Kathleen Burnett defines hypertext as a "nonlinear, nonsequential and interactive . . . organizational principle" that structures information; hypermedia is the expression of this structure. She then uses Poster's work on "the mode of information" (in contradistinction to Marx's "mode of production") to look historically at the symbolic exchange of information. She modifies his model of stages in the mode of information (face-to-face, orally mediated exchange; written exchanges mediated by print; and electronically mediated exchange) in order to account for the importance of the manuscript and the invention of the hand press and, later, multimedia exchange mediated electronically (e.g., telephone, photography, television and film). In broadening Poster's definition, she provides a fuller history of hypermedia. She draws upon Deleuze and Guattari's concept of the rhizome (in A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia [Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1987]) to theorize about the hypertext as an information structure. The concept of rhizome is useful because it is "the only structure which can effectively sustain connections between different media without giving hegemony to language." The hypertext as rhizome also portrays the endless varying connections between semiotic chains, privileges multiplicity, encourages disruptive moves in the process of "reading" information, and maps the information according the reader/user's path. (Kristin Bolton.)
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Michael Hancher

Department of English, University of Minnesota

URL: http://umn.edu/home/mh/ebibkb1.html

Comments to: mh@umn.edu

Created 5 May 1995

Last revised 17 September 1996