Giving Up Authorial Control

With the freedom for the author also comes some loss of power and control. The author of hypertext doesn't determine the direction the reader must take as she does in print. To use hypertexts on the Web to their full potential, the author has a responsibility to give up the power and provide a structure that gives control to the reader. For this discussion of the author's responsibility to provide the information and the structure to get that information, I look to Barton and Barton and their discussion of power and technical visuals. Basically, the Bartons advocate using the panoptic modes for visuals because such visuals allow an overview as well as detailed information. By providing both general and detailed information, the visual is more effective. Hypertext offers the same possibility. With hypertext on the Web, a document can easily be broad--allowing the reader to get an overview of the topic--and specific, with links to nodes with more detailed information. In this way, the reader chooses the information she wants to deal with. The document is therefore more effective--more effective because the reader can go directly to the information she wants rather than either wading through massive amounts of information to get to a very specific bit of information or, conversely, wading through massive amounts of detail to get an overview on a subject.


Freedom and the Author How Much Control?


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