Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 36, No. 168.
Department of Digital Humanities, University of Cologne
Hosted by DH-Cologne
www.dhhumanist.org
Submit to: humanist@dhhumanist.org
[1] From: Henry Schaffer <hes@ncsu.edu>
Subject: Re: [Humanist] 36.164: reading and hypertexted texts (172)
[2] From: scholar-at-large@bell.net <scholar-at-large@bell.net>
Subject: Re: [Humanist] 36.167: reading and hypertexted texts (211)
[3] From: Charles Ess <c.m.ess@runbox.no>
Subject: Re: [Humanist] 36.167: reading and hypertexted texts (68)
[4] From: Willard McCarty <willard.mccarty@mccarty.org.uk>
Subject: hypertexted text (33)
[5] From: Karadkar, Unmil (unmil.karadkar@uni-graz.at) <unmil.karadkar@uni-graz.at>
Subject: RE: [Humanist] 36.167: reading and hypertexted texts (13)
--[1]------------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: 2022-09-11 21:41:29+00:00
From: Henry Schaffer <hes@ncsu.edu>
Subject: Re: [Humanist] 36.164: reading and hypertexted texts
Dan touches on some important points - and after thinking about this some
more I'd like to suggest that* how* hyperlinks are included should be a
significant aspect of our discussion.
I agree that blue underlined text in the middle of a sentence is a
distraction. (Personally, I'm sufficiently inured to this as to not be
bothered.) But much of this distraction can be avoided by use of a
superscript digit or two referring to a footnote. People don't seem to
complain about encountering the footnote references. Instead of a footnote,
an endnote would further decrease distraction since the linked material
wouldn't be on the same page. With hyperlinking, one can reach the endnote
with a simple click, and then, when done with the note, another single
click on note-number can return to the location on the page where one
started. (This requires making that number a link, but that's a trivial
effort.")
With this organization, the size of the font of the notes is irrelevant,
and the main text fills up the pages with only a negligible amount of space
usage and distraction caused by the notes.
--henry
On Fri, Sep 9, 2022 at 2:39 AM Humanist <humanist@dhhumanist.org> wrote:
>
> Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 36, No. 164.
> Department of Digital Humanities, University of Cologne
> Hosted by DH-Cologne
> www.dhhumanist.org
> Submit to: humanist@dhhumanist.org
>
>
>
>
> Date: 2022-09-08 15:08:05+00:00
> From: Dan Johnson <djohns27@nd.edu>
> Subject: Re: [Humanist] 36.161: reading and hypertexted texts
>
> Dear All,
>
> This is an interesting question, and I too would be curious to see any
> research on the topic. I would submit, pace Henry, that hyperlinks present
> a different "rhetorical nudge" than a footnote or endnote. Footnotes, at
> least in my experience, do not cut into the reading with the same stridency
> as the blue underlined text, and it's usually easy to tell on the vision's
> periphery whether the footnote is going to contain substantive information
> or a simple bibliographic reference. Hyperlinks, however, are often
> ambiguous about intent, and I find myself pausing to hover over the link
> until a tooltip appears with the URL, which might hint at content. And the
> purpose can vary widely. A link to a simple definition of a technical term
> can be helpful or otiose. A link to a referenced known resource may or may
> not be a good idea. Then there are the links which are slipped in to appear
> like a factual data reference to back up a claim, but which lead only to
> conjectural polemic. These are only a few examples.
>
> In sum, because of the breadth of possible hyperlink "functions" and the
> relative lack of paratextual conventions and contexts available to
> footnotes -- combined with the visual weight of blue underlined text -- I
> feel that hyperlinks carry a different kind of cognitive load, and this
> loads tells on the reader, especially when hyperlinks proliferate. But I
> don't have the larger data to back up this subjective interpretation.
>
> Best,
> Dan
>
>
>
> On Thu, Sep 8, 2022 at 1:57 AM Humanist <humanist@dhhumanist.org> wrote:
>
> >
> > Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 36, No. 161.
