This is hypertext.

I took a look at Bieguelman's, "The Book After the Book" site before doing any of the readings for this week. I found the site to be confusing and with a number of broken links, I suspected that it was out of date. Ultimately, I was looking to find a starting point and then a listing of the different sections, so I would know that I had read the whole book. I left again in frustration.

After that experience I read "The End of Books" article by Robert Coover which discusses a class Coover lead in hyperfiction. The reading was quite compelling. Coover did a very good job of positioning hypermedia as something different from books - more over, something different even than e-books. As Coover says, "hypertext provides multiple paths between text segments" and so the reader is able to create their own narrative, which will be different from the narrative created by other readers and of course different from the narrative envisioned by the author (Something that Bush discussed when he talked about the Memex).

I revisited the Bieguelman site and it all became clear. This time, as I clicked the links I found myself relishing the experience of discovery as opposed to being frustrated about missing the story. I now knew that I had to create the narrative for myself and I had to be comfortable with creating a loop or with missing pieces of text entirely. This is hypertext.

I finished my exploration today by watching the Jay-Z Decoded video that Hillary had posted and the power of hypertext and the way in which it transformed reading and books was abundantly clear.

In the end, hypertext will not destroy or replace books. It truly is a new media. But, that does not mean that it will replace the old media of books. They will still have their place and their audience. Choose-your-own-adventure books were fascinating to read and disturbed the regular process of reading, yet many people still enjoyed to read narratives created by an author. This will continue to be the case. New media has the impact of segmenting audiences or segmenting spans of attention rather than displacing and killing old media.

Transforming books

Books will continue to exist, but the possibilities for their transformation are astounding. Although many of us still enjoy the tactile experience of reading books and flipping pages, I think that we may attribute more nostalgia to the physical book than they deserve.

For example, can you not enjoy an inexpensive copy of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet as much as a leather-bound printing? Is a dog-eared copy of Pride and Prejudice less dramatic? I don’t think so.

If we compare books to other forms of communication such as photography, is a digital picture worth less than a printed one? Is an online video less valuable than a DVD? I would argue that we value them both equally. But by removing the notion that we must publish books on paper and bind them together, we open up a world of possibilities.

Take for example, the creative ways for distributing a book that evolved when rapper Jay-Z partnered with the Microsoft search engine, Bing, back in October 2010. In a project that was two parts marketing and one part social experiment, Jay-Z and Bing released every page of the rapper’s upcoming book, Decoded, by strategically placing them across the United States and the world. 

For one month prior to the book’s release, they would publish five to ten pages in odd formats and venues that were determined by the content on the page. For example, pages were printed on billboards, on hamburger wrappers and even printed inside limited edition Gucci jackets.

Watch a recap of the amazing marketing and strategic publishing event:

You can read more about it here:
http://bing.decodejay-z.com/home/map?fbid=RrGro4BTA_9&wom=true

By publishing his book in nontraditional ways, it added value to the book, instead of taking away from it. Readers were now everywhere and often snapped pictures of the book and became involved in the story as opposed to passively reading it.