Some people may think of the hyperlinks are like a maze where if you go off and wander to a different path, it will lead to another path, and then become an endless journey. What I think about this is that sometimes people can gain pleasure of allowing their brains to wander. It’s like when people have different opinions of certain foods. A classically-trained chef may not like a certain dish just because it is not made in a traditional way and it tastes a little bit weird to him or her, but another person who likes food may taste that same dish and love it.
Before electronic books came out, books were usually considered for school and educational purposes so most people, especially those in the younger generation, did not want to read certain material in their free time to be reminded of school again, or for other specific reasons. But when e-books came out, some readers thought of it as a more efficient way of reading. Instead of driving all the way to the library, they could access it within a few buttons on their lap. The conversion of people reading standard print books to reading books on kindles and online has started to happen, so I think people who already use kindles and tablets will eventually have some interest of reading hypertext fiction. Hypertext fiction is a different way of reading online that tries to metaphorically get the reader fully submerged in the story. It does this by involving hyperlinks that provides further information to different scenes within a story. But since the society we live in now consists of mostly technology, readers may grow into liking or find pleasure reading hypertext fiction. The continuous update of different versions of electronics is how society keeps the use of technology going.
Steven Johnson’s article, “Why No One Clicked on the Great Hypertext Story", questions why hypertext fiction didn’t become widespread than literary advocates had imagined when it first came out. He says it is because of how hard it is to write hypertext fiction. However, he did not mention that there are many reasons why it was not popular: kindles and tablets were not available at that time, some people were still getting used to computers and laptops, and difficulties dealing with interfaces. He mentions that despite the fact that digital text readers were not fond of this new way of reading, new things have arose in its place for online users such as blogs, social networking, crowd-edited encyclopedias, etc. Johnson creates this idea that hypertext fiction was a failure. He gives credit to the authors for how hard it was to create fiction through hypertext but it seems that he does not see a future using it when he kept talking about the contribution that it gave to the Internet instead of people seeing it as a total failure. Besides, the creation of blogs and social networking gives more of a reason for digital text readers to later become more accustomed to the online world and eventually get absorbed into reading this type of fiction. The rise of new technology is becoming available for more people to use, such as e-books, so this is another important reason why hypertext fiction will become more widespread by broaden its accessibility in the future, especially for digital text readers in our generation.
Some people may think of the hyperlinks are like a maze where if you go off and wander to a different path, it will lead to another path, and then become an endless journey. What I think about this is that sometimes people can gain pleasure of allowing their brains to wander. It’s like when people have different opinions of certain foods. A classically-trained chef may not like a certain dish just because it is not made in a traditional way and it tastes a little bit weird to him or her, but another person who likes food may taste that same dish and love it.
Before electronic books came out, books were usually considered for school and educational purposes so most people, especially those in the younger generation, did not want to read certain material in their free time to be reminded of school again, or for other specific reasons. But when e-books came out, some readers thought of it as a more efficient way of reading. Instead of driving all the way to the library, they could access it within a few buttons on their lap. The conversion of people reading standard print books to reading books on kindles and online has started to happen, so I think people who already use kindles and tablets will eventually have some interest of reading hypertext fiction. Hypertext fiction is a different way of reading online that tries to metaphorically get the reader fully submerged in the story. It does this by involving hyperlinks that provides further information to different scenes within a story. But since the society we live in now consists of mostly technology, readers may grow into liking or find pleasure reading hypertext fiction. The continuous update of different versions of electronics is how society keeps the use of technology going.
Steven Johnson’s article, “Why No One Clicked on the Great Hypertext Story", questions why hypertext fiction didn’t become widespread than literary advocates had imagined when it first came out. He says it is because of how hard it is to write hypertext fiction. However, he did not mention that there are many reasons why it was not popular: kindles and tablets were not available at that time, some people were still getting used to computers and laptops, and difficulties dealing with interfaces. He mentions that despite the fact that digital text readers were not fond of this new way of reading, new things have arose in its place for online users such as blogs, social networking, crowd-edited encyclopedias, etc. Johnson creates this idea that hypertext fiction was a failure. He gives credit to the authors for how hard it was to create fiction through hypertext but it seems that he does not see a future using it when he kept talking about the contribution that it gave to the Internet instead of people seeing it as a total failure. Besides, the creation of blogs and social networking gives more of a reason for digital text readers to later become more accustomed to the online world and eventually get absorbed into reading this type of fiction. The rise of new technology is becoming available for more people to use, such as e-books, so this is another important reason why hypertext fiction will become more widespread by broaden its accessibility in the future, especially for digital text readers in our generation.