> > Department of Digital Humanities, University of Cologne
> > Hosted by DH-Cologne
> > www.dhhumanist.org
> > Submit to: humanist@dhhumanist.org
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > Date: 2022-09-07 13:59:13+00:00
> > From: Henry Schaffer <hes@ncsu.edu>
> > Subject: Re: [Humanist] 36.159: reading and hypertexted texts?
> >
> > Dear Willard,
> >
> > I view hyperlinks in academic publications as equivalent to footnotes (or
> > endnotes.) Yes, they can consume a lot of space, but using space to
> convey
> > needed information is a necessity.
> >
> > Take a look at law review articles which are festooned with footnotes. In
> > my one such article, we had 368 footnotes and sometimes half the page, or
> > more, was filled with them (even though they are printed in a smaller
> font
> > than the article text.)
> >
> > Would it have been better to leave out the footnotes in an attempt to
> > attain "elegance"? It might have made the pages look better, but it
> > certainly would have greatly decreased the information presented.
> >
> > I will agree with you that easily found and generally known items
> shouldn't
> > be linked or footnoted - but I seldom see something like a date, e.g.,
> > September 7, 2922, with a footnote to a source such as
> > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calendar_date which explains how calendar
> > dates are formulated. :-)
> >
> > --henry
> >
> > On Wed, Sep 7, 2022 at 1:43 AM Humanist <humanist@dhhumanist.org> wrote:
> >
> > >
> > > Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 36, No. 159.
> > > Department of Digital Humanities, University of Cologne
> > > Hosted by DH-Cologne
> > > www.dhhumanist.org
> > > Submit to: humanist@dhhumanist.org
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > Date: 2022-09-07 05:39:37+00:00
> > > From: Willard McCarty <willard.mccarty@mccarty.org.uk>
> > > Subject: reading and hypertexted texts
> > >
> > > Is anyone here aware of studies done to determine the effects on
> reading
> > > of heavily linked texts? I suspect from my own experience that links
> are
> > > quite often a distraction, even when the software presenting the text
> > > displays them as blue underlined words. (Humanist, for example, does
> not
> > > do that; URLs are always visible.) Then, too, linking items that can
> > > easily be found is otiose. It is also suggests the presumed reader is
> > > not only not reading, only prowling for information, but also either
> too
> > > lazy or insufficiently competent to find this information unassisted.
> > >
> > > Even a cursory study of magazine advertisements across a range of
> > > publications will show that those which are presenting expensive
> > > products are very often quite simple, uncluttered, even elegant, while
> > > those selling cheap things are cluttered, noisy, garish etc. Inelegant,
> > > overstated design, I suggest, communicates low price, cheap goods. If
> we
> > > translate this into presentation of text online, I suggest that heavily
> > > hypertexted text communicates, well, you see the point...
> > >
> > > And now extend that to self-advertising online...
> > >
> > > Comments? Arguments?
> > >
> > > Yours,
> > > WM
> > > --
> > > Willard McCarty,
> > > Professor emeritus, King's College London;
> > > Editor, Interdisciplinary Science Reviews; Humanist
> > > www.mccarty.org.uk
>
>
> --
> Daniel Johnson, Ph.D.
> English; Digital Humanities; and Film, Television, and Theatre
> Librarian
> Navari Family Center for Digital Scholarship, Hesburgh Libraries
>
> University of Notre Dame
> 250C Hesburgh Library
> Notre Dame, IN 46556
> o: 574-631-3457
> e: djohns27@nd.edu
--[2]------------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: 2022-09-10 16:48:01+00:00
From: scholar-at-large@bell.net <scholar-at-large@bell.net>
Subject: Re: [Humanist] 36.167: reading and hypertexted texts
Also of interest is Adrian Miles
Hypertext Structure as the Event of Connection (2001)
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/504216.504236
<https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/504216.504236>
[quote]
Links generate what I’d like to characterise as an ‘anxiety’ within hypertext.
[…] The anxiety I am referring to is evident in the manner in which much writing
on linking wishes to domesticate the link as some category or species of
rhetorical figure, always and already at the service of some other role, for
instance to facilitate navigation, allow cognitive and associative mapping of
ideas, or the incorporation of otherwise disparate arguments, documents, or
objects, within a larger docuverse. In such work the link always remains the
servant of other processes, but such thought obscures, indeed actively turns
away from, any consideration of the link in, or of, itself.
