I’m still not exactly sure what a hypertext is except for it being a text that has some sort of multimedia imbedded within it. I really liked Shelly Jackson’s My Body-A Wunderkammer because it forced you to click on different parts of the text to get to other parts to figure out the entire story. You can’t get the entire story by just clicking on the parts of the image (the body parts). This was really interesting, but it still seemed really text heavy, but I’m guessing that’s the point.

It just seems to me that if we are trying to do things differently, simply putting a block of text on a screen doesn’t make things any different than reading it in a book. Realistically, it’s harder (for me, at least) to read lots of text on a screen. For example, I chose not to print out the readings for today (Tuesday’s) class and found that I had a huge problem with focusing on the screen and with comprehending what I read. The most interesting part of the reading was the picture of the image from the museum of the Codex, which I found to be a really beautiful and profound image. Along these lines, it was interesting that the authors of the articles are arguing for different types of media, yet they are still writing big blocks of text that just happens to be put in an online space.

But then again, what can we do differently? The Kindle has revolutionize the eBook industry, but it’s still a book that has been transposed into a different medium. There’s nothing special about eBooks (as of yet). For example, you can’t click on a link and it takes you somewhere else online with images of certain things or to the archive of the original text. You can click on a word and get a definition, highlight and make notes, but other than eTextbooks being cheaper than print editions, what’s the point?