What constitutes nonlinear text? We build letters of lines. We arrange words in lines (mostly). Eyes flick across a page or (though irregularly) a screen in lines. Spoken words evanesce across a room into what we call past, and we model that idea time with a line. In a sense everyone reads in a line

In another sense no one does.

Hypertext authors understand that they problematize readers' sequence, of course, but

In story, first

I'm under the impression that I have some kind of theory that in some rough way explains how etext functions. Experience suggests that someone should disabuse me before I walk in front of a bus.

Before it hits, I will try to assemble sources relevant to my posts in comments to the posts themselves so as to not weigh things down too drastically.

The main lines run like this (read them fortissimo in your most strident McLuhan tones, please) ==>

Zoey raises a key concept in the entry about Ariana Huffington. Certain people and ideas gain or lose influence because of media form.

This has to happen extensively. Extreme cases will probably be obvious: for years deaf people couldn't use phones; dyslexia is considered a handicap primarily in alphabetic cultures. Likewise, not all messages travel equally in all media. Most people consider a poem or song more appropriate for a confession of love than, say, a table of data, a pie chart, or a formal essay with MLA style works-cited page attached.

It seems inevitable to extend to perhaps less obvious and more critical circumstances. Noam Chomsky and others have pointed out that 30-second TV or radio soundbytes tend to squelch dissent. One can quickly express an opinion that shares the audience's assumptions because one needn't repeat the groundwork, but if one must reform those assumptions, one needs time.

There’s a passage in one of Henry James's essays, "The New Novel," that I think is kind of uncannily apposite to a lot of the discussions that have been going on here and in class--particularly those dealing with the need for some system of filtration and mediation against a constant influx of information (see here, here, or here, to name a few), and then the semi-anxious, semi-hopeful talk about how the hell we're supposed to read, write, or analyze this hypertext stuff. So here some words from the Institution of the Novel:

Everyone should check out this story, about a (possible) 1000-page-per-minute printer.

"...we also anticipate brand-new, pioneering applications. One example is in-store book printing – where the book is printed instantly for the customer. This could enable small bookshops or even airport kiosks to carry a huge variety of books. There's also personalization – newspapers or journals printed with a customer's name, favorite topics, and suitable advertisements,” Moshe Einat told PhysOrg.com.

Wow! Okay, that's pretty cool--no more waiting weeks for books to be shipped or driving to every bookstore in the city in order to find a particular book (or being forced to read James Patterson when you forget to bring a book for the plane).