[/quote]
There is an extensive discussion of the notion of “closure” and linking. Well
worth skimming for contemporary relevance.
François Lachance, Ph.d.
scholar-at-large@bell.net
@FranoisLachanc2
> On Sep 10, 2022, at 1:59 AM, Humanist <humanist@dhhumanist.org> wrote:
>
>
> Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 36, No. 167.
> Department of Digital Humanities, University of Cologne
> Hosted by DH-Cologne
> www.dhhumanist.org
> Submit to: humanist@dhhumanist.org
>
>
>
>
> Date: 2022-09-09 06:48:50+00:00
> From: Christian-Emil Smith Ore <c.e.s.ore@iln.uio.no>
> Subject: Re: [Humanist] 36.164: reading and hypertexted texts
>
> Dear all,
>
> May be George Landow is relavant here, see for example
>
> https://www.uoc.edu/uocpapers/3/dt/eng/landow.html
>
>
> Best,
>
> Christian-Emil
>
> ________________________________
> From: Humanist <humanist@dhhumanist.org>
> Sent: 09 September 2022 08:38
> To: Christian-Emil Smith Ore
> Subject: [Humanist] 36.164: reading and hypertexted texts
>
>
> Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 36, No. 164.
> Department of Digital Humanities, University of Cologne
> Hosted by DH-Cologne
> www.dhhumanist.org<http://www.dhhumanist.org>
> Submit to: humanist@dhhumanist.org
>
>
>
>
> Date: 2022-09-08 15:08:05+00:00
> From: Dan Johnson <djohns27@nd.edu>
> Subject: Re: [Humanist] 36.161: reading and hypertexted texts
>
> Dear All,
>
> This is an interesting question, and I too would be curious to see any
> research on the topic. I would submit, pace Henry, that hyperlinks present
> a different "rhetorical nudge" than a footnote or endnote. Footnotes, at
> least in my experience, do not cut into the reading with the same stridency
> as the blue underlined text, and it's usually easy to tell on the vision's
> periphery whether the footnote is going to contain substantive information
> or a simple bibliographic reference. Hyperlinks, however, are often
> ambiguous about intent, and I find myself pausing to hover over the link
> until a tooltip appears with the URL, which might hint at content. And the
> purpose can vary widely. A link to a simple definition of a technical term
> can be helpful or otiose. A link to a referenced known resource may or may
> not be a good idea. Then there are the links which are slipped in to appear
> like a factual data reference to back up a claim, but which lead only to
> conjectural polemic. These are only a few examples.
>
> In sum, because of the breadth of possible hyperlink "functions" and the
> relative lack of paratextual conventions and contexts available to
> footnotes -- combined with the visual weight of blue underlined text -- I
> feel that hyperlinks carry a different kind of cognitive load, and this
> loads tells on the reader, especially when hyperlinks proliferate. But I
> don't have the larger data to back up this subjective interpretation.
>
> Best,
> Dan
>
>
>
> On Thu, Sep 8, 2022 at 1:57 AM Humanist <humanist@dhhumanist.org> wrote:
>
>>
>> Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 36, No. 161.
>> Department of Digital Humanities, University of Cologne
>> Hosted by DH-Cologne
>> www.dhhumanist.org<http://www.dhhumanist.org>
>> Submit to: humanist@dhhumanist.org
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> Date: 2022-09-07 13:59:13+00:00
>> From: Henry Schaffer <hes@ncsu.edu>
>> Subject: Re: [Humanist] 36.159: reading and hypertexted texts?
>>
>> Dear Willard,
>>
>> I view hyperlinks in academic publications as equivalent to footnotes (or
>> endnotes.) Yes, they can consume a lot of space, but using space to convey
>> needed information is a necessity.
>>
>> Take a look at law review articles which are festooned with footnotes. In
>> my one such article, we had 368 footnotes and sometimes half the page, or
>> more, was filled with them (even though they are printed in a smaller font
>> than the article text.)
>>
>> Would it have been better to leave out the footnotes in an attempt to
>> attain "elegance"? It might have made the pages look better, but it
>> certainly would have greatly decreased the information presented.
