I wasn't as lucid in today's class as I'd hoped; probably due in part to jetlag and the cold I've been fighting since returning from winter break. As a result some of the responses from fellow students focused on things I hadn't really considered as much over the break, which was good.

I spent the morning commute thinking not about screens or graffiti but about hyperlinks and how they fit into the "page" metaphor favored by most ebook developers at the moment. Ebooks seem impossibly wedded to "real" books; they ape the look and feel of paper books as much as possible, perhaps because developers want the transition from one to the other to be as easy as possible from potential consumers. And yet in doing so I can't help but feel that they sacrifice some of wonderful things that could be done. Take hyperlinks, for example, one of the things that make HTML so wonderful.

The hyperlink in the context of the ebook

So, in the context of a real book, consider the hyperlink as it exists embedded in a text. What is it? Is it turning to an appendix? Turning the page? Looking at a footnote? Pulling a new book off the shelf? This question, it seems to me, seems to be a critical one to address if we are thinking of an ebook as simply a digital avatar of a "real" book.

[As an aside: I realize I don't really understand xpaths, xlinks etc at all. But the question remains: what is the proper metaphor for the user when one clicks a hyperlink?]

It seems to me that a hyperlink, at its core, is an appeal for more information; for elucidation; for deeper understanding of a particular topic. A good example might be Martin Gardner's Annotated Alice: click here for an example. On the web, the publishers have used an A tag to point to Gardner's explanations as footnotes; users must click "back" to return to the original text. In its printed form, the information requested stands in the margins, next to the text being explained. In this sense, a hyperlink should not leave the original text behind but rather stand alongside it. Frames notwithstanding, browsers are incapable of allowing hyperlinks to behave in this way: to insert footnotes, not endnotes; to live in the margins rather than turning the page.

Hyperlinks as annotations?

Idea: It might be interesting to construct a real book in which each successive page is simply a hyperlinked reference from a term or phrase on the previous page. I doubt it would make much sense as a real book.

So, is there a middle ground in which text itself can be modified based on which hyperlinks have been selected? This seems a good opportunity for ebooks to present a new medium.

For example: take this excerpt from Alice in Wonderland, annotated with a (dummy) hyperlink:

"Well!" thought Alice to herself. "After such a fall as this, I shall think nothing of tumbling down-stairs! How brave they'll all think me at home! Why, I wouldn't say anything about it, even if I fell off the top of the house!" (Which was very likely true.)

"Well!" thought Alice to herself. "After such a fall as this, I shall think nothing of tumbling down-stairs! How brave they'll all think me at home! Why, I wouldn't say anything about it, even if I fell off the top of the house!" (Which was very likely true.)

Martin Gardner writes that William Empson has pointed out (in the section on Lewis Carroll in his Some Versions of Pastoral) that this is the first death joke in the Alice books. There are many more to come.

"Well!" thought Alice to herself. "After such a fall as this, I shall think nothing of tumbling down-stairs! How brave they'll all think me at home! Why, I wouldn't say anything about it, even if I fell off the top of the house!" (Which was very likely true.)

Martin Gardner writes in The Annotated Alice (W.W. Norton, 2000) that William Empson has pointed out (in the section on Lewis Carroll in his Some Versions of Pastoral) that this is the first death joke in the Alice books. There are many more to come.

"Well!" thought Alice to herself. "After such a fall as this, I shall think nothing of tumbling down-stairs! How brave they'll all think me at home! Why, I wouldn't say anything about it, even if I fell off the top of the house!" (Which was very likely true.)

Martin Gardner writes in The Annotated Alice (W.W. Norton, 2000) that William Empson has pointed out (in the section on Lewis Carroll in his Some Versions of Pastoral) that this is the first death joke in the Alice books. There are many more to come.

[Wikipedia.com] Sir William Empson (1906-1984) was an English poet and literary critic. Empson is now best known for his literary criticism, and in particular his analysis of the use of language in poetical works, though his own poetry is arguably undervalued. In his critical work he was particularly influenced by the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, whose own work is largely concerned with the problematics of language in expressing thought with clarity. His best known work is the book Seven Types of Ambiguity. This book was to have a significant impact on the New Criticism, a school of criticism which directed particular attention to close reading of texts, among whose adherents may be numbered F.R. Leavis.

Obligatory introspection

Why such a focus on the hyperlink, seemingly such a tangential departure from my original thesis idea? I guess I've begun to realize that one of the main themes of my thinking so far at ITP has been that of annotation as a mechanism for serendipity. The poetry calculator's printed verse was meant to be used to annotate places with verses that would bring unexpected joy when found; similiarly, the digital word modules were also designed to fill otherwise barren public spaces with interesting phrases.

"Objection!" says the devil's advocate: "There is serendipity in any printed page, no matter how static. Each new word is a discovery. Each new phrase conveys learning. What does hyperlinking contribute except a deterioration of the editorial mind, of authorial control?"

Aha. But perhaps digital texts must now live in two forms; in its original context, to be sure, but also able to converse with or explain other texts. I am not arguing that printed texts are obsolete, rather that digital "books" open new avenues of annotation and meaning. Ebooks need not be completely static not dynamic but perhaps in some way elastic.

So, what's a book anyway?