After reading Hayles essay I thought a lot about my history with footnotes. My experience with literature mostly included footnotes that were citings to other texts. What I learned from this is that you don't need to read a footnote. But then I met some useful footnotes (alas, more reading). Publishers of Shakespeare texts often have an entire page of footnotes for every page of story, all translating the definitions of the words that Shakespeare uses that are no longer recognizable to us. When we read "Infinite Jest" last year I didn't bother with the footnotes until somene alerted me to the fact that the footnotes were about 1/11 of the book. (I think that's correct?) In
this interview with David Foster Wallace, he says that originally the book had 400 footnotes, but he thought it might be overwhelming. I certainly feel like the 100 footnotes are overwhelming. However, when reading "Infinite Jest," I can always finish a footnote and go back to the text. It's as if the footnote could actually be placed inside the novel rather than at the end. The problem that I felt with Hayles essay is that each time I clicked on a link, I was tempted to click away form that page as well. In this way, hyperlinking makes the text feel too busy for me. There is no forseeable end to the document and that eliminates closure, which is very important for my sanity when reading.