>>
>> I will agree with you that easily found and generally known items shouldn't
>> be linked or footnoted - but I seldom see something like a date, e.g.,
>> September 7, 2922, with a footnote to a source such as
>> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calendar_date which explains how calendar
>> dates are formulated. :-)
>>
>> --henry
>>
>> On Wed, Sep 7, 2022 at 1:43 AM Humanist <humanist@dhhumanist.org> wrote:
>>
>>>
>>> Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 36, No. 159.
>>> Department of Digital Humanities, University of Cologne
>>> Hosted by DH-Cologne
>>> www.dhhumanist.org<http://www.dhhumanist.org>
>>> Submit to: humanist@dhhumanist.org
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Date: 2022-09-07 05:39:37+00:00
>>> From: Willard McCarty <willard.mccarty@mccarty.org.uk>
>>> Subject: reading and hypertexted texts
>>>
>>> Is anyone here aware of studies done to determine the effects on reading
>>> of heavily linked texts? I suspect from my own experience that links are
>>> quite often a distraction, even when the software presenting the text
>>> displays them as blue underlined words. (Humanist, for example, does not
>>> do that; URLs are always visible.) Then, too, linking items that can
>>> easily be found is otiose. It is also suggests the presumed reader is
>>> not only not reading, only prowling for information, but also either too
>>> lazy or insufficiently competent to find this information unassisted.
>>>
>>> Even a cursory study of magazine advertisements across a range of
>>> publications will show that those which are presenting expensive
>>> products are very often quite simple, uncluttered, even elegant, while
>>> those selling cheap things are cluttered, noisy, garish etc. Inelegant,
>>> overstated design, I suggest, communicates low price, cheap goods. If we
>>> translate this into presentation of text online, I suggest that heavily
>>> hypertexted text communicates, well, you see the point...
>>>
>>> And now extend that to self-advertising online...
>>>
>>> Comments? Arguments?
>>>
>>> Yours,
>>> WM
>>> --
>>> Willard McCarty,
>>> Professor emeritus, King's College London;
>>> Editor, Interdisciplinary Science Reviews; Humanist
>>> www.mccarty.org.uk<http://www.mccarty.org.uk>
>
>
> --
> Daniel Johnson, Ph.D.
> English; Digital Humanities; and Film, Television, and Theatre
> Librarian
> Navari Family Center for Digital Scholarship, Hesburgh Libraries
>
> University of Notre Dame
> 250C Hesburgh Library
> Notre Dame, IN 46556
> o: 574-631-3457
> e: djohns27@nd.edu
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Unsubscribe at: http://dhhumanist.org/Restricted
> List posts to: humanist@dhhumanist.org
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--[3]------------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: 2022-09-10 06:45:04+00:00
From: Charles Ess <c.m.ess@runbox.no>
Subject: Re: [Humanist] 36.167: reading and hypertexted texts
Very interesting - thanks, Willard, for opening up this thread.
I often wondered what it would be like to take up some of George's
earliest works on hypertext - specifically one that I recall as a
visionary speculation on what a computational scholar's workstation
would look like in a paper from either the late 1980s or early 1990s -
and see how far / not things have worked out as he anticipated / hoped.
As Willard knows, I had the privilege of working with George during the
development and then unhappy demise of Intermedia, an incredible
hypertext / hypermedia program developed at Brown with joint support
from Apple and IBM (!!). While some of its features, as promised by
Apple, were later incorporated in some aspects of later, Unix-informed
versions of the Mac OS (i.e., as as to take up these features as built
into the Apple Unix - AUX - OS Intermedia was written for) and, of
course, in Storyspace and Tinder from Eastgate - my overall impression
is that most / all of this has been washed away, or at least pushed hard
to the margins, by the commercialization of the web, which reshaped /
cut down / eliminated much of the early visions of hypertext /
hypermedia for the sake of maximizing attention (in the attention
economy) and thereby profit. (You don't have to be a Marxist or follower
of Political Economy here - but it helps.)
I'm happy to see that the ACM still sponsors a hypertext / hypermedia
conference and publications:
<https://dl.acm.org/conference/ht>
There may be some gems of the sort of research in there you're looking
for, Willard?
