http://www.dailycal.org/2011/09/06/off-the-beat-the-perils-of-stumbleupon/
There were two points that I found interesting about finding this article. First is how the formal features of StumbleUpon takes on the features of hypertext and keep the writer coming back. In CardShark and Thespis, Bernstein looks into how the medium-specific qualities of three programs (Card Shark, Social Shark, Thespis) provide both an instrument and environment for users. StumbleUpon seems to also be a kind of “hypertext”, except that instead of clicking one out of several choices, you only have one button: Stumble. From there, the website randomly generates other pages from around the web that allows the user to explore the digital world via jumping from one unfamiliar site to another. There is a kind of agency here with customizing what types of websites show up, but there is also an element of mystery with what comes up. In this way, StumbleUpon helps the user organize the experience of exploring the Internet in a randomized, hypertext fashion that is reminiscent of CardShark and Thespis.
Second, I’m interested in the inter-medial qualities of reading about StumbleUpon on the DailyCal. For one thing, I first came across this article in print before I found it digitized and published online for dissemination in the digital world. With this article available online, it takes on a new life where it can be rescued from obscurity through a search and a click on Google. In print, the article would be less easily stored, accessed, and talked about. In print, this article is easier to forget, lose, and dispose (as I did with the original print article). So while the content of the article remains the same, the form it comes in affects how it can be organized and used beyond the first viewer.
Moreover, the way that texts interact online seems to also influence the discourse of writing itself. In the end of the DailyCal article, Annie says goodbye to her readers: “So if you’ll excuse me, I’m signing off. I’ve got a Means Girls/Harry Potter gif website that’s calling my name”. The notion of “signing off” seems to be an action that belongs very much to the digital realm, in which a user “signs-off” of online chat or their Gmail account. In this way, Annie has essentially oriented her writing in the form of a kind of “chat session” while at the same time positioning her readers as the person behind the chat box.
Given that the interactions on the internet can shape the language we use to describe our interactions across different media, does it also shape the very interaction itself? If so, how?
Also, given that writing takes on a kind of “new life” online, what are the benefits of continuing to access writing through actual print?
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