What Comes with Liberation?
Jay Bolter argues that hypertext doesn't necessarily mean freedom. I would argue that hypertext does in fact give freedom to authors and readers, especially in comparison to print. However, I think whenever we gain freedom, until we are used to it, we inevitably suffer from confusion. As both readers and authors, we have gotten used to a system that has fairly strict rules, a system of linearity. That system told us that texts must follow a certain line: we should write them with a linear structure, and we should read them in a linear fashion. Now, with hypertext, we have the option of reading and writing without linearity. And this mutlilinearity causes a bit of confusion. We are forced to make decisions we didn't have to make before. Certainly readers are entangled in networks of a different order, but on the Web that order is becoming increasingly broad. Readers are not only liberated from linearity, they are also liberated from textuality and authorial control.
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