Let me / us know what you might find.
FWIW: I agree with Dan's "subjective interpretation" of the cognitive
load / affordances of underlined links vis-a-vis footnotes.
I would also add that perhaps my greatest disappointment with what
followed Hypermedia and the early days of HTML - i.e., when it didn't
take very much to build your own hypertexts as a scholar and with your
students - is the overwhelming sense that links these days help
encourage active reading, but only up to a point.
What I miss is the sense of excitement among students and perhaps some
scholars as well of being able to build one's own hypertexts that
thereby articulate and make easy to follow the web of conceptual
relations that one has discovered on one's own reading, reflection, and
scholarship.
My broad (also heartily subjective) impression is that the general
enthusiasms for teaching coding, requiring presentations in PowerPoint
from both instructors and students, and trying to keep up with all the
fun and games to be had on social media (TikTok for education, anyone?),
etc., represents a rather significant shift from a more active /
constructivist approach to building hypertext / hypermedia webs towards
a somewhat more passive posture of consuming them. To be sure, one can
remain quite active in exploiting the near-infinite webs now available,
e.g., to great profit in scholarship as well as elsewhere. And a shift
towards a somewhat more passive posture is certainly understandable
given the daily tsunami of "information" that overwhelms us daily
whenever we open up a computer or a smartphone.
But I'm rather sure that something(s) important are lost in the shift.
Perhaps not as dire as Neil Postman predicted with his _Amusing
Ourselves to Death_ (1984). Or, as another author put it in the late
1980s: Information Flood: Millions Drown.
But perhaps not so far removed from it either?
Happy weekend,
- charles ess
Professor Emeritus,
University of Oslo
--[4]------------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: 2022-09-10 06:24:47+00:00
From: Willard McCarty <willard.mccarty@mccarty.org.uk>
Subject: hypertexted text
Thanks to Christian-Emil (in 36.167) for the reminder of George Landow.
There was at that time a distinctly 'religious' fervour to the promotion
of hypertext--or, one might say, a lot of hype for hypertext--as if,
with the click of a mouse, The Truth, or a truth, would be revealed. But
a revelatory gesture is also a dismissal of what gets left behind, or at
least an interruption. Unless the loss of continuity is sufficiently
rewarded, and the reward is genuine, all one is left with is a
distraction, a loss of attention. All told, it seems to me that from a
reader's and a writer's perspective the loss massively outweighs the gain.
Footnotes have always had that distracting quality. Two great scholars,
Northrop Frye and Jaroslav Pelikan, for example, experimented with
marginalia instead of endnotes in wrestling with the problem. (Medieval
glossators used the distraction to great advantage, at times massively
rewarding the reader.) But both endnotes and footnotes are far easier to
ignore than blue & underlined hyperlinks. When, e.g. in messages sent to
Humanist, they are combined with a rash of asterisks, the total effect
is immediately to stop me attempting to read. As an editor, I delete
them. As reader, one look and I'm gone.
I refer those who would consider the alternatives to Rudolf Arnheim's
essay, "Art among the objects", in To the Rescue of Art: Twenty-Six
Essays (Univ. of California Press, 1992), 7-14.
Comments?
Yours,
WM
--
Willard McCarty,
Professor emeritus, King's College London;
Editor, Interdisciplinary Science Reviews; Humanist
www.mccarty.org.uk
--[5]------------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: 2022-09-10 06:20:42+00:00
From: Karadkar, Unmil (unmil.karadkar@uni-graz.at) <unmil.karadkar@uni-graz.at>
Subject: RE: [Humanist] 36.167: reading and hypertexted texts
Much work was done on losing track of reading threads in the 1980s and 1990s
before web page navigational features like menus and breadcrumbs became
commonplace. In pre-web hypertext systems, the granularity of information varied
and "page" was not a standard. The issues discussed surrounded the design of the
information being presented, the design of the hypertext system and its
affordances, the balance between user and usability issues.
A quick google scholar search for "lost in hyperspace" brings up this: https://s
cholar.google.com/scholar?hl=de&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=lost+in+hyperspace&btnG=. Perhaps
a starting point for a systematic literature search.
Best,
-unmil.
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